The article presents the results of ideographic analysis of Americanisms in six novels by the British writer Nick Hornby: «High Fidelity» (1995), «About a Boy» (1998), «How to Be Good» (2001), «A Long Way Down» (2005), «Slam» (2007), «Juliet, Naked» (2009). Americanisms are lexical units specific to American English and borrowed into another language or another variant of a language (in our case - British English). While selecting Americanisms in Nick Hornby’s novels the author used two methods: deduction, the essence of which is turning to the original lists of Americanisms in dictionaries, scientific articles, studies and contemporary metalinguistic comments of British English speakers, and induction, based on focusing on the text. American borrowings constitute a distinctive feature of Nick Hornby’s novels. They are used in various functions: those of linguistic and ethnical identification (pointing to the American identity of a character), linguistic mimicry (the desire of a British character to adjust to the interlocutor’s manner of speaking), stimulation of metalinguistic reflection (the reaction of a British character to the use of an American word), identification of the author’s point of view (the description of a situation from the point of view of an American character), intensification of expression (the use of an American word in a British context serves as a reference to a more informal, jargonized culture), social group emblem (identifying the speaker as a member of a particular age group or subculture) and cultural reference (to the realia of American material culture, social life and spiritual culture, often mass culture). The suggested ideographic classification contains five basic unities, named «thematic areas»: «Society and culture», «Human», «Domestic life», «Human existence (life in general)», «Work». Thematic areas have inner hierarchical structure and are further divided into smaller units - thematic groups and subgroups. Within the analysis of thematic areas and groups (subgroups) the following parameters were taken into account: the way specific ideograms are organized in a thematic group / subgroup, the number of units in a thematic group / area, symmetry / asymmetry of logically similar or correlative subgroups (for example, positive vs negative rational and emotional assessment), the degree of specification of a certain meaning or a group of meanings of American borrowings in the novels by N. Hornby. The author reveals semantic zones of the lexical system of the receiving language (British English) requiring American borrowings and thematic spheres of the donorlanguage (American English), which are the most developed in terms of a detailed representation of a certain meaning or a group of meanings. It is revealed that American borrowings prevail in such spheres as «Communication», «Physical culture, sport (Skateboarding)», «Intellect, the world of interests and hobbies of a person», «Rational and emotional assessment», «Norms (anti-norms) of social life», «Psycho-emotional world of a person». At the same time there are spheres which are characterized by sporadic examples of Americanisms with a predominant use of British English vocabulary. Predictably, these are lexico-semantic groups containing words denoting family relations, relationship terms etc.