Running in French: A Question of Performance

Abstract

Running entered the official French language dictionary in 2019. This paper proposes to focus on the motivations which have led to the acceptance of this Anglicism in French. Indeed, running has achieved the performance of being more than the mere activity of running: it is a whole phenomenon which has been gaining ground since the late 2000s, as communities, events and derived products have been flourishing. Supposedly, running must have been a buzzword in the field of sports. But given its lexicalization, running could not just remain a buzzword. It has become a whole concept as it contributes to feeding the field of running in French through both semantic extension and precision. It will be of interest to examine the pathway of the Anglicism running from a phenomenon creating the buzz to a widely accepted and frequently used lexeme in French. The question of linguistic performance will therefore be tackled, thanks to recent online data, in order to show how running has become important not only in the world and language of sports, but also in the standard everyday language in France.