  Speakers of non-English languages often adopt loanwords from English to
express new or unusual concepts. While these loanwords may be borrowed
unchanged, speakers may also integrate the words to fit the constraints of
their native language, e.g. creating Spanish "tuitear" from English "tweet."
Linguists have often considered the process of loanword integration to be more
dependent on language-internal constraints, but sociolinguistic constraints
such as speaker background remain only qualitatively understood. We investigate
the role of social context and speaker background in Spanish speakers' use of
integrated loanwords on social media. We find first that newspaper authors use
the integrated forms of loanwords and native words more often than social media
authors, showing that integration is associated with formal domains. In social
media, we find that speaker background and expectations of formality explain
loanword and native word integration, such that authors who use more Spanish
and who write to a wider audience tend to use integrated verb forms more often.
This study shows that loanword integration reflects not only language-internal
constraints but also social expectations that vary by conversation and speaker.
