Euro-English in the European Commission: Language Use and Attitudes ; Raba euroangleščine in odnos do nje v Evropski komisiji

In: Maribor

Abstract

This dissertation deals with a sociolinguistic analysis of attitudes towards Euro-English (E-E), denoting a specific variety of the English language as is primarily used within the multicultural and multilingual professional contexts of the European Union (EU) institutions. Particularly within the European Commission (EC) English has acquired the role of the primary working language. This is apparent from the most recent figures provided by its translation service, according to which as many as 81.3% of source documents were written in English in 2014 (as compared to 77.6% in 2012 and 62% in 2004), followed by French with only 5%. Consequently, 285 EC representatives from different EU member states were surveyed on their attitudes towards E-E, primarily focusing on those respondents whose mother tongues are not English. Crucially, they were asked to evaluate several sentences that deviated from Standard English according to their perceptions of what is acceptable English usage and what is not. Beforehand, a corpus-based analysis was conducted in order to determine which potentially E-E features to integrate within the acceptability test. Importantly, the authors of the examined EU material are deemed congruent as much as possible with the participants of the attitudinal analysis, as they all work for one of the main EU institutions. The main findings reveal that the high acceptability rates of the proposed deviant sentences among the surveyed non-native English-speaking EC representatives were primarily related to their lower proficiency in the English language and/or mother tongue interference, whereas we argue that the surveyed native speakers accepted most of them because they failed to apply a known language system accurately. Accordingly, we found out that the participants as a whole generally adhere to native models of English, i.e. British English, and thus do not personally endorse a European variety of English as a standard of linguistic correctness in their minds. Although specific usage that differs from the standard use of English has to an extent been developed within the EU institutions, the identified features must be regarded as EU jargon ; which may be more or less obvious ; rather than a particular E-E variety already expressing common EU culture and identity. We conclude that an independent variety of English, comparable to the Inner or Outer Circle Englishes, neither exists to date nor is in its earliest stage of development within the EU institutions. ; Disertacija predstavlja sociolingvistično analizo odnosa do t. i. evroangleščine kot različice angleščine, kakršna se pogosto uporablja v večkulturnem in večjezičnem delovnem okolju inštitucij Evropske unije (EU). Zlasti v Evropski komisiji (EK) je angleščina že prevzela vlogo dejanskega primarnega delovnega jezika, kar je razvidno iz najnovejših dosegljivih podatkov njene prevajalske službe, po katerih je bilo leta 2014 kar 81,3 % vseh izvirnikov osnovanih v angleškem jeziku (v primerjavi s 77,6 % v letu 2012 in z 62 % v letu 2004), medtem ko je bila francoščina kot drugi najpogostejši delovni jezik uporabljena v le 5 %. Opravljena raziskava zajema vzorec 285 predstavnikov EK, ki prihajajo iz različnih držav EU, osredotočili pa smo se predvsem na tiste govorce, katerim angleščina ni materni jezik. Ker je bilo proučevanje odnosa do evroangleščine usmerjeno zlasti na ugotavljanje sprejemljivosti določenih jezikovnih vzorcev, ki že odstopajo od modela angleščine rojenih govorcev, smo s korpusno analizo pisnih besedil EU ugotavljali njihovo pojavnost in pogostost. S tem smo določili, katere izmed pogosteje zastopanih prvin evroangleščine vključiti v testne stavke, s katerimi smo anketirance soočili. Menimo, da so pisci izbranega jezikovnega korpusa kar se da skladni z udeleženci spletnega anketiranja, saj vsi predstavniki opazovane populacije delujejo v eni izmed glavnih inštitucij EU. Analiza podatkov, ki jih predstavlja ta disertacija, kaže na to, da nerojeni govorci, ki smo jih anketirali, predlagana odstopanja od predpisane jezikovne norme sprejemajo zlasti zaradi pomanjkljive jezikovne zmožnosti in/ali prepletanja maternih jezikov, rojeni govorci pa jih sprejemajo predvsem zaradi nepravilne uporabe slovničnih pravil. Posledično ugotavljamo, da anketiranci kot celota na splošno stremijo k modelom standardne angleščine, in sicer britanske angleščine, in tako evroangleščine ne smatrajo kot ustrezno rabo jezika, h kateri bi zavestno težili. Čeprav trdimo, da predstavniki inštitucij EU, ki govorijo in pišejo v imenu širše evropske javnosti, do neke mere dejansko razvijajo specifično rabo jezika, ki že odstopa od modela angleščine rojenih govorcev, gre pri analiziranem besedišču v večini za bolj ali manj opazen žargon EU kot politične in gospodarske skupnosti njenih številnih držav članic, ne pa že za izražanje skupne kulture in identitete EU. Zaključujemo torej, da se v inštitucijah EU evroangleščina kot evropska različica angleščine, primerljiva z angleščinami notranjega ali zunanjega kroga, ni razvila oz. se tudi ne razvija.