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Sociolinguistics Symposium 19: Language and the City

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Freie Universität Berlin | August 21-24, 2012

Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 450

Part of Session 127: Language outside of the city (Other abstracts in this session)

Core – Periphery Logic and the Shaping of Multilingual Communication in Institutions: On Practices and Ideologies in Institutional Spaces of the European Union

Authors: Krzyzanowski, Michal
Submitted by: Krzyzanowski, Michal, Michal (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland)

In line with aims of the session on ‘Language outside of the city: centre-periphery dynamics in multilingualism’, this paper analyses how the core-periphery logic is crucial in shaping practices and ideologies of multilingualism in institutions. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and ethnography as well as analyses conducted in line with the so-called Discourse-Ethnographic Approach originating at the intersection of anthropology of organisations and critical discourse studies (cf. Krzyzanowski 2010 and 2011), the paper focuses on supranational institutional spaces of the European Union. There, as is argued, the core-periphery logic has not only been salient in key recent politico-economic discourses (about Europe of different speeds, different depths of integration, etc) but also proved pivotal for the ways in which the role and use of different languages is practiced as well as envisioned and regulated.  Looking closer at such institutions as, e.g., the European Commission, the paper explores how ‘everyday’ multilingualism in the EU-institutional contexts is conditioned by a very peculiar gradation which, despite official claims about equality between the Union’s 23 ‘official’ languages, introduces far-reaching practical and ideological differences between various languages. While some of them are thus clearly given preference (e.g. the so-called ‘working languages’; notably spearheaded by English), other languages are often peripherialised and marginalised with their speakers’ (native or selected) democratic or otherwise understood right to work, interact and obtain information in those languages often impaired. As the paper shows, the actual process of constructing the core-periphery differentiation in EU-institutional multilingualism is not only rooted in path dependence of efficiency-driven institutional practices but also stems from very peculiar ideologies of multilingualism held by many senior officials working in the Union’s key institutions.

References:

Krzyzanowski, Michal. 2010. The Discursive Construction of European Identities. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Krzyzanowski, Michal. 2011. Political Communication, Institutional Cultures, and Linearities of Organisational Practice: A Discourse-Ethnographic Approach to Institutional Change in the European Union. Critical Discourse Studies 8(4), 2011, 281-296.

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