Language ideologies in a Danish company with English as a corporate language: ‘it has to be English’

Dorte Lønsmann

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Multilingual Education and Policy Linguistic and Sociocultural Studies Language, Communication, and Linguistic Studies

Abstract

With the spread of English as a global language, concerns have been voiced over the impact of English on local languages. This article presents results from an ethnographic study of language ideologies in a Danish workplace with a particular focus on ideologies of English in relation to the local language and to other foreign languages. In this international company, conflicting ideologies construct the local language Danish on the one hand as the natural language in Denmark, but as unimportant compared to English on the other hand. English is constructed as prestigious and powerful in contrast with Danish. While previous studies of English as an international language have tended to focus on the consequences for the local language, this article also includes a discussion of the role of English in relation to other international languages. English is constructed as the international language, as the only possible choice for communicating internationally. The prevalence of this language ideology means that other foreign languages are either not considered at all, or even rejected outright as means for international communication, a process referred to by Irvine and Gal as ‘erasure’.

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References

1982Discourse Strategies 2001Focus Groups in Social Research 2000Regimes of language : ideologies, polities, and identities 2002Style and Sociolinguistic Variation 1998Introduction Language Ideology as a field of inquiry 2007English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity 2007English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity 2005A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology

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2018Language policy and practice in multilingual production workplaces 2017A Catalyst for Change: Language Socialization and Norm Negotiation in a Transient Multilingual Workplace 2018“English as corporate language” in the multilingual reality of multinational companies 2018Discretionary power on the front line: a bottom-up perspective on corporate language management 2017Mapping the Langscape—Developing Multilingual Norms in a Transient Project Community 2020Mainland Chinese students’ multilingual experiences during cross-border studies in a Hong Kong university: from a language ideological perspective

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