Exploring the Dominance of the English Language on the Websites of EU Countries

Abstract

The English language is the most dominant language in the Western world and its influence can be noticed in every aspect of human communication. It’s increasing diffusion, especially since the turn of the century, is hard to measure with conventional means. The present research studies the use of language in websites of European Union (EU) member states, in order to collect data about the prevalence of the English language in the different countries and regions of the European Union. To achieve a realistic representation of today’s landscape of the European Web, this study uses a vast population of websites and a representative sampling size and methodology. By analyzing and processing the findings from over 100,000 websites from every country in the EU, a solid foundation is set that is used to explore the dominance of the English language in the European World Wide Web in general. This is the first study that examines the presence of English content in the websites of all EU member countries and provides statistical evidence regarding the ratio of English content availability for each country. Conclusively, the results of the research demonstrate that the English language is available on more than one quarter of all websites of non-English speaking EU member states. Moreover, it is available in the vast majority of multilingual and bilingual websites, while at the same time being the only language that is available in a number of monolingual websites. In addition, it is shown preference over the national language in a significant number of cases. A moderate negative correlation is found between a member state’s population and the availability of English in these countries’ websites and the same holds true for a member state’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Both these correlations indicate that smaller countries tend to provide more content in English in order to establish a stronger presence in the international environment. Taking into account the role of language in the expression of national identity, this study provides data and insights which may contribute to the discussion about the changes underway in the national identity of EU member states.

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