Stefano De Pascale
Dirk Pijpops2
Freek Van de Velde
Eline Zenner- 1Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics (QLVL), Faculty of Arts, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
- 2LILITH, Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium
Over the past decades, research on the linguistic impact of globalization has foregrounded the socio-pragmatic meaning potential and mental categorization of anglicisms, looking for signs of agentivity and contextual sensitivity in the way receptor language users incorporate borrowed English resources into their speech, both in form and in function. This brought attention to understudied phenotypes of contact-induced variation and change that go beyond the borrowing of individual lexical items (loanwords) from English. This paper aims to contribute to this endeavor, illustrating the potential of construction grammar to uncover the integration of borrowed chunks. In focus is the emergence of the verb pimpen “to pimp” in Dutch, a rapid innovation from the English proper name Pimp My Ride. A sample of 4,561 Dutch tweets containing (strings of) pimp posted between January 2007 and April 2020 was coded manually for formal and semantic properties. This allowed us to calculate an aggregate score of “deconstructionalization” both within and outside of the target construction [pimp POSS N]. Results indeed reveal a gradual blurring of the sharp contours of the construction, but also indicate that this process mainly affects the instantiations closest to the original. Linked up with the mediatized origin of the construction, our results add to our understanding of the relationship between media, language contact, and what is referred to as glocalization.
Background
Globalization, broadly defined as the “intensified flows of capital, goods, people, images and discourse around the globe, driven by technological innovations mainly in the field of media and information and communication technology” (Blommaert, 2010, p. 13), has left a clear imprint on all aspects of society, including its language use. For one thing, globalization is readily linked up to the worldwide spread of English, both as lingua franca, the means of communication between speakers with different mother tongues in various discourse domains (e.g., Ammon, 2001 for science, Mauranen and Ranta, 2009 for business), and as a prime resource for borrowing (e.g., Onysko, 2007). In Western Europe in particular, a surge of borrowing from English was witnessed after the Second World War, resulting from the strong presence of English in mass media and pop culture (Leppänen, 2007). Initially, scholars mainly aimed to assess the impact of English influence on the lexical stock of the receptor language by tallying types and tokens of English loans in different word classes (e.g., Posthumus, 1986; Yang, 1990; Görlach, 2003), but in the past decades, there has been a shift toward more socio-pragmatic and cognitive analyses of the linguistic manifestation and development of contact with English.
In this more recent work, researchers have emphasized the importance of usage-based analyses of the negotiation between English as the linguistic signpost of globalization and the local host languages—which we can consider as a type of “glocalization” (Androutsopoulos, 2010; Garley, 2018). The goal is to uncover (1) the characteristics of users and contexts of English insertions (e.g., Zenner et al., 2014; Vaattovaara and Peterson, 2019); (2) the semantic and socio-pragmatic nuances offered by English loans, often in comparison with alternative lexicalizations available in the receptor language (e.g., Onysko and Winter-Froemel, 2011); (3) the impact of using English insertions on the way messages and their senders are being evaluated (Van Meurs, 2010 on attitudes toward English in Dutch job ads); (4) agentivity and creativity in how different linguistic manifestations of English influence are embedded in the receptor language, both in form and in function (e.g., Andersen, 2014; Peterson and Beers Fägersten, 2018; Onysko, 2021). This paper aims to add to this latter line of research, which has opened up attention for understudied phenotypes of contact-induced variation and change that go beyond the borrowing of individual lexical items (loanwords) from English. In particular, we tie in with recent studies describing the way in which (semi-)fixed expressions and chunks of English material are integrated in the receptor language use, presenting an analysis of the local lifecycle of the globally mediatized phrase Pimp My Ride.
In the remainder of this background section, we lay the necessary groundwork for our study. First, we sum up the benefits of the construction grammar framework for the description of this type of contact-induced variation and change that surpasses the level of the individual word (see also Boas and Höder, 2018, 2021), drawing comparisons and uncovering differences with phraseological approaches to borrowing (Section English Phrases and Constructions in Contact). Next, we introduce the specific case study under scrutiny through a description of the results of an early pilot study on the same construction (Van de Velde and Zenner, 2010), viz. the construction Pimp My Ride and the derived Dutch verb pimpen “to pimp” (Section Pimp My Ride). Section Research Questions then identifies the main research questions of this paper. The data, coding procedure and analytic procedure are presented in Section Methodology, after which we describe the results in Section Results. Section Discussion and Conclusion summarizes the implications of our results for our understanding of English as a global source for contact-induced variation and change.
