English in Europe: Volume 1 Attitudes towards English in Europe 9781614515517, 9781614517351, 9781501500695

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Andrew Linn, Neil Bermel, Gibson Ferguson (Eds.) Attitudes towards English in Europe

Language and Social Life

Editors David Britain Crispin Thurlow Founding Editor Richard J. Watts

Volume 2

Attitudes towards English in Europe English in Europe, Volume 1

Edited by Andrew Linn Neil Bermel Gibson Ferguson

ISBN 978-1-61451-735-1 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-61451-551-7 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-0069-5 ISSN 2364-4303 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. 6 2015 Walter de Gruyter, Inc., Berlin/Boston Typesetting: RoyalStandard, Hong Kong Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Series preface The biggest language challenge in the world today is English. School children are expected to learn it, and the need to succeed in English is often fired by parental ambition and the requirements for entry into higher education, no matter what the proposed course of study. Once at university or college, students across the globe are increasingly finding that their teaching is being delivered through the medium of English, making the learning process more onerous. Universities unquestioningly strive for a greater level of internationalization in teaching and in research, and this in turn equates with greater use of English by non-native speakers. The need to use English to succeed in business is as much an issue for multinational corporations as it is for small traders in tourist destinations, and meanwhile other languages are used and studied less and less. On the other hand, academic publishers get rich on the monolingual norm of the industry, and private language teaching is itself big business. In the market of English there are winners and there are losers. The picture, however, is more complicated than one simply of winners and losers. What varieties of English are we talking about here, and who are their ‘native speakers’? Is there something distinct we can identify as English, or is it merely part of a repertoire of language forms to be called upon as necessary? Is the looming presence of English an idea or a reality, and in any case is it really such a problem, and is it really killing off other languages as some commentators fear? Is the status and role of English the same in all parts of the world, or does it serve different purposes in different contexts? What forms of practical support do those trying to compete in this marketplace need in order to be amongst the winners? These are all questions addressed by the English in Europe: Opportunity or Threat? project, which ran from January 2012 to October 2014. This international research network received generous funding from the Leverhulme Trust in the UK and was a partnership between the universities of Sheffield (UK), Copenhagen (Denmark) and Zaragoza (Spain), Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic) and the South-East Europe Research Centre in Thessaloniki (Greece). Each of the partners hosted a conference on a different topic and with a particular focus on English in their own region of Europe. During the course of the project 120 papers were presented, reporting on research projects from across Europe and beyond, providing for the first time a properly informed and nuanced picture of the reality of living with and through the medium of English.

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Series preface

The English in Europe book series takes the research presented in these conferences as its starting point. In each case, however, papers have been rewritten, and many of the papers have been specially commissioned to provide a series of coherent and balanced collections, giving a thorough and authoritative picture of the challenges posed by teaching, studying and using English in Europe today. Professor Andrew Linn Director, English in Europe project

Table of contents Series preface

v

Gibson Ferguson Introduction: Attitudes to English

1

I

Attitudes towards English in Society

1

Olivia Walsh Attitudes towards English in France

2

Marc Deneire Images of English in the French press

3

Bjarma Mortensen Policies and attitudes towards English in the Faroes today

4

27

55

71

Zoi Tatsioka Attitudes towards English language use on Greek TV: 97 a threat or not?

II Attitudes towards English in Universities 5

Beyza Björkman Attitudes towards English in university language policy documents in 115 Sweden

6

Anna Kristina Hultgren English as an international language of science and its effect on Nordic 139 terminology: the view of scientists

7

Claus Gnutzmann, Jenny Jakisch, Frank Rabe Communicating across Europe. What German students think about multilingualism, language norms and English as a lingua franca

8

165

Maria Kuteeva, Niina Hynninen, and Mara Haslam “It’s so natural to mix languages”: Attitudes towards English-medium 193 instruction in Sweden

viii

9

Table of contents

Josep Soler-Carbonell with Hakan Karaoglu English as an academic lingua franca in Estonia: students’ attitudes and 213 ideologies

III Attitudes towards English in Schools Ulrikke Rindal 10 Who owns English in Norway? L2 attitudes and choices among 241 learners

11

Anna Jeeves Learning English in contemporary Iceland – the attitudes and perceptions 271 of Icelandic youth

Chryso Hadjidemetriou 12 English in London: Opportunity or Threat? English and Cypriot Greek in the 297 Greek Cypriot community of North London Sue Garton and Fiona Copland 13 Teaching English to Young Learners in Europe: teachers’ attitudes and 321 perspectives Index

345

Introduction

Gibson Ferguson

Attitudes to English The publication of this volume comes at a time of increased debate, and tensions, over language issues in Europe, and of change in the academic discipline of language policy and planning (LPP). The tensions derive from two major social developments which challenge the traditional autonomy of the nation-state in language matters. The first of these, dealt with here very briefly, is the challenge from within Europe itself, posed by the increased multilingualism and ethnic diversity brought about by large-scale migration. This diversity, or ‘superdiversity’ as Vertovec (2007) puts it,1 is a challenge to traditional conceptions of the nation-state precisely because language has historically been a foundational factor in the construction of a sense of national identity in many European states. In particular, the standardization, codification and dissemination of a single national language, distinct from surrounding tongues, had been widely seen as essential for national cohesion and for the functioning of the state, and for this reason the policies of European nation-states have traditionally tended to exhibit an endemic bias toward monolingualism in the dominant national language (Wright 2004; Ferguson 2006). It is hardly surprising, then, that recent sharp increases in arrivals of speakers of other languages have been unsettling, and all the more so because recent migrants have remained more transnationally engaged than previous migrant generations, often expressing dual or multiple national loyalties.2 A recent manifestation of the disquiet has been the imposition of ever stricter requirements for granting citizenship, and, in particular, the introduction in several European states (e.g. Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK) of more formal regimes of language proficiency testing in national languages, with satisfactory performance increasingly a condition for granting residence or citizenship (see e.g. Hogan-Brun et al 2009). And in the UK, at least, the bar has been set higher than previously; so from October 2013 the government requires a B1 level on the Common European Framework Scale (CEFR) (or ESOL at Entry 3).3 This is not the place, however, to discuss the 1 Vertovec (2007) points out that since the 1990s the UK, to take one country as an example, has experienced a marked rise in net migration, and a diversification in migrants’ country of origin. In the period 1993–2003 there was a 60% increase in foreign workers in the UK. 2 See Vertovec (2009). 3 www.gov.uk/english-language accessed on 11/07/2014.

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motives and merits, if any, of these policies. The point rather has been to illustrate ongoing preoccupations with issues of language, national identity and citizenship, and a continuing sensitivity to the role of the national language. More relevant for the present purposes is the second challenge posed by the very extensively documented spread of English as a global lingua franca, and its incursion into domains (e.g. higher education, business, media, youth culture) hitherto regarded as mainly, if not exclusively, the province of the national language (see e.g. Ferguson 2012a). Viewed by some as threatening the relegation of smaller national languages to a lesser role in an incipient global diglossia,4 this has prompted increased state intervention to protect national languages as ‘complete languages’. In a number of cases (e.g. Sweden and France) intervention has taken the form of explicit legislation, the implicit thrust of which is to stem the spread of English in high status domains. Thus, in Sweden, the Language Act of 2009 declares, among other things, that Swedish is the principal language of the country, that it is a required language of public administration, and the official language of the country in international contexts (see e.g. Boyd 2011).5 In France, a commonly cited protectionist measure is the Loi Toubon of 1994, which imposes French as the language of public contracts, of materials relating to the sale of goods and services and of state media (Judge 2000, 2007; and see also Walsh this volume). Legislation is, of course, not the only instrument of language policy, nor is the state the only actor. For example, anxieties concerning the proliferation of English loan words in national languages, seen in certain quarters as a threat to the purity and dignity of the national language, have largely been tackled by language academies or terminology commissions. Thus, in France the Académie française and associated bodies continue to devise French terms to replace English loan words across a whole spectrum of fields (Judge 2000), and HilmarssonDunn (2006) reports from Iceland on projects to develop Icelandic terminology and on an agreement with Microsoft to support Icelandic language software. Another focus of debate has been the steady expansion of English as a medium of instruction (EMI) in European higher education, including in states such as Italy, not usually associated with widespread English use (Costa and Coleman 2006; see also Wächter and Maiworm 2008 and Brenn-White and Faethe 2013 on EMI programmes in Europe). The expansion has been fuelled by the internationalization of higher education, a process largely driven by economic forces and, in particular, the emergence of a globalized, competitive market in 4 See e.g. Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas 1996; Pennycook 2001. 5 In apparent contradiction to the implicit thrust of the legislation, the Act also alludes to the potential benefits of English in research, university education and private business (Boyd 2011).

Attitudes to English

5

higher education, as evidenced by the multiplication of University ‘league tables’ and the competition to attract greater numbers of international students for the fees and increased prestige they bring (although see Hultgren 2014b for a discussion of the correlation between increased use of English and university rankings). The increased mobility of academic staff and students and the near hegemony of English language research publication, particularly in the sciences, also reinforce a greater dependence on, and use of, English. But the increased presence of English is also attributable to factors endogenous to higher education. For example, the Bologna process, initiated in 1999 with the aim of harmonizing European higher education programmes and qualifications, and encouraging academic mobility, has had the effect, no doubt inadvertent, of encouraging the spread of English, thereby subverting European policies aimed at promoting multilingualism and language diversity. Also not helpful in this regard are academic evaluation systems, which in many parts of Europe give international publications, a proxy for English language publications, greater weight than those in the national language (see e.g. Lillis and Curry 2010). One consequence of this academic ‘Englishization’ has been a veritable deluge of publications on the pedagogic and policy implications of EMI in European universities (e.g. Doiz et al. 2013; Earls 2013; Jenkins 2014; Hultgren 2014a; Werther et al 2014; Kuteeva 2014 and in this volume; etc). Our concern here, however, is with the policy responses, the best known of which is the Scandinavian policy of ‘parallelingualism’ or parallel language use (see Linn 2014 for a disambiguation of these two terms), whose main purpose is to defend the Nordic national languages against the encroachment of English, calling for the use of both Nordic languages and English in science, in knowledge dissemination, and in teaching (Nordic Council of Ministers 2007). ‘Parallelingualism’ is mentioned in the Swedish Language Act of 2009, and also occupies a prominent place in university-authored language policies (see Björkman this volume). Kuteeva (2014: 385), for instance, describes the Stockholm university language policy of 2011 as including a section on parallel language use, which urges the cultivation of Swedish scientific terminology, and cautions academics to use English only “. . . after careful consideration of the consequences”. Hultgren (2014a), meanwhile, also notes that parallel language use is a major theme in Danish university language policy documents. Beyond Scandinavia, official policy responses to the growth of EMI in higher education are more muted or, at least, less visible. Many universities encourage the development of EMI programmes for the economic reasons mentioned above, while many individual academics, especially those in the natural sciences, are either content to acknowledge the benefits of a single lingua franca or inclined to express a pragmatic resignation

