Attitudes towards Euro-English in a European Union Institution

Abstract

This study deals with the attitudinal aspect of Euro-English, denoting a specific form of the English language that is frequently used within the institutions of the European Union. A questionnaire survey was conducted among 285 representatives who work for one of these institutions in Brussels. The respondents were asked to rate several deviations from Standard English, identified in a corpus-based analysis of EU texts, as either 'acceptable' or 'unacceptable' English usage. The findings reveal that the high acceptability rates of the proposed features among the non-native English-speaking respondents were mainly related to their proficiency in English and/or mother tongue interference. Moreover, since native speakers of English also accepted most of the proposed deviations, it follows that the participants did not seem to be aware of non-standardness in the test sentences. Euro-English must be regarded as EU jargon due to its technical, administrative or legal nature and not as a separate non-standard form of English for EU institutional settings.Keywords: European Union institution; Euro-English; corpus linguistics; deviations from Standard English; attitudes towards language; Eurojargon Odnos do evroangleščine v opazovani inštituciji Evropske unijePOvZETEK Ta raziskava analizira odnos 285 predstavnikov ene izmed inštitucij Evropske unije do t. i. evroangleščine kot oblike angleščine, kakršno pogosto uporabljajo v svojem večjezičnem delovnem okolju. Raziskava je bila usmerjena na ugotavljanje sprejemljivosti določenih jezikovnih vzorcev, ki odstopajo od modela standardne angleščine. Z analizo pisnih besedil Evropske unije v angleškem jeziku smo določili, katere izmed le-teh vključiti v testne stavke, s katerimi smo anketirance soočili. Analiza podatkov za nerojene govorce kaže na to, da obstaja določena povezanost med sprejetjem predlaganih odstopanj od standardne angleščine in znanjem ciljnega jezika in/ali prepletanjem maternih jezikov. Ker so tudi materni govorci sprejeli večino predlaganih značilnosti, ugotavljamo, da anketiranci evroangleščine ne dojemajo kot nestandardno obliko angleščine znotraj inštitucij Evropske unije, temveč kot EU žargon zaradi svoje tehnične, administrativne ali zakonodajne narave. Ključne

The Language(s) of Politics

“…Indeed, while Robert Phillipson's observation from almost two decades ago still holds today, that most books and articles on EU politics make no reference to language and multilingualism (Phillipson 2003), much existing research that is not explicitly about politics in fact tells us a lot about language and politics in the EU. 25 Most existing research and commentary on EU multilingualism, not surprisingly, comes from scholars in linguistics, sociolinguistics, and language or translation studies (e.g., Ammon 2006Ammon , 2010Balič 2016aBalič , 2016bLabrie 1992;Phillipson 2003;Pym 2000Pym , 2014Pym et al 2013;Schlossmacher 1994;Tosi 2005Tosi , 2013Trebits 2008Trebits , 2009aTrebits , 2009bTruchot 1994;van Els 2001van Els , 2005Wodak and Krzyżanowski 2011;Wodak, Krzyżanowski, and Forchtner 2012). There is also an extensive body of work in legal studies, some of which focuses explicitly on institutional multilingualism in the Court of Justice of the EU (e.g., Baaij 2012aBaaij , 2012bBaaij , 2018Creech 2005;McAuliffe 2009McAuliffe , 2011McAuliffe , 2012McAuliffe , 2015Paunio 2013;Šarčević 2012aVan der Jeught 2015).…”

“…You just kind of integrate that as normal speak" (#58). Balič (2016aBalič ( , 2016b investigates this proposition in more detail. Her survey of Commission officials asked respondents to indicate if several deviations from standard English identified in corpus-based analyses of EU texts were acceptable or unacceptable use of English.…”

“…Jablonkai (2009) compares corpora of official EU texts to online EU news and finds them to be notably different in terms of EU-specific vocabulary, discourse patterns, and text organization. Balič (Balič 2016a(Balič , 2016b) also relies on the EUROPARL7 corpus. 12 She finds pronounced differences between the EU-specific corpus and the BNC when it comes to EU vocabulary in particular, which she describes as "generally very technical, complex, and not easily understood by the general public" (Balič 2016a, 136).…”

Identity and standards for English as a European Union lingua franca

“…English is the leading link language of the majority of the 60,000 civil servants employed in EU agencies. While the Court of Justice in Luxembourg has French — with circa 2250 employees — the remaining institutions of the Union have English as their internal working language (Balič, 2016; Leal, 2021; Ringe, 2022; see also Arnull, 2019, for the call to remove French as the primary language of the Court). English is also the language most used by elected officials in Brussels and is widely utilised in the Council and among members of the Commission.…”

EU language policy under review

“…Unfortunately, however, while the increasing prevalence of European English is already apparent in the language usage of many EU citizens, it has not as yet received recognition. What does get a good deal of attention, on the other hand, is the use of slang, often referred to as Euro-speak, among many Eurocrats (Balič 2016). Somssich refers to this as "a 'contaminated' form of English, bearing the traces of foreign influence apparent in constructions and phrases which are often incomprehensible to English natives themselves" (2016: 111).…”