English Phrases and Constructions in Contact
Researchers interested in lexical borrowing have long mainly restricted their attention to isolated loanwords, perhaps as an epiphenomenon of the traditional quest for sharp dividing lines between lexical borrowing and codeswitching and the ensuing debate on the status of single word switches (Poplack, 1980; Myers-Scotton, 2002; and see Zenner and Geeraerts, 2015). After all, the most prototypical instances of lexical borrowing involve exactly such loanwords, according to Matras (2009, p. 113): “the regular occurrence of a structurally integrated, single lexical item that is used as a default expression, often a designation for a unique referent or a grammatical marker, in a monolingual context.” However, when embracing the idea that there is a continuum from borrowing to codeswitching rather than a sharp dichotomy between both (see Matras, 2009; Zenner and Geeraerts, 2015; Zenner et al., 2019), understudied contact phenomena that are part of the linguistic reality positioned between the outer poles of the prototypical codeswitch and the prototypical loanword instead come to the fore. For instance, attention has been awarded recently to the way language users adapt and integrate larger semi-fixed chunks of source language material into their own language (Andersen, 2020a).
We consider both phraseology and construction grammar1 to be useful theoretical frameworks for this endeavor. Phraseology research aims to study the form-meaning characteristics of word combinations (Cowie, 2001; Wray, 2002; Feyaerts, 2006), viz. of all structures including minimally two words (amongst others collocations, idiomatic expressions, phrasal verbs, slogans). Construction grammar, in turn, aims to identify and compare recurring linguistic form/meaning combinations on different levels of schematicity across the lexical, phonetic and grammatical domains of language use (Fillmore, 1988; Goldberg, 1995; Croft and Cruse, 2004; Steels, 2011; Boas, 2013). Both frameworks have been applied broadly and have hence each fragmented into separate subfields, making it fairly challenging if not impossible to arrive at a fit-for-all list of necessary and sufficient criteria to define and delineate the paradigms. What is clear, however, is that although both phraseology and construction grammar have largely developed independently of each other (see Gries, 2008; Ziem, 2018), they terminologically and conceptually share a number of properties. This is for instance true when taking the subframework of Cognitive Construction Grammar (Goldberg, 1995, p. 4; Boas, 2013) as point of departure, as this paper aims to do.
Where phraseology research aims to uncover a language's phrasicon, viz. the inventory of phrasemes, Cognitive Construction Grammar is concerned with the constructicon, viz. the structured inventory of constructs or phrase types that are captured by linguists descriptively as constructions. Both constructions and phrasemes are said to be (i) fairly fixed in terms of form and meaning, though allowing for variability in some of their elements (“open slots”, e.g., Oh my X)2; (ii) entrenched as units in the language users' minds; (iii) with degrees of entrenchment depending on frequency of exposure to the unit in language use; (iv) semantically non-decomposable, in the sense that a complex expression can have a meaning that is not attributable to the meanings that the subparts would have independently (Kay and Michaelis, 2011) (the phraseme kick the bucket is not about kicking a bucket, nor does they worked their butts off as an instantiation of the body part off-construction necessarily concern the agent's behind (Goldberg, 1995; Sawada, 2000; Granger, 2009); another example is the fully schematic double object or ditransitive construction V NP NP, which is associated with the meaning “transfer of possession”, despite it containing no lexical elements whatsoever; Goldberg, 1999, p. 199). Not surprisingly then, linguists have also relied on both paradigms to study the borrowability of semi-fixed chunks as grey zones in between prototypical lexical borrowing and prototypical code-switching. In this application, some pivotal differences between the paradigms can, however, be uncovered.
Pointing out phraseological borrowing as a largely unexplored area, Fiedler (2017) aims for an inventory of English-based phrasemes in German, classified according to formal parameters of the borrowed phrasemes, mainly contrasting phraseological patterns that are directly borrowed (nice try! in German), indirectly borrowed (e.g., der Elephant in Raum based on the elephant in the room) or hybrids characterized by partial substitution of English lexemes by German alternatives (e.g., den Turnaround schaffen “to manage the turnaround”) (see Andersen, 2020a,b for further cross-linguistic support). This distinction mirrors the opposition made by Matras (2009) between matter and pattern replication. Yet, the construction grammar emphasis on the various degrees of schematicity of constructions becomes crucial when aiming to study not just which phrases are borrowed form a given source language in what form, but also to describe how language users gradually adapt and change these semi-fixed source language chunks in the receptor language. It enables us to integrate, rather than separate, direct, and indirect borrowing, to simultaneously analyze pattern and matter replication, and to arrive at a more profound understanding of the way in which language change takes shape through individual usage occurrences in which language material from source and receptor language are integrated (Boas and Höder, 2018, 2021, and see Traugott and Trousdale, 2013).
Höder (2012) describes just how language users go about such integration (and see Dogruöz and Backus, 2009 for similar ideas earlier). Through interlingual identification, language users conflate similar constructions in two languages as belonging to a common “diaconstruction”. When instantiating the diaconstruction in specific usage events, users are left with a choice to lexicalize (parts of) the construction (the pattern) with linguistics elements (the matter) from either language. Whether source or receptor language material is used, may vary or change over time, with language users for instance gradually lexicalizing more slots in the receptor language. This contact-induced change can reflect or support more generally attested types of constructional change (Traugott and Trousdale, 2013; Coussé and Von Mengden, 2014), such as the occurrence of open slots in a previously fully fixed expression, semantic specialization or generalization of the construction as a whole or of its constituent parts.
