Transcript What does the unification of Europe mean for linguistic

What does the unification of Europe mean
for linguistic and cultural diversity?
Robert Phillipson
Faculty of Languages, Communication,
and Cultural Studies
Copenhagen Business School
Paradox 1: the EU
is not what it seems
EU is at root a Franco-German project
BUT
French and German are being
marginalised nationally and
internationally
Language policy is an explosive topic
European unification
• European reconciliation and
•
economic reconstruction
subordination to US global aims
Condoleezza Rice, 2000
George W. Bush, 2000
The rest of the world is best
served by the USA pursuing its
own interests because American
values are universal.
Our nation is chosen by God and
commissioned by history to be a
model to the world.
Globalisation
is a normative project… a pseudoconcept that incarnates the most
accomplished form of the
imperialism of the universal, which
consists of one society (USA)
universalising its own particularity
covertly as a universal model .
Pierre Bourdieu, 2001
New American Century:
the grand design
www.newamericancentury.org
www.truthout.org
A.G. Frank: ignore conspiracy
theories, the conspiracy is real
http://globalresearch.ca/articles
Language in the New Capitalism:
LNC email network
Finland v. Germany 1999
’small’ and ’big’ language rights
Die europäische Integration scheint für
Lipponens Finnland nur so weit von Interesse
zu sein, wie sie zur internationalen
Wettbewerbsstärkung beiträgt. Europäisering
wird offenbar als Spielart der Globalisierung
(miss)-verstanden. Und die Globalisierung
kennt nur eine Sprache, das Englische.
Sprachenvielfalt ist somit nur eine Barriere für
die Geschäftsbeziehungen.
Andreas F. Kelletat,
Deutschland:Finnland 6:0 Saksa:Suomi 6:0,
Deutsche Studien Universität Tampere 4, 2001, 40
One Europe? One language?
Spanish Foreign Secretary, Ana Palacio, El País,
16 December 2002
“The motto ‘One Europe’, solely in English, requires a
reflection. Even though Copenhagen did not face the
question of languages, this is one of the pending
subjects that sooner rather than later must be debated
for the very survival and viability of this project of
Europe with a world vocation. Within it, Spanish, one
of the official UN languages, spoken by more than 400
million people in more than 20 countries, must take on
the place it is entitled to.”
Paradox 2: diversity is subject
to the unfree market
EU rhetoric supports cultural and linguuistic
diversity
BUT
There is in practice laissez faire in the
linguistic market, as is confirmed in the
draft EU Constitution, which provides
weak support for linguistic equality and
diversity
Language status
• parity of twenty languages
• French primus inter pares
• English the current
linguistic cuckoo
European linguistic apartheid?
European citizenship, within the limits of the
currently existing union, is not conceived as a
recognition of the rights and contributions of
all the communities present upon European
soil, but as a postcolonial isolation of ‘native’
and ‘non-native’ populations … a true
European apartheid, advancing concurrently
with the formal institutions of European
citizenship and, in the long term, constituting
an essential element of the blockage of
European unification as a democratic
construction. (Balibar 2004, 170)
David Rothkopf, Foreign policy, 1997
It is in the economic and political interest of the United States
to ensure that if the world is moving toward a common
language, it be English; that if the world is moving toward
common telecommunications, safety, and quality standards,
they be American; and that if common values are being
developed, they be values with which Americans are
comfortable. These are not idle aspirations. English is linking
the world… Americans should not deny the fact that of all
the nations in the history of the world, theirs is the most just,
the most tolerant, the most willing to constantly reassess and
improve itself, and the best model for the future.
Corporate English
Farvel til dansk
Børsens Nyhedsmagasin
19, 28 May – 10 June, 2001
Should everyone speak English?
Business Week (European edition)
13 August 2001
Fluidity in language policy
in Europe
• unresolved tension between linguistic nationalism
(monolingualism) and european institutional
multilingualism
• competing agendas at the European, state
(national), and sub-statal levels
• the under-class in Fortress Europe of non-citizens
with marginalised languages
• increase of grassroots and elite bilingualism
• largely uncritical adoption of englishisation,
lingua economica/americana
• rhetoric of language rights, and some national
and supranational implementation
Languages in EU
institutions and services
• Separate services for the written word
(translation) and speech (interpretation)
• Separate services for the Parliament, European
Court of Justice, and the Commission +
Council of Ministers
• Rights enshrined in ’Regulation 1’, 1958, with
additional languages at each enlargement
• Terminological confusion (official / working /
procedural languages) obscures inequalities
• Policy follows economic rationales
Linguistic imperialism
English should be the sole official language of
the European Union.