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to a situation they feel they as individuals can do little to combat (see e.g. Ferguson et al 2011). Such attitudes are a reminder, if any is needed, that many individuals and institutions experience English not as a challenge to be contested but as a convenience or as a source of capital with the potential to confer numerous benefits. Thus, parents and pupils welcome English language instruction because of the access it affords to varied entertainment media and because of the enhanced socio-economic mobility it appears to promise.6 Academics go along with English language research publication because of the prestige and wider readership; company employees learn English in the hope of more quickly ascending the slippery corporate ladder; and representatives of the smaller nations are happy to use English in the corridors and chambers of EU institutions because it allows them to communicate more widely than in any other language (see e.g. Wright 2009). Implicit here is the now widely accepted notion that the spread of English, in Europe and elsewhere, is largely a ‘bottom-up’ process, an aggregation of thousands of individual and institutional decisions to learn and use English because of the actual and imagined benefits proficiency in the language can confer. Moreover, this spread has a self-accelerating quality in that the greater the number of users (and learners), the more attractive the language becomes for still further potential acquirers, and the greater its value in the European labour market. This picture of a diffuse, ‘bottom-up’ agency has, if true, considerable implications for language policy, for it suggests that choices for English are driven, as Wright (2004) argues, by factors that substantially lie outside the control of national policy-makers, and that therefore language policy on its own can do little to halt a spreading lingua franca. Changing the background socio-economic and cultural forces that incline people to choose to learn, or to use, English would require a considerable upheaval, and one difficult to accomplish in a democratic society, as Linn (2010) implies in his discussion of Norwegian language politics. But, of course, there are alternative, and darker, accounts of the causes and consequences of the emergence of English as a dominant lingua franca, the best known of which derive from an influential ‘critical school’ (see e.g. Phillipson 2003, 2009; Pennycook 1994). On causation, the critics argue that the advantages of English diffusion for the major anglophone countries are of a magnitude that lends plausibility to the idea that governments and other bodies have had an influential role in spreading the language (Ives 2010). However, while it is true 6 European Union statistics show that in 2012 over 90% of secondary school students studied English (Eurydice 2012).

Attitudes to English

7

that the United States and the UK have indeed devoted resources to supporting the learning of English, this is also true of other countries that promote their national languages internationally. It is also the case that such efforts can only succeed to the extent that there is a willingness to adopt that which is promoted, that the seeds fall on fertile ground. At this point critics would retort, quite plausibly, that decisions to learn or adopt English are not taken against fair background conditions (cf. Rawls 1999), and that therefore choices are not really freely made at all. The spread of English is also represented as a hegemonic process in which the disadvantaged consent to their disadvantaging because they are seduced by discourses that portray English as a language of opportunity and its spread as ‘natural’ or irresistible (e.g. Phillipson 2007). To argue along these lines, however, may be to downplay unduly the critical, reasoning agency of individuals who have the capacity to assess where their own best interests lie. But critics of global English also point to adverse effects of the language’s spread, claiming, for instance, that English is a vector of ideological domination and ‘Americanization’. (The fact that this argument is itself made in English does, however, somewhat undermine its force.) Another still more common complaint, already referred to, is that English is disruptive of local linguistic ecologies, threatening smaller national languages with ‘domain loss’ (see Berg, Hult and King 2001), if not wholesale endangerment. However, even if statistics show a preponderance of English in certain restricted fields such as research publication (see e.g. Mortensen & Haberland 2012), evidence of the onset of ‘domain loss’ remains patchy at best. Some of the rhetoric may in fact be unduly alarmist,7 for, as Bolton and Meierkord (2013) show, Swedish, for example, remains widely used, and preferred, at the grassroots of Swedish society – including in migrant neighbourhoods – across nearly all but the most elite domains. Linn and Oakes (2007) also point out that outside the peer-reviewed journal genre Norwegian is still widely used in other areas of scientific communication. A final area of concern is with the effects of English on socio-economic equality, and the implications for linguistic justice. Beyond Europe, and to a lesser degree within Europe, English functions as a gatekeeper controlling access to university education, public sector employment and prestigious ‘middle class’ identities (see e.g. Hossein and Tollefson 2007). But it is a resource that is far from equally distributed, with elites typically finding it easier to develop and maintain high-level English skills, and in this way the language 7 Bolton and Meierkord’s (2013) example of alarmist discourse comes from an article titled ‘Nog’ (Enough) in a popular Swedish newspaper.

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Gibson Ferguson

becomes a cause, and an index, of social division (see Ferguson 2012a). Somewhat surprisingly, however, this is not the focus of recent commentary by political theorists (e.g. van Parijs 2011), who have instead attended to the large asymmetries of benefits and costs accompanying the rise of English as a lingua franca, and, in particular, to the free-riding of native anglophones, who enjoy a public good (lingua franca English) towards the cost of whose production they make little or no contribution. Van Parijs (2011) is one of those who – with some unlikely fellow-travellers (e.g. Cogo and Jenkins 2010) – happen to believe that Europe will benefit in the long run from the consolidation of English as the sole lingua franca of the EU because it serves as an instrument for efficient cross-border communication, and as a means, potentially, of overcoming the EU’s so-called ‘democratic deficit’, the lack of a transnational demos. He is alert, however, to the linguistic injustices this situation may give rise to, which in his view take three forms: first the ‘free-riding’ of anglophones, second the threat to distributive justice as anglophones benefit disproportionately in the labour market from their English proficiency, and third the loss of dignity or respect implied for other languages with which speakers may identify (i.e. loss of ‘parity of esteem’ (van Parijs 2011: 117)). Van Parijs’s proposed remedies (essentially financial transfers from anglophone to non-anglophone communities, and the introduction of territorially differentiated coercive linguistic regimes as restitution for the privileging of English) are, however, unconvincing on an empirical plane, even if they make sense in the abstract. He is astute enough, however, to recognise that the competitive advantages anglophones currently enjoy will not only be eroded but reversed in the long run. This will occur as more and more young Europeans develop bilingualism (or trilingualism) in English alongside their national language(s), and as English becomes what Graddol (2006: 15) refers to – perhaps hyperbolically – as ‘a near-universal basic skill’. The monolingualism of many anglophones will then turn into a competitive disadvantage and a bar in situations where languages other than English are required. While van Parijs’s work (2011) is one of the few cogent efforts to tackle normative issues arising from the emergence of English as a pre-eminent lingua franca, his advocacy of its use as a sole lingua franca of the EU is open to objection on two grounds. The first is that he perhaps gives too much weight to the instrumental or communicative function of language (see Robichaud and de Schutter 2012) and insufficient weight to the symbolic, affective dimension, where language can serve as a focus of identity and collective self-respect. The second is that we could argue, with Gazzola and Grin (2013), that even though knowledge of English is diffusing rapidly in the younger generation, there remain considerable numbers of Europeans whose competence in English is limited.

Attitudes to English

9

Gazzola and Grin’s (2013: 101) estimate is that only 24% of non-anglophone EU citizens claim a ‘good knowledge’ of English. Relevant here is a disenfranchisement index provided by Ginsburgh and Weber (2011: 153) that shows the proportion of Europeans in each EU country who would be excluded from official channels of communication were English (or selected other languages) to be adopted as the sole lingua franca of Europe. Table 1 below shows the disenfranchisement rate in English, and – for comparison–German, across a number of selected countries. Table 1: Disenfranchisement rates in English and German for selected countries8 Languages Country

English

German

Denmark Finland France Germany Hungary Netherlands Spain Sweden United Kingdom EU

34 69 80 62 92 23 84 33 1 62.6

73 95 95 1 91 43 98 88 98 75.1

Perhaps the most interesting feature of this table is the variation between countries, with – for example – a disenfranchisement rate of only 23% in the Netherlands as against a high rate of 92% in Hungary. Such divergences are probably the outcome of a combination of such factors as (a) histories of exposure to English, (b) wealth and investment in English language education, (c) linguistic distance. The wider point, however, is that English and its status as a European lingua franca look very different depending on where you are situated in class terms (see Block 2014), in education, and in national background. But this is precisely one of the dimensions of the current European language situation that this and other volumes in this series on English in Europe explore. It is useful at this point to consider what language policy actually consists of and, indeed, what we mean by ‘English’.

8 Ginsburgh and Weber are economists, not linguists, and this data is drawn from previous work by Fidrmuc, Ginsburgh and Weber (2007). Table 1 is adapted from Ginsburgh and Weber (2011).

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Turning to the former first, it is widely accepted that policies are often covert or implicit (Bamgbose 2003), sometimes vague or unrealistic, and very frequently have no effect on everyday language practices or belief. For example, the Loi Toubon measures, mentioned earlier, are regularly flouted and there has been no end to lexical borrowings from English (Judge 2007). Parallelingualism in the Scandinavian context remains a concept open to different interpretations (Hultgren 2014a), and one rarely operationalized consistently in practice (Kuteeva 2014). And, as Ljosland (2014) shows, a university departmental language policy to employ English as a sole medium of instruction does not, and cannot, override more complex multilingual interactional practices (see also Mortensen 2014). The same is often true in the corporate world where multinationals that have adopted English as the official corporate language find that in practice a variety of languages are used, especially in more informal spoken communication (see e.g. Kingsley 2009, Nekvapil and Nekula 2006). Finally, on the largest scale of all, there is ample evidence of a disjuncture between official EU policies and discourses on multilingualism and the actual preference and practices of bureaucrats and citizens, who seem to converge increasingly on English (Wright 2009; Ammon and Kruse 2013). Disjunctures of this kind are one of the reasons that have led Spolsky (2004) to redefine language policy as consisting of practices and beliefs in addition to the often absent explicit formulations of policy. “Language practices and policies”, he tells us, “. . .like Topsy, tend to grow without overmuch official intervention”, and thus if we want to locate policy we may sometimes need to make inferences from implicit beliefs and practices (Spolsky 2004: 13). Equally influential has been Spolsky’s (2009) recognition that traditional state level policy-making is only part of a wider field which he prefers to refer to as ‘language management’, and which he defines as activities aiming to “. . .modify the language practices or beliefs of a group of speakers” (p. 181). Spolsky (2009) conceives language management as taking place across a range of social domains – family, religion, health institutions, workplace – over which the state typically has limited oversight; as potentially multilevel in scope with upper levels of management typically seeking to impose policies on lower levels; and as a field where the activities of actors within a particular domain (e.g. parents, teachers, priests, doctors, etc) can be distinguished from those of actors outside the domain, most usually government bodies. From this distinction have emerged the metaphors of top-down and bottom-up policy, policy from above and below, and macro and micro policy. A related development here, and one of particular significance for this volume, has been what one might call the ‘ethnographic turn’ in language policy, exemplified in the work of McCarty (2011), Johnson (2013), Hornberger