The benefits of a (Diasystematic) Construction Grammar approach for the description of contact-induced variation and change have been illustrated by the papers in (Boas and Höder, 2018, 2021; and further see for instance Noël and Colleman, 2018). Meanwhile, as concerns change in (semi-)fixed chunks borrowed from English, Zenner et al. (2018) may serve as a first study. In this work, Zenner et al. analyzed semantic and formal similarities between the diaconstructional variants [(DET) ADJsuperlative N ever (Ptcp)] (e.g., beste zomer ever “best summer ever”) and [(DET) ADJsuperlative N ooit (Ptcp)] (e.g., beste zomer ooit “best summer ever”). Particularly, Zenner et al. (2018) aimed to link ongoing change in the existing Dutch ooit-construction to the incorporation of the English ever-counterpart in Dutch. The current paper focuses on a different question. It investigates the construction Pimp My Ride, which was borrowed from English into Dutch, and analyzes how its constituent elements have evolved in Dutch both within and outside of the target construction.
Pimp My Ride
In a pilot study, Van de Velde and Zenner (2010) revealed the rapid emergence of the verb pimpen “to pimp, fancify” in Dutch following the introduction of Pimp My Ride as the name of a popular MTV series in 2005. Pimp, part of English vocabulary since the 1600s3, (1) is a noun referring to a person who controls prostitutes; (2) is a verb derived from the noun in the meanings “to act as a pimp” and “to prostitute someone”; (3) exhibits figurative meanings based on (1) and (2) such as he pimped himself out to the media. MTV (Music Television), an American cable channel that spawns numerous affiliated channels across the globe, introduced a then still innovative additional verbalization of the noun when launching the TV show Pimp My Ride in 20044. In essence, the show involves the cosmetic makeover of a shabby car provided to the show by a participant. The title of the show refers to the request of the participant (imperative pimp) to, simplistically put, fancify their car (my ride) to the point where it looks like a car one would stereotypically link to a pimp. Although the show emerged in the socio-cultural context of the US, connecting to cultural ideologies surrounding pimps and ghetto-style, the series, both in the original and in various adapted versions, quickly found an international audience, carrying with it the new meaning of “to pimp”.
The choice made by Van de Velde and Zenner (2010) for this particular construction can be justified by pinpointing several reasons why it is actually fairly unexpected that the English phrase Pimp My Ride would instigate the introduction of a new verb, pimpen “to pimp, fancify” in the Dutch lexicon. First, the verb is introduced in Dutch via an international TV show, and so far the role of media in language change has generally been contested (Tagliamonte, 2014) and, in the context of anglicisms, understudied (Andersen, 2020a, p. 2). Second, its original fairly taboo meaning loaded with social stigma could hinder the spread of the more innocent meaning “to fancify”. Third, the imperative use of the noun pimp concerns a denominal verbalization that is not straightforward in Dutch. Finally, the verb pimpen is borrowed as part of a fixed expression functioning as a proper name. Hence, a process of constructional change could be evoked to explain the process of how the verb has become detached from the original proper name.
This latter point is precisely what Van de Velde and Zenner (2010) set out to study. Mining a self-collected fit-for-purpose Dutch corpus of newspaper articles published between 1998 (well before the first episode of Pimp My Ride in 2004) and 2009 (the time of analysis) for instances of pimp, the authors corroborated the fact that the “fancify” meaning of verbal pimp did not occur prior to the introduction of the MTV show Pimp My Ride in the Low Countries, in this way pinpointing T0 of the constructional change and sidestepping the actuation problem typical of variational studies (Weinreich et al., 1968). Second, the authors show how, even in the quality newspaper corpus, the new verb pimpen with its new “fancify” meaning spread quickly after the introduction of the show Pimp My Ride. Making a case for a construction grammatical approach to the change, they show how the verb pimpen was distilled from Pimp My Ride through a fast process of semantic and formal “deconstructionalization” from the underlying constructional template [pimp POSS N]. By “deconstructionalization” we mean the process of a gradual or stepwise blurring of the formal and semantic contours of the constructional template, leading to a less crisply delineated, recognizable chunk. Deconstructionalization is in that sense used here merely as a descriptive label, not as a bid to engage in theoretical and technical terminological debates. We prefer the term “deconstructionalization” over “schematization”, as the latter is mainly used to refer to the shift from lexically fixed slots to open slots, whereas we also intend to look at insertion at the syntagmatic level, and expansion of morphological productivity.