Director, British Council, Germany, cited in
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 26 February 2002
Newsweek interviewer, 31 May 2004:
A unified Europe in which English, as it turns
out, is the universal language?
Romano Prodi: It will be broken English, but it
will be English.
Factors accounting for paralysis in
language policy formation (1)
• different cosmologies in national linguistic
cultures
• confusions of terminology (e.g. lingua franca,
multilingualism, working language) in discourse
(politics, media, business etc) and in distinct
academic disciplines
• linguistic human rights a recent development in
international law
• criteria for guiding equitable supranational
language policy are under-explored
Factors accounting for paralysis in
language policy formation (2)
• EU institutions are inconsistent in living up to
ideals of multilingual equality (website,
communications with member states)
• overall responsibility for language policy in the
EU is fragmented (Council of Ministers, DGs
for Education & Culture,Translation, …), and
ultimately (inter-) governmental
• alternatives to market forces (the comparative
advantage of English in the European linguistic
market) and linguistic nationalism (e.g.
Esperanto) are unexplored
• power politics, linguistic nationalism, economics
Concern at Englishisation:
1 (nation-state)
•
•
•
•
•
L’Alliance pour la Souveraineté de la France
Legislation in France, Poland, Hungary
Belgian government: EU discriminates
Vienna Manifesto ‘The cost of monolingualism’
Nordic Council of Ministers surveys of domain
loss in each Nordic language
• Swedish parliamentary committee national
languages policy plan, ‘Mål i mun’
Concern at English invasion:
2 (supranational/international)
• European Council conclusions ‘Linguistic
diversity and multilingualism’, 1995
• Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe Recommendation on ‘Linguistic
diversity’, 1998
• European Parliament & Commission: Year of
Languages 2001, and the ensuing Resolution
• Resolution on Linguistic and Cultural Diversity
…, NGOs at Porto Alegre, 2002
• Esperanto association discrimination campaign
Paradox 3: Panglossian faith in
Danish in EU institutions
• the most senior Danish translator:
Danish is thriving, expanding
• Head of interpretation services:
Danish risks marginalisation,
need for policy formation,
need for interpreter training
DET DANSKE SPROG
SKAL STYRKES
 at elevernes sproglige udvikling i
folkeskolen styrkes gennem en forøget
indsats i skolen og på pædagog- og
læreruddannelserne
 at forskningen følger en
parallelsproglig strategi, hvor dansk
styrkes, uden at engelsk eller andre
relevante fremmedsprog nedprioriteres
som videnskabs- og forskningssprog,
og at formidlingen af videnskabelige
resultater på dansk styrkes
Mangler i ’Sprog på spil’
• strategier for andre fremmedsprog end engelsk
(EU forpligtelser, 2003 Action Plan), helhed
• veje til flersprogethed for majoritets- og
minoritetsbefolkningen, indvandrersprog
(forpligtelser i konventioner)
• dansk i EU institutioner og i medlemslandene
• konkrete populariseringsstrategier.
Udvalget anbefaler at man ’følger opmærksomt’
indvandrersprogsspørgsmålet og igangsætter
udredning af dansk i EU-sammenhæng.
EU Commission
Promoting language learning
and linguistic diversity: An Action Plan
2004-2006, 24 July 2003
The range of languages for learning:
• the smaller languages as well as the
larger ones
• regional, minority and migrant languages
as well as those with ’national’ status, and
• the languages of our major trading
partners throughout the world.
EU Commission
Promoting language learning
and linguistic diversity: An Action Plan
2004-2006, 24 July 2003
The language friendly school: … a
’holistic’ approach … appropriate
connections between the teaching of
’mother tongue’, ’foreign’ languages, the
language of instruction, and the
languages of migrant communities.
Obstacles to
supranational language policy
• poor infrastructure nationally and
supranationally
• weak infrastructure in research
• international coordination among national
language bodies is in its infancy
• EU translation and interpretation services are
impressive in many respects, but subject to an
economic rationale, see themselves as a service
function rather than policy-making, and are
detached from international research