Attitudes to English

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and Johnson (2007), Cincotta-Segi (2011), and Bolton and Meierkord (2013) among others. The ethnographic approach involves close-up, detailed, often very local study of the beliefs, attitudes and practices of speakers in specific sites and is characterized by the attention given to participants’ point of view (the ‘emic’ perspective), to participants’ agency, and to the various levels at which policy is initiated, interpreted, resisted or appropriated (Johnson 2013). An example of such an approach might be Bolton and Meierkord’s (2013) study of the language choices, preferences and attitudes to English of speakers at the grassroots of Swedish society. Although the authors refer to their study as a micro-sociolinguistic one rather than an ethnography of language policy, the similarities are very evident, for, drawing on a set of ethnographic interviews, they conclude that there is a significant disjuncture between macro-sociolinguistic perceptions at the elite levels of society and linguistic realities at the grassroots level, where no evidence is to be found suggesting that English is a threat to Swedish as a national language. The value of this, and similar work, is that by casting light on linguistic practices, and how these are regarded by ordinary speakers, it affords a clearer view of how top-down policy may be consistent with, or diverge from, the level of practice where policy is actually realised, which, in turn, holds out some promise for more grounded and realistic policies. The relevance of this discussion for the present volume, Attitudes to English in Europe, is that several of the contributions can be seen as falling within a broadly ethnographic approach not just because they draw on methodologies – questionnaires, interviews, discourse analysis – loosely associated with ethnography, but because many contributors explicitly or implicitly relate their findings on attitudes and practices to top-down policies or elite discourses on English, (see e.g. Hultgren, Gnutzmann et al, Mortensen, Walsh, Deneire in this volume). And in several cases they report a disjuncture between the attitudes (or practices) of grassroots participants and ‘top-down’ policies, though, as Johnson (2013: 108) rightly cautions, it is not always clear in policy matters what is ‘top’ and what is ‘bottom’. Hultgren (this volume), for example, reports that the perceptions and practices of Nordic scientists regarding terminological borrowing from English do not necessarily lend support to the Nordic Council’s 2007 call for the coordination of terminology creation across Nordic countries.9 And Gnutzmann et al. (this volume) find, for example, that nearly 50% of German students, when asked explicitly, consider the official EU aspirations for individual plurilingualism to be unrealistic;10 while Mortensen (this volume), again from a Nordic context, paints 9 Many of these borrowings are in fact of Greco-Latin derivation. 10 The EU calls for citizens to develop competence in two languages in addition to their mother tongue, the so-called M+2 formula.

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a nuanced portrait of Faroese attitudes to English showing, among other things, that a substantial minority of young people dissent from the official line on linguistic purism. The second area we need to discuss in this introduction is what exactly we mean by ‘English’, or for that matter ‘attitude’, since neither is entirely straightforward in meaning. The first, rather obvious, point is that ‘English’ in the title of this volume, and elsewhere, does not stand for a discrete, autonomous and well-defined linguistic system, nor even a set of varieties, but covers rather a heterogeneous set of phenomena. Among these are images, ideas, or discursive constructions of English, as entertained in the public imagination or as presented in the mass media, or even in official documents. These have little, or nothing, to do with English as a linguistic system. Then, there are the multiple uses or functions of English in various settings: for example, as a medium of instruction in higher education, as a subject of learning in school, as a language of research dissemination, as a relay language for translation and interpreting in the EU bureaucracy, as a lingua franca for cross-border communication, and even as a language of Eurovision song contest press conferences (Motschenbacher 2013a). Several of the chapters in this volume explore attitudes to just such functions – for example, English as medium of instruction in higher education or as a subject of learning in schools (e.g. Jeeves, Kuteeva et al, Mortensen, Soler-Carbonell). But functions may also be given a broader definition, as in House (2003), who draws a distinction between languages for communication and languages for identification, with English in Europe usually seen as serving the former function. The dichotomy has some initial plausibility, especially if one wishes to compare national languages with English as a lingua franca, but is increasingly regarded as an over-simplification of a more complex reality in which some Europeans at least are moving beyond the merely instrumental and beginning to see English as a means for performing a transnational European identity (see e.g. Motschenbacher 2013b). There is, then, considerable diversity and complexity in what ‘English’ denotes, in the social practices associated with it, and in the symbolic meanings and values attributed to the language, and thus far we have not even begun to discuss the linguistic properties of what we call ‘English’. Turning now to this aspect, it has become a commonplace that there is no single, internally homogenous, self-enclosed linguistic entity that we may call ‘English’ but rather many Englishes. The pluralization here pays recognition not only to the many non-standardized Englishes existing alongside standard English but also to the norm-developing post-colonial New Englishes of Kachru’s (1985) celebrated ‘Outer Circle’ countries, whose formal properties – phonological, lexical, grammatical, discoursal – exhibit considerable divergence from standard

Attitudes to English

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British/US English. In addition to these territorial varieties, there is now a considerable body of research into another kind of English, the non-territorial, transnational use, in Europe and beyond, of English as a lingua franca (ELF) (e.g. Jenkins 2009; Seidlhofer 2011; Seidlhofer et al 2006). Motivated in part by the desire to assert the independence of ELF usage from standard English norms,11 ELF researchers were initially inclined to treat ELF as an emergent or potential variety, a kind of ‘Euro-English’ (Jenkins et al 2001), but more recently there has been a retreat from any claim to variety status. In part this re-positioning is a response to an accumulation of empirical research findings showing that in fact ELF is a highly heterogeneous, fluid and variable form of interaction to which interlocutors from a range of L1 backgrounds bring different levels of linguistic resources (see e.g. Meierkord 2004; Dewey 2009; Seidlhofer 2011; Mauranen 2012). But it also springs from an influential strand of poststructural thinking that questions the very notions of a variety or a language as having an existence independent of speakers’ communicative behaviour, speech or languaging (see e.g. Pennycook and Makoni 2007; Pennycook 2010). In this view there are no discrete, countable languages; there is no ‘English’ that exists as a clearly bounded, fixed linguistic entity. Language structure rather falls out of, or sediments from, re-occurring communicative behaviours, and the labels, or language names, we use (e.g. English, French, Dutch) are very largely sociohistorical, modernist constructs, reifications, or, as Widdowson (2012: 6) might put it, convenient fictions. Whether or not such views are true, and they remain open to question, they do appear to have had an influence, for ELF is currently regarded as a form of social practice, as situated performance, or as a sui generis kind of communicative interaction where speakers often draw creatively on the material of more than ‘one language’ (see e.g. Seidlhofer 2011; Jenkins et al 2011; Ferguson 2012b). It is therefore a phenomenon that it is difficult to fold into the straitjacket of traditional notions of ‘a variety’ or ‘a language’, and ELF research has thus moved on from investigating linguistic forms as features of a potential or putative variety,12 and turned attention to the functions of such forms and to the pragmatics of ELF interactions. In other words, the movement is from product to process. What remains constant, however, is the insistence that ELF is a self–sufficient, transnational kind of communication that takes place outside the scope of standard English norms, that prioritises intelligibility over

11 In the ELF literature these norms are all too commonly, and incorrectly, conflated with nonexistent ‘native speaker norms’. 12 However, research into the formal linguistic properties of ELF talk has not been entirely abandoned.

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formal accuracy, and that rejects standard English norms as the yardstick of accuracy. This is not the place, however, to pursue discussion of ELF or its implications, but neither should the preceding discussion be regarded as idle ontological musing – for two reasons. First, there are at least two chapters in this volume that explicitly mention ELF (Kuteeva et al; Gnutzmann et al), a further five that make reference to the lingua franca role of English, and one that explicitly questions students on their attitudes to ELF or Euro-English (Gnutzmann et al). It is thus a significant theme. The second, more important, reason is that it is useful for editors of a volume with ‘English’ in the title to clarify what is meant by the term, and what, therefore the object of study is, for, as we have seen, there are many different conceptualizations of English and many different kinds of linguistic practice that fall within the scope of what we call ‘English’. And this, of course, is one reason why it is risky to generalise too boldly about what English in Europe is or does, and why it is preferable to build an understanding on the basis of grounded, local examinations of English in particular contexts. As it happens, in this volume we have not imposed any particular interpretation of ‘English’, and thus the contributors have taken different facets of English, different attitudinal targets, as their object of study. We come finally, and very briefly, to the question of attitudes. Attitudes are generally regarded as social-psychological constructs, and are, as Garrett (2010) explains, commonly discussed in terms of three components – cognition (beliefs), affect (emotion), and behaviour – though the relationship between these three is complex and quite variable. In some cases, for example, there may be a divergence between affect or belief and behaviour, with contextual constraints intervening between belief and action. Nonetheless, an important and common reason for investigating attitudes, particularly in policy-making, education and marketing, is that attitudes are thought to be predictive of behaviour, to some degree at least. Indeed, in the language policy field attitudes attract attention because they may be both an input and output of policy: an input in that attitudes may well influence the acceptability, and hence the implementation, of policy; an output in that language policy may be designed, as with some minority languages, to shape attitudes to particular languages or varieties, though often without success. Attitude research can, of course, be undertaken for a range of other reasons: to develop a sociolinguistic record of attitudes to linguistic features or stereotypes, to enquire into the determinants of attitudes and into differences in attitudes between regional, ethnic or professional groups, for example (Garrett 2010). A rather obvious but necessary point here is that attitudes may have many different foci and may be targeted at any or all levels of language including the

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‘whole language’. This diversity is well exemplified in this volume, where there are chapters investigating attitudes to accents of English (Rindal), to English terminologies in science (Hultgren), to anglicisms in France (Walsh), and to standard English norms (Gnutzmann et al), and this list does not include chapters already mentioned that focus on attitudes to the use of English – for example, as medium of instruction in higher education or as school subject. Several of the chapters do in fact cover attitudes to more than one facet of English. Turning momentarily to methodologies for researching attitudes, Garrett (2010) helpfully summarises three broad types of method: (a) direct methods, which rely on questionnaires and interviews to elicit respondents’ attitudes; (b) indirect methods, comprising matched or verbal guise techniques, typically to tap into people’s attitudes to accents; and (c) what Garrett (2010: 46) refers to as ‘societal treatment’ methods, which typically involve inferring attitudes from observation of behaviour, media reports or public documents. Each of these has its own strengths and weaknesses. At least two chapters in this volume employ a ‘societal treatment’ approach; namely, Deneire, who undertakes a form of content analysis of a corpus of French newspapers, and Björkman, who conducts a discourse analytic study of Swedish university language policy documents and their stance on English. The majority, however, use direct methods, particularly questionnaires and interviews. The limitations of these instruments are wellknown: people’s private attitudes may differ from what they are prepared to reveal openly; people may respond in such a way as to give a favourable impression of themselves (social desirability bias); the researcher’s persona (age, gender, ethnicity) may condition the nature of the response; and so on. On the other hand, they have the advantage of being economical, they allow a relatively large volume of data to be collected from largish samples in a short time, and used in combination they can elicit fairly nuanced responses. In short, if note is taken of the limitations, they can be very serviceable instruments. Just as there can be many foci of attitude studies, so can there be many different types of respondent, and in this volume members of the public – old and young (Tatsioka, Walsh), journalists (Deneire, Mortensen), language managers (Björkman) and scientists (Hultgren) are among those whose attitudes are investigated. Unsurprisingly, however, given that they are a readily accessible audience, the most common type of respondent – in no less than 6 chapters – is the young person in education. This makes sense not only because education is a key domain for language policy and a site of English language learning but also because these young people are often those in most direct contact with English and are at the forefront of change. Some of them are also the teachers, managers and policy-makers of the future. On this note, we turn to a summary of the constituent chapters of this volume.

