English as a Lingua Franca of Science in Relation to Spanish: Perspectives from the Field of Astrophysics

Abstract

English works as a global lingua franca in a large number of contexts. Here we examine its role in science using data from the field of astrophysics. We have analysed the language of publication of scientific papers and the number of doctoral theses and oral contributions at Spanish national conferences presented in English. This confirms a strong evolution in favour of English over Spanish during the last few decades. On the other hand, we have studied the process of adaptation of terms from English into Spanish in a corpus of twelve texts. Loanwords are mainly expressed through lexical calques and, to a lesser extent, through semantic specialisation, integral borrowings and anglicisms. This work joins other studies that attest to the rise of English as a scientific lingua franca and underlines, as one of its consequences, the importance of establishing strategies to express in Spanish technical terms coined in English.