Multilingual communication for whom? Language policy and fairness in the European Union

Abstract

This article compares the effectiveness and the fairness of four alternative policies aimed at managing multilingual communication in the European Union. The current multilingual regime, based on the formal equality among the official languages of the European Union Member States disenfranchises only a small percentage of residents. On the contrary, an English-only language policy would exclude 45% to 79% of adult residents in the 25 countries for which data are available, depending on the indicator used. A language regime based on English, French and German would disenfranchise 26% to 49% of residents, whereas a regime based on six languages would bring the shares of the excluded population down to 9-18%. In addition, results show that economically and socially disadvantaged individuals are less likely to speak languages other than their own native tongue, and therefore they are much more likely to be adversely affected if the European Union stops using their language. The current full multilingual policy of the European Union based on translation and interpreting not only is (and will be for the foreseeable future) the most effective language policy among the alternatives examined; it is also the only one that is truly inclusive at a relatively reasonable cost. The British withdrawal from the European Union is likely to increase rather than decrease the importance of a multilingual language policy.

Mapping the language ideologies of organisational members: a corpus linguistic investigation of the United Nations’ General Debates (1970–2016)

“…However, research (e.g. Ammon, 2006Ammon, , 2012Author 2006;2015;Cogo & Jenkins, 2010;Gazzola, 2006Gazzola, , 2016Koskinen, 2013;Lenaerts, 2001;Piron, 1980;Quell, 1997;van Els, 2005;Wright, 2009) and internal inspections (e.g. JIU/REP/2011/4, see below) within these organisations have long shown that reductions in multilingual provision and use are commonplace, and multilingual language policies have been difficult to implement.…”

Political Parties in Deeply Multilingual Polities: Institutional Conditions and Lessons for the EU

“…And, secondly, the more we reject an elitist and top‐down understanding of partisanship and reconceive partisanship as a bottom‐up inclusive and deliberative process, the more problematic it is to ignore the deep linguistic diversity that exists among ordinary EU citizens. Indeed, recent empirical research has shown that abandoning the current regime of full official multilingualism in the EU and adopting either an English‐only or an English‐French‐German language regime would disenfranchise up to 79 per cent and up to 49 per cent of adult residents in the EU, respectively (Gazzola, ). This suggests that transnational EU parties using a bottom‐up deliberative model could not resort to the use of a lingua franca without undermining their inclusiveness and remaining elitist.…”

How do institutional constraints affect judicial decision-making? The European Court of Justice’s French language mandate

“…Furthermore, scholars in the linguistic justice tradition examine linguistic heterogeneity and the implications of language inclusion—or exclusion—within institutions on the policymaking process (e.g. Gazzola, 2016b; Liu and Baird, 2012). How does the choice of a lingua franca in a multilingual society affect a court and its judges?…”