Semantically, the verb pimpen was increasingly used for other entities than rides and vehicles, even including animates [see (1)]5. Formally, a transition was noted from the fixed proper name Pimp My Ride via the semi-fixed target construction [pimp POSS N] [see (2)] to finite uses of the Dutch verb pimpen detached from the construction [see (1)].
(1) Vervolgens pimpten ze Frank Deboosere (De Morgen, 12 July 2008).
“Then they pimped Frank Deboosere [the national broadcaster's weather man]”
(2) onder de slogan “Pimp uw pots!” konden vrijwilligers zich een gepimpte muts aanmeten (HLN, 14 February 2009).
“under the slogan “Pimp your hat!” volunteers were able to acquire a pimped hat”.
In conclusion, by the end point of the measurements of the pilot study, viz. a mere 5 years after the first broadcast of Pimp My Ride in the Low Countries, the (in Dutch) new verb pimpen seemed to have established itself in Dutch, being used with a range of pimpable entities, both in the constructional template [pimp POSS N] derived from the target expression pimp My ride and more freely as a finite verb. This finding is further supported by the inclusion of the verb in dictionaries as of 2006 and the lack of objection to its use in normative reference works6.
This impressive trajectory in the Low Countries from English-origin TV show to canonized dictionary entry in less than 3 years might hold implications for our understanding of the role of globalized media for local language change. However, as the presumed lack of longevity is a traditional argument used against media-induced variation and change (Labov, 2001, p. 228), a follow-up study is required. Particularly, we aim to understand what has happened with pimp in Dutch following the 2004 introduction of Pimp My Ride, verifying whether the change is long-lived, and to what extent differences can be found in the trajectories of free use of the new verb pimpen “to pimp” and the [pimp POSS N]-construction that is closer to and hence in part still resonates the verb's globalized media origin.
Research Questions
This study aims to uncover deconstructionalization patterns in the use of the verb pimp in Dutch following the first wave of deconstructionalization as described in Van de Velde and Zenner (2010). A contrast is made between the trajectory of pimp-cases in the constructional template [pimp POSS N] and of occurrences of verbal pimp outside of this original template:
RQ1: To what extent do we find signs of further deconstructionalization in the target construction [pimp POSS N] after the establishment of the new verb pimpen following the introduction of Pimp My Ride in 2004, as attested in the choice of possessive (from original 1SG to other possessors), the type of pimped entity (from vehicles to other entities), the language lexicalizing the pimped entity (from English to Dutch) and the amount of lexical intrusion found in the constructional template (from no intrusion to intrusion)?
RQ2: To what extent do we find signs of further deconstructionalization in uses of the verb pimpen already detached from [pimp POSS N], as attested in verbal morphology (from imperative over infinitive and participle use to finite forms), derivational morphology (from less to more productivity) and in the semantics of the pimped entity (from vehicles over inanimate entities to animate entities)?
Methodology
To answer the research questions formulated above, we analyzed a sample of 4,561 Dutch tweets derived from a dataset of 163,046 tweets posted between January 2007 and April 2020 including a string of pimp (Section Data). Careful manual coding of the tweets for a number of formal and semantic properties (Section Coding Procedure) allowed us to calculate an aggregate score of deconstructionalization both within (RQ1) and outside of (RQ2) the target construction [pimp POSS N] (Section Deconstructionalization Score). In this way, we go beyond absolute and relative frequency measures, which make up the bulk of the quantitative data in grammaticalization, lexicalization, and constructionalization literature, and combine the attention to diagnostics of constructional change (Traugott and Trousdale, 2013) with a quantitative assessment that is amenable to statistical investigation (see also Petré and Van de Velde, 2018; De Troij and Van de Velde, 2020).
Data
For our study, we made use of a Twitter corpus. Following Androutsopoulos (2010, p. 204), we consider computer-mediated communication (CMC) as optimally suitable when aiming to study how “globalization is not a unidirectional process by which linguistic or cultural elements are diffused and uncritically adopted” but rather a process of local integration. Computer-mediated communication will be a primary source for uncovering the detachment of pimp from its original template [pimp POSS N]. Practical considerations further support the specific choice for Twitter: it allows us to arrive at a diachronically sliceable corpus of sufficient size. Needless to say, caution is needed when interpreting our findings, in the sense that we cannot simply extrapolate the trajectories of use of pimp to other genres or media.
We gathered a dataset of pimp-tweets automatically identified as written in Dutch for the period from 2007 to 2020, viz. from the launch of the platform in the Low Countries to the time of data collection. This means that we started our retrieval after the initial wave of deconstructionalization of Pimp My Ride in 2004 (Van de Velde and Zenner, 2010). Tweets containing conjugated and derivative forms of pimp were gathered through Python, also querying spelling deviations expected to occur in the conjugation of borrowed verb forms in Dutch or in the general CMC context (e.g., gepimpt vs. gepimped)7. All 163,046 collected tweets8 were lemmatized and POS-tagged with Frog (Van den Bosch et al., 2007). As the quality of POS-tagging is hampered by the multilingual contexts in which many of the pimp-forms occur and by the graphemic instability typical of the informality of CMC, we proceeded to manual coding of a sample of tweets. Specifically, a random selection of 500 pimp-tweets (or less, if no 500 were available) was selected for each of the 13 years under scrutiny. As such, a total of 6,381 pimp-examples was manually coded for their semantic and formal properties.