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Summary of Chapters The volume is divided into three parts. The first addresses attitudes to English in society, the second attitudes to English in universities, and the third attitudes to English in schools. The opening chapter of Part 1 by Walsh, Attitudes towards English in France, investigates the attitudes of individuals toward three facets of English – the use of Anglicisms, learning English, and perceptions of the threat English poses to the French language. Contrasting these with the official stance, which is generally viewed as negative, she finds that her respondents regard learning English very positively, and are not particularly exercised by the threat English allegedly poses to the French language. The majority are also unconcerned by the use of Anglicisms, though some point out that the context in which the Anglicism is used would affect their stance. Interestingly, because it echoes some of the findings in Tatsioka’s chapter, Walsh finds that older people are more likely to hold somewhat more negative attitudes to English. Deneire’s chapter also takes issue with the received popular notion of a negative French stance toward English, but this time, using corpus analytic and statistical techniques, he focuses on the images of English presented in the French Press, comparing well-established national newspapers (e.g. Le Monde, Le Figaro) with business-oriented and regional papers. He finds that more conservative and sceptical, even hostile, views of English are mainly confined to the national press (e.g. Le Monde), read by a cultural elite, whereas the regional and business press tends to be more favourable toward English. Using a questionnaire-based methodology, Tatsioka’s chapter investigates grassroots attitudes to the use of English phrases and words on Greek television. She finds, like Walsh, that older respondents – from a small, provincial town – tend to be more hostile than the younger generation to the use of English on television, but simultaneously less concerned about any possible threat to the Greek language. It is unclear whether the typically lower English proficiency of older people is a factor in these generational differences (see also Martin 2012 for another study of the experience of older language users). Mortensen’s chapter, Policies and attitudes towards English in the Faroes today, starts with an outline of some of the language policy measures undertaken to secure the future of Faroese as ‘a complete language’ and to safeguard against ‘domain loss’. These include an insistence on the use of Faroese as the dominant medium of instruction in higher education institutions, the development of Faroese terminology, and the dubbing of imported television programmes. In a further section, drawing on questionnaire data, Mortensen

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investigates the attitudes of Faroese youth toward the influence of English on the Faroese language and toward the government’s puristic language policy. She finds that there is considerable support for developing Faroese terms and for protecting the language from the influence of English, though the views expressed do not always tally with actual linguistic practices. Otherwise, there are largely positive views expressed toward English in general and the use of English in education in particular. The chapter usefully highlights a number of themes that surface in some other chapters: a divergence between official policies and young people’s generally more relaxed attitudes to English, the tendency of the older generation to express more conservative or puristic language attitudes, and an occasional disjuncture between what people say about language and what they actually do. In the opening chapter of Part 2, Björkman undertakes a discourse analytic study of language policy documents from nine Swedish universities, examining their response to the increased presence of English in both teaching and research. She finds that the discourse of these documents largely reflects official government discourses on language. They repeatedly mention ‘parallel language use’ as one measure for reconciling the importance of English as an academic lingua franca with the need to maintain the status and integrity of Swedish. English is represented as useful, even necessary, but also problematic. It detracts potentially from the status of Swedish, and not all academic staff and students are considered sufficiently proficient in English for advanced academic research and teaching through the language. Hultgren’s chapter returns to the topic of terminology with an investigation of alleged gaps in the scientific terminology of national Nordic languages, and the attitudes and practices of scientists regarding such gaps. Drawing on questionnaire data from around 290 scientists from 5 Nordic countries and 3 scientific disciplines, she finds that the majority of respondents are indeed aware of terminological gaps and well able to supply examples. When a terminological gap is encountered, the most common reported practice is to use the English term but to continue the sentence in the national language. This is generally regarded as communicatively helpful but also aesthetically displeasing. Icelandic and Finnish scientists tend to be more resistant to English use. In their chapter Gnutzmann, Jakisch and Rabe probe the attitudes of undergraduate German students on such issues as European Union (EU) policies regarding official EU languages and individual plurilingualism, the concept of ‘Euro-English’, and the influence of English on their personal identity. Drawing on a large body of questionnaire data, the authors show that a majority are opposed to the proposition that English should be the only official language of EU institutions but that opinion is roughly equally divided over the specific

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question of whether it is realistic for the EU to propose that every citizen should develop competence in two languages in addition to their mother tongue. Consistent with other studies, and despite their frequent use of English in lingua franca situations, the respondents exhibit a marked conservatism on language norms, viewing standard (‘native’) English as an appropriate model to orientate towards and rejecting ideas of adhering to any independent ‘Euro-English’ or ELF norms. The next chapter by Kuteeva, Hynninen and Maslam is a case study of an English-medium programme at a Swedish university that draws on questionnaire and interview data to look at student attitudes to studying in English, to their own English proficiency level, and to the utility of English in their future careers. The respondents confirm, rather unsurprisingly, the importance of English to their future careers. They also display confidence in their level of English – with some differences between the international and Swedish respondents, and they report viewing English as an integral element in the Swedish language ecology. Also highlighted is the prevalence, noted in other studies, of multilingual translanguaging, or code-mixing, in what is an officially English-medium programme. Soler-Carbonell’s contribution shares many features with the preceding chapter in that it is located in a northern European context (Estonia), employs a questionnaire and interview based methodology, and investigates student attitudes to the use of English in academic teaching and research, and their experience of studying through English. In contrast with the Swedish case, the respondents from Tallinn university report limited experience with Englishmedium (EMI) programmes. However, there is strong support for the introduction of further EMI programmes, and students do not generally see such programmes as a threat to Estonian. Most respondents acknowledge that it may be more difficult to study through English, with unfamiliar terminology considered a particular source of difficulty. The point resonates with concerns expressed in other studies about the challenges of academic study through a second or foreign language. Rindal’s chapter is the opening one of Part 3 of the volume, Attitudes towards English in Schools. It has a specific focus on Norwegian secondary school students’ preferences regarding the accent they aim at, their reasons for selecting that particular target, and the social associations of these accents. The accents offered for evaluation were ‘British’, ‘American’, ‘neutral’, and ‘Norwegian’. Questionnaire responses indicated a general preference for ‘native’ accents. The ‘American’ accent, associated with greater informality, was preferred by slightly more participants than the ‘British’ accent, which was seen as indexing education and greater formality. The ‘British’ accent was also reported

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to be more difficult to acquire than the more accessible ‘American’ one. Interestingly, because it reflects an emergent theme, Rindal comments on a divergence between the views expressed and actual linguistic practices, where Americanaccented pronunciation is more prevalent than would be predicted from an attitude survey, probably because of greater media exposure to American English. Jeeves opens her chapter with an overview of the situation of English in Iceland, explaining that, despite its official status as a foreign language, young people’s extensive exposure to English makes it more akin to a widely used second language, a very different linguistic environment from their grandparents’ generation. Basing her study on interviews with employees and students, Jeeves goes on to look into the importance of English in their daily lives and their experiences of studying English at school. She finds that young people, with some exceptions, are generally confident in their level of English and have a positive attitude to the language, regarding it as very useful, even essential, for work, travel, and access to entertainment media. Views on their study at school are more mixed: some report enjoying their English lessons, others some dissatisfaction with the teaching provision. The chapter by Hadjidemetriou is an original contribution to this volume in two key respects. First of all it considers attitudes towards English in a multilingual context within an officially Anglophone country, the UK, and secondly it treats the experience of language use outside the mainstream of education, viz in a complementary Greek school in London. Hadjidemetriou explores the complex relationship between various linguistic and cultural identities as lived out by expatriate Cypriot students learning Greek in an English-speaking context. The paper explores the fluidity of ‘(ethnic) identity’ as a social category based on audio-recorded interactions with the teenage informants. The final chapter by Garton and Copland presents findings from a largescale survey of the challenges European primary school teachers face in teaching English. As one might expect, these vary across the 6 countries discussed (Italy, Latvia, Macedonia, Poland, Spain, Ukraine), but widely shared problems include motivating and disciplining pupils, teaching speaking, and catering to individual differences within the class. Teachers also express a shared desire for better technological resources, smaller classes and improved working conditions. Taken together the chapters in this volume present readers with a range of perspectives on English as it is used and experienced in Europe today. It also includes perspectives from contexts and countries that remain somewhat underresearched. Among the themes that emerge are the contrast between the views of younger people and that of an older generation, and a commonly observed tension between official discourses or policies and the more relaxed, untroubled

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attitudes of youth, for whom regular, even daily, contact with English is a commonplace. These same young people, however, do not appear to be entirely immune from socializing forces that continue to uphold standard ‘native’ Englishes as the preferred normative model. Above all, though, this volume illustrates the complexity and contextual variability of attitudes to very different aspects of English, and in so doing offers up empirical data that enrich our understanding and that may inform current policy debates on the role of English in Europe.

