In the modern workplace, as exemplified by the case of an international company in Denmark, employees are often proficient in the company’s lingua franca but fall short of local language skills, whereas some ‘local’ employees lack corporate language (typically English) proficiency. This may induce the sociolinguistic lockout of either group. These lockout processes are related to two language ideologies: one about a vital link between language and nation and one about a ranking of English users.