Abstract:
While the field of loanword research has received more attention since the Nineteenth Century, it
has been noted that the existing literature is rather limited in terms of both the perspective and the
methodology, both of which deserve special attention from future research. In an attempt to
address these problems in the field, this thesis attempts to study loanwords from an
onomasiological perspective with use of corpus data. It first examines the conceptual framework
adopted in the field of loanwords research and modifies the inconsistencies within the framework
for a better understanding on the process of lexical choice. Then, this thesis proposes a
methodology that attempts to capture patterns in speakers’ attitude towards loanwords from corpus
data. It ends with the application of the proposed methodology to a diachronic case study on a
Russian word pair, one English loanword and its native synonym, in order to demonstrate the
potential of such a methodology to provide a different understanding to the usage of loanwords.