References Ammon, Ulrich and Jan Kruse. 2013. Does translation support multilingualism in the EU? Promises and reality – the example of German. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 23(1), 15–30. Bamgbose, Ayo. 2003. A recurring decimal: English in language policy and planning. World Englishes 22(4), 419–43. Berg, Cathrine, Francis Hult and Kendall King. 2001. Shaping the climate for language shift? English in Sweden’s elite domains. World Englishes 20(3), 305–319. Block, David. 2014. Social class in applied linguistics. London: Routledge. Bolton, Kingsley and Christiane Meierkord. 2013. English in contemporary Sweden: perceptions, policies, and narrated practices. Journal of Sociolinguistics 17(1), 93–117. Boyd, Sally. 2011. Do national languages need support and protection in legislation? The case of Swedish as the ‘Principal Language’ of Sweden. In Catrin Norrby and John Hajek (eds.), Uniformity and diversity in language policy: global perspectives, 22–36. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Brenn-White, Megan and Elias Faethe. 2013. English-taught master’s programs in Europe: a 2013 update. New York: Institute of International Education. Cincotta-Segi, Angela. 2011. ‘The big ones swallow the small ones’. Or do they? Languagein-education policy and ethnic minority education in the Lao PDR. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 32(1), 1–15. Cogo, Alessia and Jennifer Jenkins. 2010. English as a lingua franca in Europe: a mismatch between policy and practice. European Journal of Language Policy 2(2), 271–293. Costa, Francesca and James Coleman. 2013. A survey of English-medium instruction in Italian higher education. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 16(1), 3–19. Dewey, Martin. 2009. English as a lingua franca: heightened variability and theoretical implications. In Mauranen, Anna and Elina Ranta (eds.), English as a lingua franca, 60–83. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Doiz, Aintzane, David Lasagabaster & Juan Manuel Sierra (eds.). 2013. English-medium instruction at universities. Global challenges. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Earls, Clive. 2013. Setting the Catherine wheel in motion: An exploration of “Englishization” in the German higher education system. Language Problems and Language Planning 37(2), 125–150. Eurydice. 2012. Key data on teaching languages at school in Europe. Luxembourg: Office for Publications of the European Communities (available at (http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/ education/eurydice). Accessed on 27/07/2014.

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Ferguson, Gibson. 2006. Language planning and education. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Ferguson, Gibson. 2012a. English in language policy and management. In Bernard Spolsky (ed.), The Cambridge handbook of language policy, 475–498. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ferguson, Gibson. 2012b. The practice of ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1(1), 177– 180. Ferguson, Gibson, Carmen Pérez-Llantada and Ramón Plo. 2011. English as an international language of scientific publication: a study of attitudes. World Englishes 30(1), 41–59. Fidrmuc, Jan, Victor Ginsburgh and Shlomo Weber. 2007. Ever closer union or Babylonian discord? The official-language problem in the European Union. CEPR Discussion Paper 6357, Centre for Economic Policy Research. Garrett, Peter. 2010. Attitudes to language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gazzola, Michele and François Grin. 2013. Is ELF more effective and fair than translation? An evaluation of the EU’s multilingual regime. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 23(1), 93–107. Ginsburgh, Victor and Shlomo Weber. 2011. How many languages do we need? The economics of language diversity. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Graddol, David. 2006. English next. London: The British Council. Hilmarsson-Dunn, Amanda. 2006. Protectionist language policies in the face of the forces of English: the case of Iceland. Language Policy 5, 293–312. Hogan-Brun, Gabrielle, Clare Mar-Molinero and Patrick Stevenson (eds.). 2009. Discourses on language and integration: critical perspectives on language testing regimes in Europe. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hornberger, Nancy and David Johnson. 2007. Slicing the onion ethnographically: layers and spaces in multilingual language education policy and practice. TESOL Quarterly 41(3), 509–532. Hossein, Tania and James Tollefson. 2007. Language policy in education in Bangladesh. In Tsui, Amy and Tollefson, James (eds), Language policy, culture and identity in Asian contexts, 241–258. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. House, Juliane. 2003. English as a lingua franca: A threat to multilingualism? Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(4), 556–578. Ives, Peter. 2010. Cosmopolitanism and global English: language politics in globalisation debates. Political Studies 56, 516–535. Hultgren, Anna Kristina. 2014a. Whose parallellingualism? Overt and covert ideologies in Danish university language policies. Multilingua 33:1/2. 61–87. Hultgren, Anna Kristina. 2014b. English language use at the internationalised universities of Northern Europe: Is there a correlation between Englishisation and world rank? Multilingua 33:3–4. 389–411. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2009. English as a lingua franca: interpretations and attitudes. World Englishes 28(2), 200–207. Jenkins, Jennifer. 2014. English as a lingua franca in the international university: the politics of academic English language policy. London and New York: Routledge. Jenkins, Jennifer, Marko Modiano and Barbara Seidlhofer. 2001. Euro-English. English Today 17(4), 13–19. Jenkins, Jennifer, Alessia Cogo and Martin Dewey. 2011. Review of developments in research into English as a lingua franca. Language Teaching 44(3), 281–315.

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Johnson, David. 2013. Language policy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Judge, Anne. 2000. One state, one language, one nation. In Stephen Barbour and Cathie Carmichael (eds.), Language and nationalism in Europe, 44–62. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Judge, Anne. 2007. Linguistic policies and the survival of regional languages in France and Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kachru, Braj. 1985. Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism; the English language in the outer circle. In Randolph Quirk and Henry Widdowson (eds.), English in the world: teaching and learning the language and the literatures, 11–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kingsley, Leilarna. 2009. Explicit and implicit dimensions of language policy in multilingual banks in Luxembourg. Language Problems and Language Planning 33(2), 153–173. Kuteeva, Maria. 2014. The parallel language use of Swedish and English: the question of ‘nativeness’ in university policies and practices. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 35(4). 332–344. Lillis, Theresa and Mary Jane Curry. 2010. Academic writing in a global context: the politics and practices of publishing in English. London: Routledge. Linn, Andrew R. 2010. Voices from above – voices from below: Who is talking and who is listening in Norwegian language politics. Current Issues in Language Planning 11(2), 114–129. Linn, Andrew R. 2014. Parallel languages in the history of language ideology in Norway and the lesson for Nordic higher education. In Anna Kristina Hultgren, Frans Gregersen & Jacob Thøgersen (eds.), English in Nordic universities: ideologies and practices, 27–52. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Linn, Andrew and Leigh Oakes. 2007. Language policies for a global era: the changing face of language politics in Scandinavia. In Fandrych, C. and Salverda, R. (eds), Standard, variation and change in the Germanic languages, 59–90. Tübingen: Narr. Ljosland, Ragnhild. 2014. Language planning confronted by everyday communication in the international university: the Norwegian case. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 35(4). 392–405. Martin, Maisa. 2012. Multilingualism in Nordic cooperation – a view from the margin. In Jan Blommaert, Sirpa Leppänen, Päivi Pahta and Tiina Räisänen (eds.), Dangerous multilingualism: Northern perspectives on order, purity and normality, 176–193. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mauranen, Anna. 2012. Exploring ELF: academic English shaped by non-native speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCarty, Teresa (ed.). 2011. Ethnography and language policy. London: Routledge. Meierkord, Christiane. 2004. Syntactic variation in interactions across international Englishes. English World-Wide 25(1), 109–132. Mortensen, Janus. 2014. Language policy from below: language choice in student project groups in a multilingual university setting. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 35(4), 425–442. Mortensen, Janus and Hartmut Haberland. 2012. English – the new Latin of academia? Danish universities as a case. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 216, 175–197. Motschenbacher, Heiko. 2013a. ‘Now everybody can wear a skirt’: linguistic constructions of heteronormativity at Eurovision Song Contest press conferences. Discourse and Society 24(5), 590–614.

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Motschenbacher, Heiko. 2013b. New perspectives on English as a European lingua franca. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Nekvapil, Jiri and Marek Nekula. 2006. On language management in multinational companies in the Czech Republic. Current Issues in Language Planning 7(2 & 3), 307–327. Pennycook, Alastair. 1994. The cultural politics of English as an international language. London: Longman. Pennycook, Alastair. 2001. Critical applied linguistics: a critical introduction. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. Pennycook, Alastair. 2010. Language as a local practice. London & New York: Routledge. Pennycook, Alastair and Sinfree Makoni. 2007. Disinventing and reconstituting languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Phillipson, Robert. 2003. English-only Europe? Challenging language policy. London and New York: Routledge. Phillipson, Robert. 2007. English, no longer a foreign language in Europe? In Jim Cummins and Chris Davison (eds.), International handbook of English language teaching, 123–136. New York: Springer. Phillipson, Robert. 2009. Linguistic imperialism continued. London: Routledge. Phillipson, Robert and Tove Skuttnab-Kangas. 1996. English only world-wide or language ecology? TESOL Quarterly 30(3), 429–452. Rawls, John. 1999. A theory of justice (revised edition). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Robichaud, David and Helder De Schutter. 2012. Language is just a tool! On the instrumentalist approach to language. In Bernard Spolsky (ed.), The Cambridge handbook of language policy, 124–146. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2011. Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seidlhofer, Barbara, Angelika Breiteneder and Marie-Luise Pitzl. 2006. English as a lingua franca in Europe: challenges for applied linguistics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 26, 3–34. Spolsky, Bernard. 2004. Language policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spolsky, Bernard. 2009. Language management. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van Parijs, Philippe. 2011. Linguistic justice for Europe and for the world. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vertovec, Steven. 2007. Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30(6), 1024–1054. Vertovec, Steven. 2009. Transnationalism. London: Routledge. Wächter, Bern and Friedhelm Maiworm. 2008. English-taught programmes in European higher education. Bonn: Lemmens. Werther, Charlotte, Louise Denver, Christian Jensen and Inger M. Mees. 2014. Using English as a medium of instruction at university level in Denmark: the lecturer’s perspective. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 35(5), 443–462. Widdowson, Henry. 2012. ELF and the inconvenience of established concepts. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1(1), 5–26. Wright, Sue. 2004. Language policy and language planning. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wright, Sue. 2009. The elephant in the room: Language issues in the European Union. European Journal of Language Policy 1(2), 93–120.

