Gaming, Glamour and Other American Realities in Spanish Obesogenic News

The major Spanish dailies regularly publish news about health and nutritional research, especially that conducted in the USA, and in doing so, many American English (AmE) lexical creations have been incorporated into Spanish. In this study over 50 AmE loanwords were first identified in 88 national press reports on childhood obesity. Then the 28 popular culture items were extracted from a 48-article sample and divided into four thematic categories: consumerism, entertainment, sports and video gaming. The analysis provides evidence of contemporary Spanish borrowing of pure (king-size) and naturalized (hamburguesas) AmE loans as well as calques like supermercado and videojuegos.