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Part of
The Politics of Multilingualism: Europeanisation, globalisation and linguistic governance
Edited by Peter A. Kraus and François Grin
[Studies in World Language Problems 6] 2018
► pp. 333–358

Chapter 14
European integration and the variety of languages

An awkward co-existence

| Université Paris 1, Panthéon Sorbonne

While formal EU law acknowledges the equality of the 24 languages of the Member States, practice has sanctioned the blatant hegemony of the English language over the years, and the United Kingdom has now decided to leave the European Union. Most social scientists do not care about this situation. As members of a trans-European elite, they privilege the certainties of a standardised European English over the strict demands of science and truth that need pluri-lingualism. But there is more to pluri-lingualism than being an indispensable vector to rigorous social science. Language is also indispensable for politics and, as politics is now made in English in the European Union, non-speakers of English now face exclusion from full participation in politics. Contrary to received wisdom, this concerns the majority of European citizens. One key obstacle to the modification of language practices across the Union lies in the structural features of EU law itself, with regard to its very conception of language as a discriminating instrument.

Keywords: European English, European Union, pluri-lingualism, multilingualism, vehicular language, exclusion from politics, EU law
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 1.When formal equality between national languages meets “all-English” practice and when the legitimacy of the EU is challenged by various linguistic factors
    • 1.1Impeccable primary law
    • 1.2“All-English” dominant trend in the practice of EU institutions
    • 1.3The exclusion from English for a majority of EU citizens and the increasing practice of politics in English
    • 1.4A special case: Is EU law especially foreign to EU citizens?
    • 1.5The democratic deficit? Could it be linked to language practice and English?
  • 2.Why EU-level policies in favour of language diversity are unlikely to gain great support in the near future
  • 3.The uncanny relationship of EU law with language
    • 3.1The lack of EU competences
    • 3.2The complex relationship of EU economic law with other domains of national legislation
    • 3.3When economic law spills over to the rest of legislation
    • 3.4Illusory protection: The subsidiarity principle
    • 3.5Language as an ontologically discriminatory obstacle
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 September 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/wlp.6.14bar
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