Abstract
Most social scientists and an overwhelming majority of politicians disregard the existence of any “language issue” in the EU. According to the doxa, English competence is steadily increasing, and English will soon be able to universally deliver all the functions that a common language in the European Union asks for. A careful empirical analysis shows that this is but a myth promoted by the political communication of the EU and facilitated by the paucity of independent data. A majority of European citizens is actually excluded from the benefits of multilingualism in the EU, and this has dangerous political implications for its future.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Since the creation of the Eurobarometer, the EU Commission only implemented a survey of citizens’ language skills (aged 15 and more) three times; the first was Special EB 54.1 as late as 2001; the second was issued in 2006, special EB243. And the latest version was published in 2012, Special EB 386. As is explored further, the Adult Education Survey (Eurostat) also delivers interesting findings.
- 2.
Van Parijs (2011: 9): “there is no dataset that could document it [the extension of English as a lingua franca, ndr] with anything like the same precision as the Eurobarometer”.
- 3.
Special EB 386, June 2012
- 4.
This figure may reflect the absence of Turkey and Croatia in the second survey.
- 5.
There are of course many available definitions for “lingua franca”, an English version of the classic “vehicular language” (Hagège 1985). A very loose definition indeed does not care about the proportion of speakers in communities linked by the lingua franca, as P. Van Parijs contends (2011: 9). As will be discussed later, his definition implicitly assumes that political participation may be legitimately restricted to an elite (ibid. 30–31).
- 6.
AES collected data in 2007 in 24 member states; AES then collected data in 2011 in 28 member states.
- 7.
Eurostat news release, STAT/1O/139, 24.9.2010
- 8.
The sample was slightly different. Corresponding figures were people stating they know at least one foreign language 66%, no foreign language 34%, 13.2% declared they were proficient, 23.10% saw themselves as good, and 29.7% as fair or basic (Eurostat news release 138/2013, 26.09.2013).
- 9.
There were several limits to the coverage of the survey in 2007: no data for the Netherlands and partial data for Italy, Malta, and Denmark.
- 10.
Obviously, expected is not actual: European surveys have estimated that about 20% of European citizens lack the literacy skills they need to function fully in a modern society, and the OECD PISA studies in 2009 showed that one in five 15-year-olds had poor reading skills.
- 11.
Given the various uses of English today, increasing its knowledge among disadvantaged publics would be a priori favourable for them. Funding English training as a priority however has detrimental effects on funding training in other languages as foreign languages.
- 12.
For him, this goal is not contradictory with allowing for the local use of various languages for subordinate and mundane functions.
- 13.
See later: traces of the influence of the French language are still existing yet.
- 14.
With the help of aggregating answers to five questions of the Eurobarometer, they distribute the barometer sample into two categories (strong versus weak), each making 50% of it.
- 15.
“Populism” has been a classic conundrum posed to political philosophers, sociologists and political scientists for the last 50 years. One of the first important intellectual (and unsurpassed) milestones in its discussion was held as a seminar in London in May 1967 and featured the seminal paper by Isaiah Berlin. Taguieff (2002) has very convincingly showed that, along with an ethno-populist trend displaying xenophobic and more often than not racist features, the qualifier “populist” is often straightforwardly attributed by elite politicians and journalists (as well as numerous social scientists) to all sorts of critical—and obviously as legitimate as favourable ones—attitudes towards the consequences of globalization and business-led integration, as they are experienced by voters of all sorts of parties across the political spectrum.
- 16.
It is also to be noted that in the three countries, significant extreme-left parties exist, which are also strongly acting against the various forms of European integration: we don’t take this point in consideration for our exploratory observation.
- 17.
Comparisons between the structures of qualification between Denmark, the Netherlands and France are made difficult because of statistics: at face value (Eurostat), the three structures are not very different. Danish colleagues have reminded me of the limitations of Danish statistics for the measurement of training and skills. Moreover, the linguistic situation is affected by the practice of other Scandinavian languages.
- 18.
The SF party (Socialistisk Folkeparti) also used to be anti-European.
- 19.
For lack of space in the present article, we cannot explore the immensely important question of refugees.
- 20.
A particularly illustrative example can be taken in social policy: the essential legal instrument that the EU Commission has published for the last 5 years is “Com 2013 (83), Communication from the Commission: Towards Social Investment for Growth and Cohesion—including implementing the European Social Fund 2014–2020”. The communication itself has 23 pages in English. It is accompanied by about a dozen so-called working documents where the essential argumentation of the policy lies: of these several hundred pages none had been translated in 2015. Only the 23 pages are available in all EU official languages.
- 21.
In the late eighteenth century, while remaining despots, monarchs in Europe pretended to abide by the rules of reason. The European institutions today act very much alike, while overruling democratic rules in the name of the general economic interest of the Union.
References
Aldrin, P. (2010). L’invention de l’opinion publique européenne, genèse intellectuelle de l’Eurobaromètre (1950-1973). Politix, 89, 79–101.
Arnold, C., Sapir, E. V., & Zapryanova, G. (2012). Trust in the institutions of the European Union: A cross-country examination. In: Beaudonnet, L. & Di Mauro, D. (Eds.), Beyond Euro – skepticism: Understanding attitudes towards the EU. European Integration online Papers (EIoP), Special Mini-Issue 16(2), Article 8. http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/2012-008a.htm
Barbier, J.-C. (2008). La longue marche vers l’Europe sociale. Paris: PUF, Le lien Social.
Barbier, J.-C. (2012). Une seule bannière linguistique pour une justice globale, recension de Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World, Philippe Van Parijs. Revue française de science politique, 62(3), 469–471.