Coding Procedure
A first step in the coding procedure consisted of excluding noise from the dataset. A total of 1,820 tweets (28.52%) were excluded from further scrutiny for one of the following reasons: (1) the matrix language of the tweet was not Dutch, but rather English, Afrikaans, German, … (N = 754 of N = 6,381); (2) the target semantics of pimp were not “to fancify”, but rather pertained to the original prostitute controlling meaning, or the tweet was too short to establish the meaning of pimp (N = 1,031 of the remaining N = 5,627); (4) the verb pimp was conjugated following English derivational rules (e.g., past participle pimped rather than gepimpt) (N = 35 from the remaining N = 4,596)9.
For the N = 4,561 observations left after noise removal, we first identified the observation type, contrasting instances within the construction, which include both tokens of the original fixed expression Pimp My Ride [N = 254; 5.57%, see (3)] and tokens of the derived constructional template [pimp POSS N] that are not Pimp My Ride [N = 711; 15.59%, see (4)], with instances outside of the construction, viz. free occurrences of the verb pimp [N = 3,596; 78.84%, see (5)]. Table 1 and Figure 1 summarize the tokens per observation type per year, supporting the finding that the first wave of deconstructionalization happened soon after the first introduction of Pimp My Ride in 2004: the “free” use of pimp is the most frequent throughout the period under investigation. Additionally, we see a revival of original Pimp My Ride cases in 2010–2013. This probably relates to a rerun of the show on TV.
(3) dat haar van die gozer bij pimp my ride. met al die egelstekels.
“the hair of that dude on pimp my ride. with al those hedgehog spines”
(4) Pimp my coffee. Of eigenlijk de koffie van @USERNAME10.
“Pimp my coffee. Or actually @USERNAME's coffee.”
(5) @USERNAME Hoe zou ge een chihuahua dan plastisch willen pimpen?
“@USERNAME How would you want to pimp a chihuahua plastically?”
Table 1. Tokens per observation type.
Figure 1. Observation type per year.
Next, we proceeded to coding the formal and semantic characteristics for both groups further. Table 2 summarizes the tokens per year of the construction [pimp POSS N], classified according to the parameters of RQ1. This table was composed as follows. Following Table 1 above, we first split off occurrences of the original fixed proper name Pimp My Ride, which always have a 1SG possessive pronoun, ride as pimpable entity and English as language for the three slots. For the other [pimp POSS N] cases, four parameters are included. First, we indicate whether or not an English first person singular form is used as in the original construction [see my in (3) vs. your in (6) or je “your” in (8)]. For the N-slot, we keep track of the semantics by contrasting pimped vehicles (cars, caravans, motorcycles) with other types of entities [see car in (7) vs. kussensloop “pillowcase” in (6)]. Further, we keep track of the language used to instantiate N, contrasting English slots with Dutch slots [see coffee in (4) vs. autoband “car tyre” in (8)]11. Hybrid forms such as feestoutfit “party outfit” are considered English. Unclear cases and proper nouns are awarded NA (N = 21, marked red in Table 2). Finally, we keep track of lexical elements intruding in the [pimp POSS N]-construction [see nu “now” in (8)].
(6) Drukke #workshop week 3: Stickeren, Stencil, Pimp Your Kussensloop. Guerrilla Gardening, Beatbox, Zang, Theater, Dj en Hiphop op donderdag.
“Busy #workshop week 3: Stickering, Stencil, Pimp Your Pillowcase. Guerilla Gardening, Beatbox, Singing, Theater, DJ and Hiphop on Thursday.”
(7) Pimp your car met deze unieke AUTO WIMPERS vandaag bij BRANDNAME.
“Pimp your car with these uniqe CAR LASHES today at BRANDNAME”.
(8) hoe moet ik dat zien? pimp nu je autoband?
“How should I perceive this? Pimp your car tire now?”
Table 2. Tokens per category for observations of “pimp my ride” and of the target construction [pimp POSS N] (NA's marked in red).
The “free” pimp tokens do not follow the [pimp POSS N]-template, calling for another set of formal parameters that indicate (even) further deconstructionalization. The variables and token counts can be found in Table 3. For the semantics, we now resort to a ternary classification, contrasting pimped vehicles, other non-animate pimped entities and animate pimped entities [see (9), (11), and (10)]. NAs are awarded to instances where no pimped entity is specified (N = 106).