I Attitudes towards English in Society

Olivia Walsh

1 Attitudes towards English in France Abstract: It is often claimed that French speakers display a particularly high level of concern about the effect that English has on the French language. The Académie française is seen to be representative of such an outlook, as are the many official measures taken to protect the language from English influence, such as the introduction of the 1975 Bas-Lauriol and 1994 Toubon laws, which attempt to curtail the use of English in certain official domains, and the creation of bodies such as the Délégation à la langue française et aux langues de France and the French terminology commissions, which introduce replacement French terms for English borrowings. These all relate to language activity at the official level, however. If we are to provide a representative picture of attitudes towards English in contemporary France, it is important to consider language activity at the non-official level also. This chapter therefore investigates the language use and attitudes of individual members of the speech community in France towards the English language in general and, more specifically, towards the use of Anglicisms in French, to determine whether “ordinary” speakers of French in France reflect the concerns displayed at the official level. Keywords: Anglicisms, borrowings, language attitudes, language policy, language ideology

1 Introduction French speakers in France are often seen to display great concern about the effect that English has on the French language and to be particularly eager to protect their language from borrowings from English. The existence of the Académie française and official language planning measures such as the creation of linguistic laws and terminology commissions in France, along with the publication of high-profile works such as Étiemble’s (1964) Parlez-vous franglais? have served to bolster this view. These all relate to language activity at the official level, however. It appears to be widely assumed that the French population in general also displays this concern for their language, but there have been very few studies to determine whether or not this is in fact the case. We will first outline some of the official language planning measures taken in France, which are representative of a certain attitude towards the English language, before

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outlining the design and results of two studies undertaken to determine whether or not this official attitude is mirrored by members of the general speech community in France.

2 Official positions towards English in France The French language enjoyed a particularly privileged status in the past, acting as the international language of diplomacy and education: the privileged language of a small and advantaged elite. This led to the French language becoming associated with a high level of prestige and to a number of myths about the language, for example, that it is exceptionally clear, logical and pure (cf. Lodge 1998). However, French no longer enjoys this privileged status as an international, elite language, and directly related to this is the fact that France no longer has the political power it once had and has had to make a transition from dominant power to relatively minor player in the global arena (Oakes 2001: 154). As France’s role in the world has diminished, the United States has become increasingly more influential and powerful in the economic, political and cultural spheres and so too has the English language. This has arguably had an effect on language attitudes in France, leading to the notion that not only is the French language losing prestige, but that it is under attack from English or Anglo-American. As Schiffman (1996: 77) puts it: Today, there is widespread concern in France about the loss of the international status French had acquired during the Enlightenment, and as Anglophone visitors to France are well aware, much of the blame for this loss is laid at the feet of Anglo-American culture and the English language.

This concern has been seen to lead to a “crisis of French”1 in current-day France (cf. Adamson 2007: xi–xx). Although the issue of whether or not there really is a language “crisis” in France is debatable, it is clear that at least some French speakers in France believe their language to be seriously threatened. One of the first major indications of this perceived threat to the language was at the founding of the United Nations in 1945, where the French language was granted official status by one vote only. Since then, and as American English has increasingly gained ground as the major world language, French political discourse has begun more and more to give voice to the feeling that French society, and in particular its cultural symbols (e.g. language) are threatened and menaced 1 crise du français (all English translations mine, unless otherwise stated).

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by change. For example, members of parliament talk of attacks on the language, the culture it conveys and the civilisation it symbolises, and governments, groups and individuals use the military language of defence and stability (Ager 1999: 9). In order to deal with this threat, various political strategies have been devised to try and improve the status of French and maintain its prestige. These include new language policies and state language planning (status and corpus planning).

2.1 Linguistic legislation in France The 1960s saw a flurry of language and political activity. It was during this period that René Étiemble’s Parlez-vous franglais? (1964) was published, which denounced the “Atlantic pidgin”2 that he claimed was emerging due to the “bad” influence of American English on French. This work was deliberately extremist, as Étiemble wanted to alert the public to the dangers he felt were posed by English. Indeed, in his detailed study of Étiemble’s work, Bogaards (2008: 108) states: The message in Parlez-vous franglais? is clear: the French use too many English words; this endangers not only the purity of their language but also their economic and cultural independence, and even their intellectual integrity. If we want to prevent the worst from happening, it is therefore of the utmost urgency that we step in and take carefully thought-out measures [. . .] His objective is not to describe the state the language is in, in an even remotely objective manner, but to alert the public. And in this context, he has the right to overdo it. Which he has done, a little, and sometimes a lot.3

The fact that this work was reprinted three times and is still available for purchase today is perhaps an indication of the fear felt by some French people that their language was seriously threatened by English. Its popularity may also, however, have been due to a more general anti-American feeling, as France saw its international standing in the world diminished in the decades after the Second World War (Bogaards 2008: 133). Étiemble’s work was swiftly followed by a concrete state manifestation of linguistic anti-Americanism: the founding

2 sabir Atlantique. Note that the term sabir in French has very negative connotations, which is not necessarily true of the term ‘pidgin’ in English. 3 Le message de Parlez-vous franglais? est clair: les Français se servent trop de mots repris à l’anglais; cela met en danger non seulement la pureté de leur langue, mais aussi leur indépendance économique et culturelle, voire leur intégrité intellectuelle. Il est donc de la plus grande urgence, si on veut éviter le pire, d’intervenir et de prendre des mesures bien senties [. . .] son objectif n’était pas de d’écrire, d’une façon un tant soit peu objective, l’état de la langue, mais d’alerter le public. Et dans ce cadre, il avait le droit d’exagérer. Ce qu’il fit, un peu, et parfois beaucoup.

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of the Haut Comité pour la défense et l’expansion de la langue française4 by Pompidou in 1966 (Bogaards 2008: 151). The task of the Haut Comité was “to create or encourage all initiatives relating to the defence of the French language or the promotion of its use abroad”.5 The use of the term “defence” clearly reflects the state’s desire to “protect” the French language, as does the language used by Pompidou when discussing this law; he refers to the “the corruption of our language”6 and to “the bastardisation of the vocabulary”7 (Bogaards 2008: 151). Although the decree creating the Haut Comité does not explicitly mention the English language, it is clear that it is English, rather than any other language, which is perceived as constituting a threat. This desire for “protection” eventually led to the adoption of the first linguistic law in France, the Bas-Lauriol law of 1975 and, later, the Toubon law of 1994. These laws are fairly similar; the Toubon law is seen as an update and expansion of the Bas-Lauriol, which did not prove to be very effective. The Bas-Lauriol law of 31 December 1975 (law no. 75–1349)8 was intended to act as a form of consumer and employee protection by making the use of French compulsory in various domains to protect the French from misinformation arising from the use of a foreign language (Judge 2000: 77). French was required to be used in product descriptions and advertisements (consumer information), in contracts of employment, and in all radio and television programmes except those aimed at a foreign audience, and foreign terms were explicitly forbidden: “The use of any foreign term or expression is prohibited when an approved expression or term already exists” (article 1).9 This law therefore clearly displayed 4 The Haut Comité changed names several times. It became the Haut Comité de la langue française in 1973, and was then split into two bodies in 1984, the Comité consultatif de la langue française and the Commissariat générale à la langue française. In 1989 these became the Conseil Supérieur de la langue française and the Délégation générale à la langue française, respectively, and the latter was further renamed as the Délégation générale à la langue française et aux langues de France in 2001, DGLFLF “Les institutions chargées de la langue française” (01/2014),

5 “de susciter ou d’encourager toutes initiatives se rapportant à la défense et à l’expansion de la langue française”, DGLFLF “Décret n° 66-203 du 31 mars 1996 portant création d’un Haut Comité pour la défense et l’expansion de la langue française” (01/2014), 6 “corruption de notre langue” 7 “l’abâtardissement du vocabulaire” 8 Legifrance, “Loi n o 75-1349 du 31 décembre 1975 relatif à l’emploi de la langue française” (01/ 2014), 9 “Le recours à tout terme étranger ou à toute expression étrangère est prohibé lorsqu’il existe une expression ou un terme approuvés” (article 1).

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the intent not only to impose the general use of French but, more specifically, to oppose the use of foreign terms or expressions in French. This law did not prove to be very effective, in part because the fines imposed on anyone breaking the law were so minimal (Nelms-Reyes 1996: 298; Fagyal, Kibbee and Jenkins 2006: 178) and also because very few prosecutions were actually made (Grigg 1997: 372). Due to its lack of success, the Toubon law was passed on 4 August 1994.10 This law makes the use of French mandatory (but not exclusive) in five domains: education, commerce, the audio-visual media, the workplace, and public meetings such as colloquia and conferences, and its purpose is “to guarantee the right of citizens to use their language in certain circumstances of their daily lives”.11 It states that French is the language of instruction, work, trade and exchanges and of the public services (Article 1) and that French must be used in the naming, presentation, instructions for use, description and warranties of all goods, products or services and also for all written, spoken, radio or television advertisements (Article 2). All signs posted or announcements made in public or on public transport must also be in French (Article 3). All contracts in the public services must be drawn up in French, and may not contain any foreign terms or expressions if there exists an equivalent official French term (Article 5). The law also ostensibly shows a change of strategy in the fight against English, by attempting to counteract the dominance of English not through traditional defensive measures but instead by actively promoting a policy of multilingualism: it states that public bodies, when providing translations, must use at least two other languages (Article 4). For example, the SNCF must use at least two languages when providing translations for travellers and so, similarly, must government ministries and agencies, when providing translations of their websites. In reality, however, not much has changed, and the spread of French abroad and its promotion as an international language are still the main aims of the law (Oakes 2001: 161), which really seeks to bolster France’s position in the world. These laws show clearly that the official attitude towards English in France is highly negative; the laws are attempting to ensure that English terms are used as rarely as possible and that French continues to be used in as many domains as possible in France.

