ANGLICISMS IN THE LINGUISTIC CONSCIOUSNESS OF KAZAKH YOUTH: ADAPTATION STRATEGIES AND LINGUOECOLOGICAL NICHES (BASED ON ASSOCIATIVE DICTIONARY DATA)

Abstract

The intensification of English-Kazakh language contact under digitalization and the trilingual policy makes it essential to determine how deeply anglicisms are rooted not only in usage but in the linguistic consciousness of Kazakh speakers. The study aims to establish the volume, adaptation strategies and linguoecological niches of anglicisms – words of English origin – in the mental lexicon of Kazakh-speaking youth. Its scholarly significance lies in transferring loanword-adaptation analysis from textual material to the associative-verbal network; its practical value lies in the applicability of the results to terminological planning and language policy. The data source is the Kazakh associative dictionary (1,000 stimuli, 556,543 reactions; respondents aged 17–25). The methodology combines identification of anglicisms by the ultimate origin of the word (regardless of the mediating language), counts of reaction frequencies, distribution across thematic spheres and periods of entry, and analysis of competition between borrowed and native names. A total of 766 anglicisms were identified; together they were used 5,952 times, or 1.06% of all reactions. An opposite organization of the two spelling strategies was established: the Latin-script layer covers 83% of the different words but only 15% of usage occurrences, whereas the Cyrillic layer covers 17% of the words and 85% of occurrences; 71.7% of the entrenched layer is concentrated in three modernization domains; 34.3% of stimuli are entirely free of anglicisms; in competing pairs (galamtor – internet, kasipker – business) the planned term is shown to rely associatively on the borrowing. The study contributes a two-stage model of anglicism entrenchment in the mental lexicon and provides a measurable definition of a linguoecological niche. The results are applicable in terminography, language planning and language teaching.