(9) Zo de volgbus van Team Gers! een beetje op gepimpt met ballonnen en onze mascotte dog
“Here the tracking bus of Team Gers! Pimped up a little with balloons and our mascotte dog.”
(10) Gistermiddag op de boerderij. Ze pimpten paardjes en ook een paar poesjes.
“Yesterday afternoon on the farm. They pimped horses and a couple of kittens.”
(11) #budgettip. Pimp afdankertjes op, koop buiten t seizoen en in de #uitverkoop. Maak zo een #cadeaula aan en speel t hele jaar voor Sint.
“#budgettip. Pimp up discards, buy outside of season and during #sales. Make a #giftdrawer this way and play Santa all year long.”
Table 3. Tokens per category for observations outside of the target construction (NA's marked in red).
For the formal classification of tokens, we adopt a verbal and a derivational morphological perspective. In terms of verbal morphology, we contrast imperatives [see (11)], infinitives [see (5)], (adjectival use of) participles [see (9)] and finite uses [see (10)]. For derivational morphology, we keep track of pimp's productivity by checking for derivational morphemes or phrasal extension [see op “up” in (9)].
Deconstructionalization Score
To arrive at a “holistic” picture of the deconstructionalization process of the lexical expression pimp my ride both within and outside the template [pimp POSS N], we follow a quantitative procedure applied earlier in studies by Van de Velde (2009, p. 334–339), De Smet and Van de Velde (2013), and Petré and Van de Velde (2018). The idea is that an observation collects “points” for each dimension of constructional change that plays a role in the departure of the original construction. To give an example: a point is awarded if we observe pimp your ride instead of pimp my ride, and yet another if the pimped entity is not ride but e.g., pimp your laptop. In a sense, the number of points collected can be seen as a distance value from the original construction12.
The total score is then used as the response variable in a negative binomial regression, with the year of attestation as the predictor. If the predictor is significant, we can assume there to be a robust trend over time. Before we have a look at the results, we will first detail the scoring procedure, which takes the information from the manual coding as input. We made a distinction between the original construction [pimp POSS N] and the subsequent “free” use of the verb pimp.
For the original construction (RQ1), the following system has been applied:
- Form in the POSS-slot: 0 points if the possessive was my or ma; +1 point otherwise (mijn, jouw, onze ...).
- Semantics of N-slot: 0 points if the entity is a vehicle; +1 point otherwise (food, animate entities etc.).
- Language of the N-slot: 0 if the pimped entity is English, an English loan or a hybrid form; +1 point otherwise (Dutch noun, French loan ...).
- “Intrusion” in the template: 0 if the imperative pimp, the possessive, and the pimped entity are contiguously expressed; +1 point if there is intervening material [see nu “now” in (8)].
As such, the maximal number of points an observation of the form [pimp POSS N] can gather is 4.
For the verb pimp in its “free” use, outside of the constructional template (RQ2), the following scoring system has been applied:
- Verbal morphology: 0 if the verb is an imperative; +1 point if the verb is an infinitive; +2 points if the verb is a past participle; +3 points if it is a finite, non-imperative form. This scoring reflects a continuum “infinitive > participle > finite verb”: we know from earlier studies that loan verbs enter the (Dutch) language preferably through their non-inflected forms, with infinitives being easier to accommodate than participles (Wichmann and Wohlgemuth, 2008, see also De Smet, 2014).
- Derivational morphology: 0 if the verb is used as a simple stem; +1 point when signs of productivity are attested, viz. if pimp is combined with a derivational morpheme or a phrasal extension (pimp up, oppimpen, ontpimpen etc.).
- Entity semantics: 0 if the pimped entity is a vehicle; +1 point if the pimped entity is something else; +2 points if the pimped entity is an animate entity (human, animal or body part).
The maximal number of points for the “free” construction is 6 points.
Results
Patterns of Change Within the Target Construction [pimp POSS N]
For the use of the [pimp POSS N] construction, the negative binomial model (with the natural logarithm as the link function) indicated a trend over time. Diachronically, the distance from the original construction as measured by the four-point scoring system increases significantly [β = 0.07 (on the log scale), p < 0.001]. This is visually represented in the effect plot in Figure 2. Next, Figure 3 verifies to what extent we still find a significant deconstructionalization trend when taking the original lexical construction, viz. all occurrences of the lexically fixed Pimp My Ride, out of the equation. As can be seen in Figure 3, the upward trend remains, but loses some of its oomph and its significance [β = 0.01 (log scale), p = 0.156].
Figure 2. Effect plot negative binomial regression for [pimp POSS N].
Figure 3. Effect plot negative binomial regression for [pimp POSS N] excluding Pimp My Ride.
