The European Union, its Institutions and its Languages: Some Language Political Observations

Abstract

The present 15 member states of the European Union have acknowledged 11 languages as the 'official and working-languages' for use within the organisation. In principle these languages are fully equal. The future expansion with new member states may bring the number of 'official and working-languages' to over 20. It is expected that institutional communication within the European Union – which is not without problems under the present circumstances – will become more and more laborious with each additional language. These circumstances raise a major question for the European Union – whether to consider the restriction of the number of official and working-languages. This monograph puts forward linguistic insights that may be pertinent both to reconsidering the desirability and tenability of the principle of plurilinguistic equality and to the day-to-day practice of multilingual institutional communication. Central to the discussion are: (1) a number of 'myths' surrounding the phenomenon of language; (2) domains of language use; (3) quality of (multilingual) communication; and (4) the handicaps experienced by natives and non-natives in multilingual communicative settings.