The Global Anglicism Database (GLAD) Network is motivated by the current and increasing interest of linguists and laypeople alike in the influence of English on other languages (Furiassi, Pulcini & Rodríguez González 2012; Furiassi & Gottlieb 2015). Both through face-to face interaction and via distant contact situations, the English language affects languages globally at lexical, morphological, syntactic, phraseological and pragmatic levels, thus turning English, a recipient language by tradition, into the donor language par excellence.

To begin with, we seek to establish a network of scholars and institutions willing to share bibliographical material, research findings and initiatives of all sorts.

The GLAD project aims at:

1. building a network of scholars monitoring the Anglicization of the world’s languages;
2. posting personal profiles of scholars studying the influence of English, with links to their publications;
3. compiling and spreading a database of tools and resources for the study and analysis of Anglicisms;
4. producing an online global database of Anglicisms (and their synonyms);
5. sharing bibliographies on Anglicism studies worldwide;
6. spreading news about Anglicism-related events, including conferences and university courses;
7. investigating theoretical issues related to language contact with English and related phenomena

The Idea

The idea for the network was launched at the European Society for the Study of English conference in Košice, Slovakia in 2014, following the seminar The Pragmatics of Borrowing: Assessing the Pragmatic Effects of Borrowings from and into English, hosted by Cristiano Furiassi, Gisle Andersen, and Biljana Mišić Ilić. At that meeting, several researchers realized they were conducting complementary research on the world’s languages that had to do with English as a contact and donor language.

The next meeting and the official kick-off for the GLAD Network was held at the 14^th International Pragmatics Association conference in Antwerp, Belgium. Following up on the IPRA conference panel Linguistic and Pragmatic Outcomes of Contact with English as a Foreign Language, hosted by Elizabeth Peterson, 24 researchers from around the world interested in the study of Anglicisms met to discuss theoretical and practical issues related to documenting and sharing their work.

The third GLAD Network meeting, titled the Building the Global Anglicism Database (GLAD), took place on 11-12 March, 2016 and was hosted by the University of Alicante, Spain.

For more information on this event, please contact the organizers at Félix Rodríguez, University of Alicante (frodgonzalez@gmail.com)

José Luis Oncins, University of Extremadura, Cáceres (oncins@unex.es)