Patterns of Change Outside of the Target Construction [Pimp POSS N]
“Free-roaming” pimp, i.e., the occurrence of pimp outside of the [pimp POSS N] template, does not show a trend over time. The effect of the year of attestation is not significant [β = −0.004 (log scale), p = 0.111]. Indeed, the effect plots in Figure 4 shows that the line is flat. Upon closer inspection, however, it seems that we would be remiss to assume that everything remains the same. Over time, the average score does remain more or less stable, but the range widens. Indeed, there is an increase over time in the standard deviation (Pearson's correlation 0.83, p < 0.001), see Figure 5.
Figure 4. Effect plot negative binomial regression for deconstructionalized “pimp”.
Figure 5. Standard deviations over time.
What we have, then, is an increase in the higher regions of the scores, but this increase is counterbalanced by a simultaneous upsurge in the more basic use of the construction. This echoes a finding from Zenner et al. (2018), who noted that the use of a new construction can boost the frequency of an older cognate construction, which they call the “a rising tide lifts all the boats” phenomenon.
Discussion and Conclusion
This study aimed to uncover deconstructionalization patterns in the use of the verb pimp in Dutch following the first wave of deconstructionalization as described in the Van de Velde and Zenner (2010) pilot study. The analysis distinguished between pimp-occurrences found within the target template [pimp POSS N] and of pimp-cases that are to be located outside of the original target template. We relied on a holistic score aggregating over formal and semantic diagnostics of the pimp-occurrences attested through manual coding.
Within the original constructional template, our aggregate score revealed a significant pattern of deconstructionalization over time. However, the significance attested likely concerns an artifact of a rerun of the show in 2010–2013. This rerun spiked the use of pimp in the original fixed phrase Pimp My Ride. When this original use started decreasing after 2013, this naturally caused the aggregate deconstructionalization score to rise.
Outside of the construction, not much seems to be going on at first glance. From 2007, our first point of measurement, to 2019, the curve for our deconstructionalization score is flat, indicative of stability in the degree of digression from the original Pimp My Ride form and meaning across time. Closer scrutiny revealed a more complicated story. A significant increase is attested in the standard deviations of the aggregate score over time, indicative of an increasingly broad use of pimp. This can be understood as the combined effect of two phenomena known from the grammaticalization and constructionalization literature. The first phenomenon is “layering” (see Hopper, 1991): a new use does not overthrow the old use, rather the two may happily coexist. Take for instance the grammaticalization of the indefinite article a(n) from numeral one. The emergence of the article does not obliterate the numeral, obviously. The same may be true in our case as well: the emergence of a new use of pimp does not necessarily come at the expense of the old fixed expression. The second phenomenon is “a rising tide lifts all the boats” (see Zenner et al., 2018): increased use of the new construction may even lead to a concomitant increase in the use of the old construction.
It would be interesting to complement our corpus study with perception research in at least three ways. First, studies could aim to uncover whether the media origin of this verb is still perceived by language users and to what extent this might promote the selection of the verb over Dutch near-synonyms such as opleuken. Second, we could verify to what extent the socio-cultural stereotypes surrounding the pimp persona and ghetto-fabulous style that likely underlie the US original version are perceived by Dutch speakers, or what is “lost in translation”. Third, research could verify which of the two pimp-meanings (“prostitute controller” or “to fancify”) is prompted first in language users” perception and to what extent the negative connotations of the original noun pimp might restrict the use of the verb pimp or whether instead any trail of negative semantic and social connotation has been bleached from the new verbal usage (see Bucholtz, 2016 on indexical bleaching).
Additionally, to fully grasp the interaction between the global and the local at play in the pimp lifecycle, future research can aim to uncover to what extent similar patterns of deconstructionalization have occurred in other countries where the TV show was broadcast. A quick scan of online dictionaries reveals the occurrence of a pimp-verb in our target meaning in German Duden (pimpen), in Swedish Akademiens OrdBöcker (pimpa), in Norwegian NAOB (pimpe) and in English Cambridge Dictionary itself (to pimp), though not in French Robert, in Italian Treccani or in Spanish Diccionario de la lengua española13. It is of course tempting to consider this support for a diasystematic approach to multilingual constructions, as the languages typologically closer to English and hence sharing templates for the noun phrase seem to be the ones who have taken over the construction. Caution is needed, of course, as differences in dubbing or subtitling practices might also be at play, and more or less normative traditions in lexicography might promote or disfavor inclusion of the verb in the dictionary (consider the strong monitoring role of the Académie française for French, though see Estival and Pennycook, 2011). Further, the mere occurrence of a pimp-based verb does not indicate the extent to which the usage is comparable with the original uses in (American) English. As Andersen (2020a,b) points out, more cross-linguistic research on the way English phrases are included in local languages is needed. As a reviewer of this manuscript rightly points out, such cross-linguistic research should also encompass a close comparison with the original usage patterns in the source language. This will allow us to better understand how the global and the local interact, and whether what appears to be local might in itself be more global than anticipated.
