English in Danish and the Danes English

Preisler, Bent

doi:10.1515/ijsl.2003.001

Cited by 21 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This marks the most obvious difference between the results of Preisler's (2003) study of English use in the Danish population and my analysis: Students at the FUB hear English much less often in these media than Danes. This is most likely due to the fact that in Denmark, English television shows and films are generally broadcast in the original version with Danish subtitles, while in Germany all state-funded television channels dub foreign language programming into German.…”

Section: English Outside Universitycontrasting

confidence: 55%

Local identities, global connections: affinities to English among students at the Freie Universität Berlin

Erling¹

2007

World Englishes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper examines a specific group of English users in Germany: students studying English at the Freie Universität Berlin. The first section outlines the various domains in which these students encounter English in their daily lives, both within and outside university, as they make and maintain intercultural connections. This analysis suggests that, at least among these university students, EnglishGerman bilingualism seems to be the norm. The second section of this paper shows how students' proficiency in English plays a role in their creation, or re-creation, of local, national, European and global identities. What is more, in this small community of students, it seems that the ability to use English is intricately tied in with the (re)definition of what it means to be German, or at least an educated, urban German. Although they constitute a small community, these students' uses of and attitudes towards English highlight some general trends of globalization and provide some insights into the evolving role of English in Europe.

show abstract

Section: English Outside Universitycontrasting

confidence: 55%

Local identities, global connections: affinities to English among students at the Freie Universität Berlin

Erling¹

2007

World Englishes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In other words, Germans and Dutch with particular attitudes towards English (and sociodemographic characteristics) have more in common with their peers in the neighbouring country than with their compatriots in the other national group. This finding is broadly in accordance with the socioeconomic divide between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' of English identified in previous studies (Preisler, 2003).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

A cluster analysis of attitudes to English in Germany and the Netherlands

Edwards

Fuchs²

2018

World Englishes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Although English is becoming increasingly entrenched in Western Europe, large‐scale comparative studies of attitudes among the general public to this development are scarce. We investigate over 4,000 Dutch and Germans’ attitudes towards English based on responses to an attitudinal questionnaire. Respondents saw English as a useful additional language, but not generally as a threat to their national language. Using k‐means, an unsupervised clustering algorithm, we identified two attitudinal groups per country. Respondents with positive attitudes towards English, regardless of nationality, tended to be younger, urban, better educated and more proficient in English than their compatriots with more negative views of English. These within‐country differences outweighed between‐country ones, for example, that Germans were more confident in the status of their L1, whereas Dutch showed signs of ‘English fatigue’. The findings thus appear to confirm the previously identified divide between elite ‘haves’ versus ‘have‐nots’ of English.

show abstract

“…higher education and the corporate world (Danish Ministry of Culture 2008). 2 Most Danes consider themselves proficient in English; 3 however, 20 percent have little or no English skills (Preisler 1999(Preisler , 2003. The majority of these English-have-nots are between 50 and 75 years old, but the phenomenon is also encountered among younger people.…”

Section: The Setting: Three Levels Of Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistic diversity in the international workplace: Language ideologies and processes of exclusion

Lønsmann

2014

Multilingua

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article draws on a study of language choice and language ideologies in an international company in Denmark. It focuses on the linguistic and social challenges that are related to the diversity of language competences among employees in the modern workplace. Research on multilingualism at work has shown that employees may be excluded from informal interactions and from access to power structures on the basis of language skills in the company's language(s). The data discussed here show that in the modern workplace, employees' linguistic competences are diverse; international employees often have competence in the company's lingua franca but lack skills in the local language while some 'local' employees lack competence in the corporate language (typically English). This can lead to the sociolinguistic exclusion of either group. In conclusion, the article relates these processes of exclusion to two language ideologies: one about an essential connection between language and nation and one about a hierarchy of English users.

show abstract

English in Danish and the Danes English

Cited by 21 publications

References 0 publications

Local identities, global connections: affinities to English among students at the Freie Universität Berlin

Local identities, global connections: affinities to English among students at the Freie Universität Berlin

A cluster analysis of attitudes to English in Germany and the Netherlands

Linguistic diversity in the international workplace: Language ideologies and processes of exclusion

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About