10 Legifrance, “Loi n° 94-665 du 4 août 1994 relative à l’emploi de la langue française” (01/2014),

11 DGLFLF, “Circulaire du 19 mars 1996 concernant l’application de la loi n° 94-665 du 4 août 1994 relative à l’emploi de la langue française” (01/2014),

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2.2 Terminology commissions in France A further significant official act of language planning in France was the creation of the terminology commissions, aimed at ensuring that technical vocabulary has a French origin and uses French native terms as far as possible (Ager 1999: 115), that is, aimed at finding French alternatives to Anglo-American terms. The first official terminology commissions, originally called the “commissions ministérielles de terminologie” (CMT) were established in the early 1970s, with more than ten CMTs created within different ministries between 1970 and 1972. Although these published a number of new terms between 1973 and 1978, their output later diminished (Depecker 2001: 25). However, the creation of the Commissariat général de la langue française in February 1984 led to a new wave of activity and, in that year, numerous terminology decrees appeared in the Journal officiel and continued to appear regularly after this time (Depecker 2001: 26). In the period up to 1994, the commissions published over 4000 terms in the Journal officiel.12 The aim of these terminology commissions is fairly clear: to replace foreign borrowings in French. For example, the Decree no. 72-19 of 7 January 1972 relating to the enrichment of the French language13 states in Article 2 that the aims of the terminology commissions are “to establish an inventory of the gaps in French vocabulary in a given sector”14 and “to suggest the terms needed either to denote a new reality or to replace undesirable loanwords from foreign languages”.15 In later decrees, explicit references to foreign languages are either removed or toned down. For example, in Decree no. 83–243 of 25 March 198316 and Decree no. 86-439 of 11 March 1986,17 there is no reference to foreign loanwords; instead emphasis is placed on creating new terms to fill lexical gaps. Although the reference to foreign languages is reintroduced in Decree no. 96602 of 3 July 1996,18 this is more neutral than in earlier decrees; the term “loanword” is not used, instead it is stated in Article 7 that one of the aims of the commissions is to “collect, analyse and propose the terms and expressions that

12 DGLFLF, “L’enrichissement de la langue française” (01/2014), http://www.culture.gouv.fr/ culture/dglf/terminologie/termino_enrichissement.htm 13 Décret n o 72-19 du 7 janvier 1972 relatif à l’enrichissement de la langue française 14 “d’établir pour un secteur déterminé un inventaire des lacunes du vocabulaire français” 15 “de proposer les termes nécessaires soit pour désigner une réalité nouvelle soit pour remplacer des emprunts indésirables aux langues étrangères” 16 Décret n o 83-243 du 25 mars 1983 17 Décret n o 86-439 du 11 mars 1986 18 Décret n o 96-602 du 3 juillet 1996

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are needed, particularly those equivalent to new terms and expressions appearing in foreign languages”.19 The specialised terminology commissions relate in general to highly technical terminology in very specialised domains. The Commission générale de terminologie was also created in 1986 to deal with terms in general usage, and the decree creating this commission refers directly to foreign expressions: “The general commission has as its objective the creation of an inventory of foreign terms or expressions in common usage which require Gallicization”20 (cf. Article 8 of Decree no. 86-439 of 11 March 1986). The fact that foreign terms need to be “Gallicized” supports the idea that the aim of the commissions is not to create new terms to fill lexical gaps or name new concepts, but to remove foreign borrowings from the French language (which have already filled these gaps and named these concepts) and replace them with French terms. Furthermore, although English is not referred to explicitly in any of the decrees, the lists of terms created during this period are almost exclusively Anglicisms (cf. Depecker 2001), which demonstrates clearly that the “foreign terms and expressions” referred to are in fact English ones and that the aim of the commissions is not to replace foreign terms in general but in fact to replace Anglicisms. The terminology commissions therefore appear to mirror the negative attitude towards the use of English in French displayed by the linguistic legislation. We can see that, at the official level at least, the perception from abroad that French attitudes towards English are very negative is certainly true. That this is the case is amply reinforced by other studies of language policy in France (cf. for example Ager 1990, 1999; Chansou 2003; Gordon 1978).

3 Individual attitudes towards English in France Although it may be true that, at the official level, attitudes towards English are very negative, it is not clear whether these attitudes are replicated at the level of individual members of the speech community in France. Individual attitudes towards English in France need not necessarily correspond to those at the official level. Although certain scholars have attempted to address this question, studies remain relatively rare. Oakes (2001) in his investigation of the role language has played, and continues to play, in the construction of national identity in France and Sweden, attempted to test whether there are any discrepancies 19 “recueillir, analyser et proposer les termes et expressions nécessaires, notamment ceux équivalents à des termes et expressions nouveaux apparaissant dans les langues étrangères” 20 “La commission générale a pour mission d’établir, dans le domaine du langage courant, un inventaire des termes ou expressions étrangers dont la francisation est requise”

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between the grassroots and official levels in this regard. He found that the majority of respondents had positive attitudes towards English and did not perceive it as a threat; in fact, a majority claimed that it was not important that French be kept as pure as possible from foreign loan words. In terms of attitudes towards English, then, there was quite a significant level of divergence between grassroots and official circles (Oakes 2001: 175–226). Although Oakes only tested 187 younger speakers (secondary school students) and it is not, therefore, clear whether this split can be generalised to the wider population in France, this is nonetheless an interesting result and demonstrates that it is important to distinguish between attitudes at the official level and attitudes of the speech community more generally. Many studies on language policy or on language and national identity do not take the wider speech community into account. Ager (1999: 110–11) discusses the results from a SOFRES21 poll of representative citizens in March 1994 on the image of French. This poll showed that the French general public does not display any major levels of insecurity about its language. Almost as many respondents felt that using American and English words and expressions is positive (42%) as did not (44%). As many felt that the use of American terms is shocking (49%) as held the opposite opinion (49%). If anything, the use of English terms was viewed positively: far more respondents chose positive terms to describe the use of English terms in everyday life than negative ones (41% of respondents found the use of English terms “modern”, 30% “useful”, 19% “amusing”, compared to 16% who found it “snobbish”, 14% “annoying” and 6% “stupid”). As Ager states, these results demonstrate that it is unlikely that most members of the speech community in France are anywhere near as concerned by feelings of insecurity as the elite, and their general attitude towards Americanisms is much more practical than the idealistic and generalised dislike felt by that same elite. Members of the French speech community generally seem prepared to adopt Americanisms if they feel they are useful, and have no specific dislike of the English language (Ager 1999: 111). These results appear to coincide with Oakes’ survey above, and reinforce the idea that institutionalized attitudes towards the national language do not necessarily coincide with those of the general population. Finally, Flaitz’s (1988) volume on French perceptions of English as a world language shows that the attitudes of French people both towards English in general, and towards the influence of English on the French language more specifically, are more positive than official activity or pronouncements may lead us to believe. Other studies on the knowledge French speakers display of terminology commission replacement terms have shown that they

21 Société française d’études par sondages [French Society of Survey Studies]

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are on the whole unaware of these terms, and more likely to use the English equivalents (cf. Cartier 1977; Fugger 1980, 1983; Guilford 1997). Although this is not necessarily reflective of a positive attitude towards Anglicisms (it would be possible for someone to have an aversion to Anglicisms as a matter of principle but to use them for practical reasons, for example), it does appear to reinforce Oakes’ and Flaitz’s studies. These studies, however, are now somewhat dated, and since their publication, the use of the Internet – and with this, the use of the English language – has become more and more prevalent, not just in France, but throughout the world. It may be that this has led to increased fears for the French language, or, equally, as more speakers become familiar with English, it may be that the attitudes outlined above, where speakers feel that English poses no great threat to French, have become even stronger. It was with this in mind, and within the framework of a larger study of linguistic purism in France, that we designed two empirical studies to examine speaker attitudes in France towards the English language and the use of Anglicisms in French: an online questionnaire provides a quantitative analysis of speaker attitudes and an interview study develops the examination of these attitudes in more detail to provide a qualitative analysis. Only those aspects of these two studies that are relevant to the question of attitudes to English in France are discussed here.

3.1 Individual attitudes towards English in France: questionnaire study Data on attitudes to Anglicisms in France were gathered using an anonymous, online questionnaire. Of the various survey methods available for this type of study, an online questionnaire was chosen because it allows data to be collected from a large number of respondents simultaneously, and therefore requires fewer financial or temporal resources than distributing questionnaires in paper format or conducting interviews with a similar number of respondents. It also means that data can be gathered in a very uniform manner, as each person responds to exactly the same questions; and it allows anonymity, which increases the chances of collecting data that actually reflect respondents’ true beliefs and attitudes. The social desirability bias, which refers to the tendency for respondents to respond to questions in a way that makes them appear more prestigious (Baker 1992: 18) is likely to be far less significant in an anonymous questionnaire than it may be in face-to-face interviews. The questionnaire used a direct approach; respondents were overtly asked to report their attitudes. Questionnaire respondents included personal contacts

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at universities and companies across France; members of academic departments, social groups and sports groups at schools and universities; members of trade unions and professional associations; and members of retiree associations. Although participants in a study of this type are essentially self-selecting and may therefore not reflect the attitudes of the French speech community as a whole, the large number of respondents may mitigate against this. The results of the study were analysed quantitatively, combining descriptive statistics with tests for statistical significance, where these were deemed appropriate. The descriptive statistics mainly provide overall frequencies and percentages, and the test for statistical significance used is a contingency chi-square test, which gives a measure of the likelihood of the results observed being due to chance, or due to the effect of the independent variables investigated. These were used to test the effect of independent variables, such as age and level of education, on the data. As is standard in the social sciences, a p value of less than 0.05 is regarded as significant.

3.1.1 Social characteristics of questionnaire respondents The questionnaire received several hundred responses, but in order to be retained, respondents had to be monolingual French speakers, be of French nationality and be resident in France. This left a total of 401 respondents. In terms of the social characteristics of the respondents, a slightly greater proportion was female (59%) than male (41%). The questionnaire included three age groups: a younger group, aged from 15 to 24; a middle group aged between 25 and 64; and an older group aged over 65. These correspond roughly to the three stages, which Ager (1990: 113) claims are linguistically relevant: “the period of schooling; the period of economic activity; and the period of retirement”. The greatest number of respondents (68%) were aged between 25 and 64, which is to be expected, given that this group has the greatest age span. 21% of respondents were aged between 15 and 24 and 11% were over 65. Although these may look like relatively small percentages, the relatively high number of respondents means that the numbers involved are more than adequate for comparative and statistical purposes.22 The questionnaire also included three education groups: Level 1, lower than school-leaving certificate; Level 2, school-leaving certificate; Level 3, third-level education. The majority of respondents had Level 3 education (83%), 10% had Level 2 education and 7% Level 1. It is likely that this is 22 In all cases where a chi-square test was used, each cell had more than 5 respondents.

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due to the online nature of the questionnaire; it may be that more highly educated speakers are more likely to be in jobs which provide access to a computer and the internet, for example. Where results are displayed using graphs, these graphs are proportional representations, allowing the different tendencies of each group to be clearly displayed. The variation in numbers just discussed must naturally lead us towards caution in interpreting these graphs. However, the statistical tests applied using the statistical package SPSS take uneven distributions into account and correct for these, which allows us to clearly determine which results are significant.

3.1.2 Questionnaire design The questionnaire outlined here was part of a broader study examining linguistic purism in France and Quebec, which was composed of six parts. Sections from four of these parts are discussed here (sections from parts IIa, III, IV and V).23 Part IIa of the questionnaire was designed to investigate attitudes to the use of Anglicisms in French by investigating whether, given a choice, respondents would choose to use an unassimilated loanword or its French replacement and, if they chose the replacement, whether they would choose an assimilated loanword or a calque. It additionally investigated how likely respondents were to choose a terminology commission term (in each case, the calque was also a terminology commission term). The sentences displayed in Figure 1 were shown on the screen, each with a gap and a choice of three terms to fill this gap: an unassimilated loanword (e.g. web page); an assimilated loanword (e.g. page web); or a calque (e.g. page sur la toile). We would expect respondents choosing mainly unassimilated loanwords to display a positive attitude towards English loanwords, those choosing assimilated loanwords to display a slightly less positive attitude, and those choosing mainly calques to display a more negative attitude. For each sentence in this section, one term out of the three was also a term recommended by the French terminology commissions (highlighted in italics in Figure 1).24 As terminology commission terms are generally created to replace an existing Anglicism, we can assume that choosing one of these displays a more negative attitude towards Anglicisms. This exercise also allows us

23 Part I elicited information on social characteristics, and part IIb measured respondents’ attitudes to ‘correctness’ in French and to terminology commission replacement terms. 24 Sentences 1 and 2 are excluded from the analysis of terms chosen because neither contains an assimilated loanword. Sentence 10 is excluded from the analysis of terminology commission terms chosen.