Either way, our exploration of the way in which the Dutch-speaking Twitter population has incorporated the new verb pimpen in their lexicon points to language users' high flexibility in adopting words from borrowed phrases. On a methodological note, we hope to inspire future work in two ways. First, we hope to reveal the benefits of disentangling free occurrences of pimp from occurrences of pimp that are part of the constructional imperative template [pimp POSS N], and more broadly of identifying points on a spectrum of linguistic innovation from lexically fixed to fully productive patterns. Second, other research might benefit from our scoring system, that allows for a quantified bird's eye perspective derived from manual coding of the formal, morphological and semantic characteristics of the construction at hand.
Data Availability Statement
The datasets presented in this study can be found in online repositories. The names of the repository/repositories and accession number(s) can be found in the article/supplementary material.
Author Contributions
SD and DP: conception study, data collection, interpretation results, and revision manuscript. FV and EZ: conception study, data annotation, data analysis, interpretation results, draft and revision manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.
Funding
This publication was funded by the project How predictable is language change? (KU Leuven, BOF, grant number C14/18/035) and by VCL-OZALGE-T2022 (KU Leuven).
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher's Note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Footnotes
1. ^Construction grammar is often written with capitals, as a way to highlight the status of construction grammar as a theory, as originally developed by Fillmore, Kay and collaborators (see e.g., Fillmore, 1988). We have chosen not to use capitalization in this paper for two reasons: (1) we do not intend to refer solely to Fillmorian Construction Grammar, but rather refer to the broad family of constructional theories, and hence only use capitals when referring to specific theories such as Cognitive Construction Grammar or Sign-based Construction Grammar; (2) we would not want to create the impression that we are promoting construction grammar over phraseology, an equally valid framework.
2. ^Note that other subframeworks of construction grammar consider the occurrence of an open slot obligatory (see Michaelis, 2019). Cognitive Construction Grammar (but see also Fluid Construction Grammar; Steels, 2011, p. 3–4) define “construction” to broadly mean “symbolic unit”, including words, multi-word expressions and schematic constructions with open slots (Goldberg, 2006, p. 18).
3. ^The Oxford English Dictionary includes examples of pimp, n. and pimp, v. (1) since 1639, and of pimp, v. (2) since 1745.
4. ^The Oxford English Dictionary includes examples of to pimp in the meaning “to fancify” from 2000 onwards.
5. ^Examples in this section are drawn from the database collected by Van de Velde and Zenner (2010).
6. ^See https://www.vlaanderen.be/taaladvies/pimpen, https://onzetaal.nl/taaladvies/pimpen, both consulted July 6, 2021.
7. ^The Twitter API does not allow downloading tweets older than 7 days. We hence relied on the Python package “GetOldTweets3”. This package is meanwhile deprecated, with “snscrape” as its successor. As barely any metadata for the tweets is retrieved by GetOldTweets3, we complemented the GetOldTweets3 data with information retrieved from the standard Python package “Tweepy” relying on the tweet's ID.
8. ^Twitter API does not guarantee exhaustivity: “Standard search API returns a collection of relevant Tweets matching a specified query. Please note that Twitter's search service and, by extension, the Search API is not meant to be an exhaustive source of Tweets. Not all Tweets will be indexed or made available via the search interface.” (https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api/v1/tweets/search/api-reference/get-search-tweets).
9. ^The coded data can be accessed via https://osf.io/bjevu/?view_only=9222b6704473464caf1e242e6c391cdc (folder “deconstructionalization”).
10. ^Personal information of tweets like usernames were replaced by placeholders in the examples.
11. ^NAs, marked red in Table 2, are awarded in the rare event that the tweet contains an empty placeholder for the N-slot, such as “ZO...... 3E PIMP MY..........! ITEM IS GEMAAKT” “so… 3rd pimp my …! item has been created” (N = 4).
12. ^NAs systematically receive score 0. Alternative analyses that instead exclude NAs reveal the same results.
13. ^https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/pimpen, https://svenska.se/, https://naob.no/ordbok, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary, https://dictionnaire.lerobert.com, https://www.treccani.it/, https://dle.rae.es/, consulted July 7, 2021.
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Keywords: Pimp My Ride, anglicisms, Dutch, construction grammar, glocalization
Citation: De Pascale S, Pijpops D, Van de Velde F and Zenner E (2022) Reassembling the Pimped Ride: A Quantitative Look at the Integration of a Borrowed Expression. Front. Commun. 7:777312. doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2022.777312
Received: 15 September 2021; Accepted: 21 January 2022;
Published: 17 March 2022.
Edited by:
Peter Siemund, University of Hamburg, GermanyReviewed by:
Laura Adrienne Michaelis, University of Colorado Boulder, United StatesVsevolod Kapatsinski, University of Oregon, United States
Copyright © 2022 De Pascale, Pijpops, Van de Velde and Zenner. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Eline Zenner, eline.zenner@kuleuven.be