Barbier, J.-C. (2013a). The road to social Europe, a contemporary approach to political cultures and diversity in Europe. Abingdon: Routledge.
Barbier, J.-C. (2013b). Europe sociale, l’état d’alerte. Opinion Paper 13, Observatoire social européen.
Barbier, J.-C. (2014). Languages of ‘social policy’ at ‘the EU level’. In D. Béland & K. Pedersen (Eds.), Analysing social policy language and concepts: Comparative and transnational perspectives (pp. 59–79). Bristol: Policy Press.
Barbier, J.-C. (2015, May–August). English speaking, a hidden political factor of European politics, Europeanization and European integration. Politiche sociali, 2, 185–218.
Barbier, J.-C. (2016). L’évolution des droits linguistiques dans la construction européenne. In D. Huck (Ed.), Émergence des notions de « droits linguistiques » et « droits à la langue ». Les apports d'une approche historique, actes du colloque de septembre 2014. Strasbourg: Université de Strasbourg.
Barbier, J.-C., & Colomb, F. (2012). EU Law as Janus bifrons, a sociological approach to “Social Europe”. In: Barbier, J.-C. (Ed.), EU Law, Governance and Social Policy. European Integration online Papers (EIoP), Special Mini-Issue 16(1), Article 2. http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/2012-002a.htm
Barbier, J.-C., Rogowski, R., & Colomb, F. (Eds.). (2015). The sustainability of the European social model, EU governance, social protection and employment policies in Europe. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Bartolini, S. (2005). Restructuring Europe, Centre formation, system building and political structuring between the nation-state and the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bartolini, S. (2006). Faut-il “politiser” l’Union européenne? Perspectives et Risques. Policy Paper 19: 32–52 (La politisation de l’Europe, remède ou poison), Notre Europe. Accessed November 1, 2014, from http://www.notre-europe.asso.fr
Cautrès, B. (2014). A collapse in trust in the EU. Revue de l’OFCE/Debates and policies, 134, 19–26.
Cautrès, B., & Grunberg, G. (2007). Position sociale, identité nationale et attitudes à l’égard de l’Europe, la construction européenne souffre-t-elle d’un biais élitiste. In O. Costa & P. Magnette (Eds.), Une Europe des élites ? Réflexions sur la fracture démocratique de l’Union européenne (pp. 12–31). Bruxelles: Éditions de l’université de Bruxelles.
European Commission. (2012). Eurobarometer EB 386, “European and their languages”. Brussels: European Commission.
Fayolle, J., Fleury, N., Malaquin, M., & Rain, A. (2015). Investment in education and training, from national issues to European perspectives. Report for the ETUC. Paris: Groupe Alpha.
Ferrera, M. (2005). The boundaries of welfare, European integration and the new spatial politics of social protection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fligstein, N. (2008). Euro-Clash, the EU, European identity and the future of Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gazzola, M. (2006). Managing multilingualism in the European Union: Language policy evaluation for the European Union Parliament. Language Policy, 5, 593–417.
Gazzola, M. (2014). Partecipazione, esclusione linguistica e traduzione: Una valutazione del regime linguistico dell’Unione europea. Studi Italiani di Linguistica Teorica e Applicata, 43(2), 227–264.
Gazzola, M. (2016). Multilinguisme et équité: L’impact d’un changement de régime linguistique européen en Espagne, France, Italie. In Actes du 1 erCongrès mondial des droits linguistiques. Teramo: Université de Teramo.
Grin, F. (2005). L’enseignement des langues comme politique publique. Rapport pour le haut conseil de l’évaluation de l’école 19. Paris: Haut conseil de l’évaluation de l’école.
Habermas, J. (2011). Zur Verfassung Europas, Ein Essay. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Hagège, C. (1985). L’homme de paroles, contribution linguistique aux sciences humaines. Paris: Fayard (Folio).
Hovens, D. (2012). Who are ‘the ordinary people’ of Europe and why they do not like the European Union, a case study of Dutch populism. In: Klein, L. & Tamcke, M. (Ed.), European in-between identities in a (trans-)cultural space. Groningen: Groninguen University. Accessed December 21, 2014, from http://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/434256.html
Kjær, A. L., & Adamo, S. (Eds.). (2011). Linguistic diversity and European democracy. Farnham: Ashgate.
Kraus, P. (2008). A union of diversity, language, identity and polity-building in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Milza, P. (2002). L’Europe en chemise noire, les extrêmes droites européennes de 1945 à aujourd’hui. Paris: Fayard.
Morgan, G. (2005). The idea of a European superstate, public justification and European integration. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Perrineau, P. (2013). L’électorat de Marine Le Pen. In P. Perrineau (Ed.), Le vote normal, les élections présidentielles et législatives d’avril-mai-juin 2012 (pp. 227–251). Paris: Presses de science po.
Perrineau, P. (2014). La France au Front. Paris: Fayard.
Scharpf, F. W. (2014). Legitimierung, oder das demokratische Dilemma der Euro-Rettungspolitik. Witschaftsdienst, 94(13), 35–41.
Schmidt, V. A. (2006). Democracy in Europe, EU and National Polities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stubager, R., Hansen, K. M., & Andersen, J. G. (2013). Krisevalg Økonomien og folketingsvalget 2011. København: DJØF Publishers.
Taguieff, P.-A. (2002). L’illusion populiste. Paris: Berg International.
Van Parijs, P. (2011). Linguistic justice, for Europe and for The World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Barbier, JC. (2018). The Myth of English as a Common Language in the European Union (EU) and Some of Its Political Consequences. In: Gazzola, M., Templin, T., Wickström, BA. (eds) Language Policy and Linguistic Justice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-75261-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-75263-1
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)