Language issues in the EU

The EU has yet really to acknowledge or come to terms with language issues relating to the excolonial groups of non-European origin. And, as regards individual nations, both France and Britain have in recent years come up with some rather clumsy attempts to get to grips with language differences among their non-indigenous populations—often identifying language as a cause for social ills. A good example of this was the controversial Bénisti report for a bill on the prevention of delinquency in France (Commission Prévention du GESI 2004), which provoked uproar by appearing to identify inability to speak French with problems of social unrest and in its early stages proposed that mothers should be obliged to speak to their children in French in the home. And Blackledge shows that in the debate in Britain surrounding the strengthening of legislation relating to language testing for citizenship the apparently liberal discourse of politicians and policy-makers links languages other than English, and therefore speakers of these languages, with civil disorder, school underachievement, social segregation, societal burden, isolation, unhappy marriage, poor employment prospects, mental health difficulties, lack of social mobility, and threat to democracy, citizenship and nationhood.

Furthermore, these ideologies gain force as they are debated in increasingly legitimate settings, and are ultimately enshrined in the least negotiable domain of all, the law.

Language rights and language status issues can easily become a channel for the expression of wider group grievances or aspirations, especially when a language has been long suppressed and subjugated to that of a dominating force, whether intra-nationally, as in the case of regional languages, for example, or cross-nationally, as with the Baltic states. Although sometimes debates over language can be a diversionary tactic, either conscious or unconscious, to mask other underlying concerns, because of its identity function, language can become imbued with immense symbolic potential among groups wanting to reassert their separateness and the right to control over their own affairs. Our language lets us set our boundaries, lets us differentiate ourselves from others and, we imagine, has the power to unify. As a result, language can be endowed with a kind of idealistic potential as a unifying force that will overcome former divisions–an approach used with both benign and less benign intent according to context. Such a unifying role, although counter to the stated aims of the European Commission, is often proposed for English within Europe where increasingly it functions de facto as a lingua franca.

Crucial in discussing linguistic issues in relation to Europe, whether it be from the perspective of own and others’ discourse, or in relation to language as actor in identity negotiation, is the disparity in power between dominant and less dominant groups. While this may derive from the legacy of what is traditionally understood as colonialism, similar power disparities also remain as the legacy of over-powerful neighbours, or an overweening state apparatus in relation to the regions. For the purposes of this volume we have identified three groups within Europe where power disparities of the kind mentioned above are evident, and where a neocolonial mentality might be anticipated.

The concept of lingua franca usually denotes a medium of communication between people each speaking different mother tongues, which means that it is used as an auxiliary or a third language. According to the defining criterion of “third language”, native speakers of English could not be part of lingua franca communication in English, simply because English would not be a third language in their case. This position is in line with traditional definitions of lingua franca and defines EELF interactions “as interactions between members of two or more different linguacultures in English, for none of whom English is the mother tongue”. Thus, failing to meet the criterion of third language for the use of the English language, e.g. between an Australian and a Bulgarian at an international meeting, would not fall within the scope of the above-mentioned.

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European identity	\|	The concepts of Euro English

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