EVOLVING ANGLICISMS: A DIACHRONIC ANALYSIS OF GERMAN YOUTUBE VIDEOS (2014-2024) — FREQUENCY TRENDS, SPECIFICITY, AND PERSISTENCE

This thesis investigates the integration, semantic development, and persistence of English loanwords known as anglicisms in German YouTube discourse over a ten-year period from 2014 to 2024. In the context of globalization and digital communication, English increasingly influences informal spoken German, especially on platforms like YouTube. While previous studies have largely focused on written corpora, this research addresses a significant gap by examining spontaneous, speech-like language in digital settings. Particular emphasis is placed on adjectives, which are central to informal expression, stylistic positioning, and cultural signaling. Based on a self-compiled 196-million-word corpus called GYST (German YouTube Speech Transcripts), the study first analyzes the frequency of anglicisms across all parts of speech and content genres. Nouns are found to be the most frequent and stable borrowings, while verbs and adjectives show greater variability. The subsequent semantic and persistence analysis focuses exclusively on adjectives. Entropy scores are used to measure contextual flexibility, revealing that adjectives with higher entropy are also more frequent and more likely to persist across time. In contrast, low entropy adjectives tend to remain restricted in usage and are more likely to decline. A strong positive correlation is found between entropy and frequency, indicating that semantic vagueness and broad contextual use support long-term integration. Persistence is analyzed descriptively, showing that adjectives with stable or gradually increasing usage trends are more likely to remain active over time. Variation across content genres further shows that domains such as Gaming are characterized by rapid lexical turnover, while others like Education promote more stable borrowing patterns. Overall, the study provides insight into the dynamics of contact induced change in German as shaped by informal digital discourse.