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Vous trouverez ci-dessous plusieurs phrases à trou. Pour chaque phrase, vous avez un choix de trois termes pour remplir la phrase. Veuillez choisir le terme que vous utiliseriez en parlant avec un ami. 1. Internet Explorer, Firefox et Google Chrome sont tous des ________. ◌ browsers ◌ logiciels de navigation ◌ navigateurs 2. On utilise le terme _______ pour désigner un logiciel qui a pour fonction de faire respecter la politique de sécurité d’un réseau. ◌ barrière de sécurité ◌ firewall ◌ pare feu 3. On utilise souvent le langage HTML pour créer une ______ . ◌ page sur la toile ◌ page web ◌ web page 4. J’ai acheté un _____ pour transformer mes vieilles photos en images numériques et les mettre sur CD-Rom. ◌ scanner ◌ numériseur ◌ scanneur 5. Je serais perdu sans mon_____ pour sauvegarder les données importantes comme les rendez-vous et les adresses. ◌ organiseur ◌ agenda électronique ◌ organiser 6. Le ____ est responsable de la gestion et de la maintenance du site web.25 ◌ webmestre ◌ administrateur de site ◌ webmaster 7. Je vais lui envoyer un ___ tout de suite. ◌ courriel ◌ Email / mail ◌ mél 8. Mon nouvel ordinateur a une ___ intégrée. ◌ cybercaméra ◌ webcaméra ◌ webcam 9. Mon ___ est une espèce de journal public ou j’écris tout ce qui me vient à l’esprit. ◌ blog ◌ bloc-notes ◌ blogue 10. Malgré la crise, les ___ continuent à recevoir des bonus. ◌ tradeurs ◌ opérateurs de marché ◌ traders Figure 1: Part IIa of the questionnaire 25 Note that the use of the masculine article le here may have caused some respondents to avoid choosing administrateur de site, which would normally use the form l’. Although the results for this sentence reinforce the general trend shown for the other sentences (with respondents being less likely in general to choose calques), we have omitted this sentence from the results.

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to see how widely terminology commission terms are accepted in France. If respondents choose mainly terminology commission terms in this exercise, it would suggest that these are widely known and accepted in France, which may suggest that speakers reflect the official attitudes towards English discussed above.26 Part III of the questionnaire examined respondents’ general attitudes towards learning English. This can be viewed as a separate issue to attitudes towards Anglicisms in French, as it may be the case that a speaker has a positive attitude towards studying the English language, but dislikes using Anglicisms in French. This section contained a number of statements about the English language, and for each of these respondents could choose from a five-point scale ranging from agree totally to disagree totally. The sentences discussed in the present work are as follows: – Knowledge of English is important27 – Children should start learning English at primary school Part IV of the questionnaire included two questions aimed at examining respondents’ attitudes towards the threat posed to the French language by English. As above, respondents could choose from a five-point scale ranging from agree totally to disagree totally: – Laws are needed to protect the French language – The increasing use of English will lead to the marginalisation of the French language in the future, even in France Part V aimed to examine respondents’ attitudes towards the use of Anglicisms in French. It included two statements (for which respondents could choose from the same five-point scale above) as follows: – I notice a lot of Anglicisms in French – The French language needs Anglicisms It then included a question where, for each area listed, respondents could choose from one of three responses (necessary, indifferent, superfluous):

26 Of course, respondents’ stated behaviour may not reflect their actual behaviour, but to attempt to account for this, they were asked to choose the term they would use when speaking to a friend. This was to encourage them to report the term they would use spontaneously. 27 All parts of the questionnaire have been translated into English here, but the original questionnaire was in French.

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What do you think of the use of Anglicisms in the following domains?  Spoken language  Technical / specialised language  Product packaging  Advertisements  Television / radio

The questions in parts III, IV and V were deliberately placed after part II so that responses to them would not affect respondents’ answers to the task in part II. After finishing part II, respondents had to click a “Continue” button to move onto part III and could not later return. As the questions in parts III, IV and V were intended to gauge the level of self-reported attitudes of respondents, the results of these are examined first before confirming whether or not the self-reports match the behaviour in the exercise in part IIa. 3.1.3 Questionnaire results: parts III–V The results for part III of the questionnaire display a clearly positive attitude towards learning English. The majority of respondents (98%) agreed with the first statement that it is important to know English (77% agreed totally and 21% agreed partially). The majority (86%) also agreed with the second statement that children should learn English from primary school level (57% agreed totally and 29% agreed partially). Knowledge of English is clearly seen as important and necessary to these French respondents. The results for part IV of the questionnaire are less clear-cut but they show that respondents do not feel overwhelmingly threatened by the English language. Less than half of respondents (46%) agreed with the statement that the French language needs laws to protect it (13% totally and 33% partially), 25% were undecided and 29% disagreed (21% partially and 8% totally). A majority of respondents (60%) disagreed with the statement that the French language is in danger of being marginalized (36% partially and 24% totally), 13% were undecided and 27% agreed (6% fully, 21% partially). This statement reflects a fear that is often employed in France as an argument for the necessity of linguistic legislation (indeed, the stated aim of both the Bas-Lauriol and Toubon laws to “guarantee the right of citizens to use their language in certain circumstances of their daily lives” reflects the fear that the use of French in these “circumstances” is threatened)28 and it is therefore interesting that barely more than a 28 DGLFLF, “Circulaire du 19 mars 1996 concernant l’application de la loi n° 94-665 du 4 août 1994 relative à l’emploi de la langue française” (01/2014),

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quarter of the French respondents agree with this statement. Clearly, they do not reflect official concerns in this regard. The results for part V are slightly less positive towards English. The majority of respondents (88%) agreed with the first statement that they notice a lot of Anglicisms in French (30% fully, 58% partially). Although this does not necessarily indicate a negative attitude towards Anglicisms (respondents may notice a lot of Anglicisms without having an issue with this), a majority of respondents were either undecided about whether or not the French language needs Anglicisms (30%) or disagreed with this statement (33%, of which 27% disagreed partially and 6% disagreed fully). Only 37% of respondents agreed that French needs Anglicisms (31% partially and 6% fully). The results for the final statement show that attitudes to English are not necessarily clear-cut, and that various nuances can be at play. This statement was intended to investigate whether or not the domain in which an Anglicism is found can play a role in its acceptability. For the five different domains listed, respondents were asked to indicate whether they found the use of Anglicisms in each of these domains necessary or superfluous or whether they were indifferent to the use of Anglicisms in these domains. The results displayed in Figure 2 show very clearly that Anglicisms used in specialised or technical domains are much more acceptable than those

Figure 2: Acceptability of Anglicisms

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used in other domains; the majority of respondents (74%) found Anglicisms in specialised/technical domains “necessary”, whereas the majority found Anglicisms “superfluous” on product packaging (68%), in advertisements (69%) and on the television or radio (61%). Anglicisms in spoken language were considered slightly more acceptable than those used on packaging, in advertisements or on the television and radio (33% of respondents found them “necessary” in spoken language). There is a strong correlation between the domain in which an Anglicism is used and its acceptability to respondents, with a chi-square test returning a value of p≤0.001. These results demonstrate that the issue of attitudes towards Anglicisms is not necessarily clear-cut. Respondents can have a strongly negative attitude towards Anglicisms in general domains, whilst remaining positive towards those used in specialised or technical domains. The questionnaire also provided respondents with the opportunity to enter comments at will, with no stipulation about what those comments should contain (a text box was provided with the heading “General comments”). Only 40 respondents out of the 401 left comments, but some of these usefully highlight the nuanced nature of this question. For example, respondent 349 states that: My responses about Anglicisms may appear contradictory and this is normal. In some cases the use of Anglicisms is absolutely justified and logical. Some ideas, concepts, have no equivalent in French and to express them, you have to use English. The most basic example can be found in technical domains. On the other hand, I completely deplore the unwarranted use of Anglicisms in everyday circumstances. You sometimes get the impression that people are using English words or expressions in their conversation just to make themselves look important [. . .] The use of such terms weakens the French language and devalues the English language.29

Similarly, respondent 238 states that: I think this is a complex question. When you work in a company, you use a lot of English terms or Anglicisms. I think this is sometimes necessary, particularly for new concepts or technical terms. But these words often have an equivalent in French and it is a shame not to use them.30 29 Mes réponses sur les anglicismes peuvent paraître contradictoires et c’est normal. Dans certains cas l’usage d’anglicismes est tout à fait justifié et logique. Certaines idées, concepts, n’ont pas d’équivalent en français, et pour les exprimer, il faut passer par l’anglais. L’exemple le plus basique se trouve dans les domaines techniques. Par contre, je déplore totalement l’usage injustifié d’anglicismes au quotidien. Cet usage donne parfois l’impression que les personnes placent des mots ou des phrases anglaises dans leur conversation uniquement pour se donner de la valeur. [. . .] L’usage de tels termes affaiblit le français et galvaude l’anglais. 30 Je pense que c’est une question complexe. Quand on est en entreprise, on utilise beaucoup de termes anglais ou d’anglicismes. Je pense que c’est parfois nécessaire, notamment pour les nouveaux concepts ou pour les termes techniques. Mais souvent, ces mots ont leur équivalent en français et il est dommage de ne pas les utiliser.

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This shows how it is possible to hold positive attitudes to Anglicisms used in one domain, or for a particular reason (for example, filling a lexical gap) and negative attitudes towards those used in another domain.

3.1.4 Questionnaire results: parts III–V. Age and education. There is also no apparent correlation between education or sex and attitudes in the results for parts III, IV and V. However, age does appear to play a role in parts IV and V. In part IV, respondents over 65 were more likely to agree that laws are needed to protect the French language and that the French language is in danger of becoming marginalized due to the increasing use of English; however, chi-square tests on these data do not return any significant results. In part V, the middle age group was the most likely to agree that the French language needs Anglicisms, and the older age group was the most likely to disagree that this was the case. A chi-square test shows a significant correlation between age and the reaction to this statement (p