English words in Croatian: linguistic borrowing and bilingual language processing

The English language is considered prestigious, and the prestigious status of a language is closely related to linguistic borrowing, language attitudes, and language exposure. English has become the dominant donor language, and its prestigious status reduces the probability that a borrowed word will adapt to the rules of the recipient language. As a result, many words borrowed from English are used in an unadapted form. In Croatian, the use of native equivalents is generally recommended, but it seems that they still do not fulfill the speakers' communicative needs. Research has shown that Croatian speakers generally have positive attitudes towards such words in some domains, and that the use of English words is related to intergroup favouritism and social evaluation. These results can in part be attributed to the prestigious status of English, but also to language exposure. Croatian speakers of diff erent ages are exposed to English through various informal activities, which facilitate incidental language acquisition. Language exposure has also been recognised as one of the most important factors in the research of bilingualism in a broad sense. This creates possible ground for research into the cognitive processing of English words within the framework of bilingual language processing. The aim of this paper is to present the emergence of English words in Croatian through different scientific approaches, to propose an interdisciplinary approach that would provide a more comprehensive insight into the issue and to consider research problems, possible solutions and guidelines for further research.