Hostname: page-component-7f64f4797f-6fdxz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-11-08T13:22:05.569Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Language policy and social change: A critical examination of the implementation of an English-only language policy in a Danish company

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2018

Dorte Lønsmann  and
Janus Mortensen
Dorte Lønsmann*
Affiliation:
Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Janus Mortensen
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
*
Address for correspondence: Dorte Lønsmann, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Management, Society and Communication, Dalgas Have 15, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark dl.msc@cbs.dk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article examines the introduction of English as a corporate language in a Danish consultancy company from a critical angle. Based on analyses of language policy documents and interviews with language policy makers in the company, we investigate the underlying assumptions of the policy-making process, and explore how the language policy functions as a means of exerting power beyond the domain of language. The article shows how the language policy is heavily influenced by the language ideology of English as the natural language in global business as well as by neoliberal ideals of international expansion. Drawing on the notion of language commodification, the article investigates how the language policy reconfigures the social space of the organisation. The analysis shows that while the language policy aims to change the company culture towards a more ‘global mindset’, it also effects social change by legitimising certain types of employees while marginalising others. (Language policy, social change, English as a corporate language, language ideologies, linguistic market, language commodification)*

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , June 2018 , pp. 435 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

We would like to thank Nikolas Coupland, Hartmut Haberland, Kamilla Kraft, Jenny Cheshire, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. We take full responsibility for any remaining shortcomings.

References

Angouri, Jo (2013). The multilingual reality of the multinational workplace: Language policy and language use. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 34(6):564–81.Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich (2000). What is globalization? Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1977). The economics of linguistic exchanges. Social Science Information 16(6):645–68.Google Scholar
Cogo, Alessia (2016). Visibility and absence: Ideologies of ‘diversity’ in BELF. In Pitzl, Marie-Louise & Osimk-Teasdale, Ruth (eds.), English as a lingua franca: Perspectives and prospects. Contributions in honour of Barbara Seidlhofer, 39–48. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Crystal, David (2003). English as a global language. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dlaske, Kati; Barakos, Elisabeth; Motobayashi, Kyoko; & McLaughlin, Mireille (2016). Languaging the worker: Globalized governmentalities in/of language in peripheral spaces. Multilingua 35(4):345–59.Google Scholar
Duchêne, Alexandre, & Heller, Monica (eds.) (2012). Language in late capitalism: Pride and profit. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fabricius, Anne H.; Mortensen;, Janus & Haberland, Hartmut (2017). The lure of internationalization: Paradoxical discourses of transnational student mobility, linguistic diversity and cross-cultural exchange. Higher Education 73(4):577–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farr, Marcia, & Song, Juyoung (2011). Language ideologies and policies: Multilingualism and education. Language and Linguistics Compass 5(9):650–65.Google Scholar
Gramsci, Antonio (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart.Google Scholar
Haberland, Hartmut (2009). English: The language of globalism? RASK: Internationalt Tidsskrift for Sprog og Kommunikation 30:17–45.Google Scholar
Haberland, Hartmut, & Mortensen, Janus (2012). Language variety, language hierarchy and language choice in the international university. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 216:1–6.Google Scholar
Heller, Monica (2010a). Language as resource in the globalized new economy. In Coupland, Nikolas (ed.), The handbook of language and globalization, 347–65. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Heller, Monica (2010b). The commodification of language. Annual Review of Anthropology 39:101–114.Google Scholar
Holmen, Anne (2017). Parallel language strategy. In Van Deusen-Scholl, Nelleke (ed.), Second and foreign language education, 301–311. Cham: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hult, Francis M., & Källkvist, Marie (2015). Global flows in local language planning: Articulating parallel language use in Swedish university policies. Current Issues in Language Planning 17(1):56–71.Google Scholar
Hultgren, Anna K. (2014). Whose parallellingualism? Overt and covert ideologies in Danish university language policies. Multilingua 33(1–2):61–87.Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. (1989). When talk isn't cheap: Language and political economy. American Ethnologist 16(2):248–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Irvine, Judith T., & Gal, Susan (2000). Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Kroskrity, Paul (ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities and identities, 35–83. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, David Cassels (2011). Critical discourse analysis and the ethnography of language policy. Critical Discourse Studies 8(4):267–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Källkvist, Marie, & Hult, Francis M. (2016). Discursive mechanisms and human agency in language policy formation: Negotiating bilingualism and parallel language use at a Swedish university. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 19(1):1–17.Google Scholar
Kankaanranta, Anne, & Louhiala-Salminen, Leena (2010). ‘English? – Oh, it's just work!’: A study of BELF users’ perceptions. English for Specific Purposes 29(3):204–209.Google Scholar
Kingsley, Leilarna (2009). Explicit and implicit dimensions of language policy in multilingual banks in Luxembourg: An analysis of top-down and bottom-up pressures on practices. Language Problems and Language Planning 33(2):153–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kraft, Kamilla, & Lønsmann, Dorte (2018). A language ideological landscape: The complex map in international companies in Denmark. In Sherman, Tamah & Nekvapil, Jiri (eds.), English in business and commerce: Interactions and policies, 46–72. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Lønsmann, Dorte (2011). English as a corporate language: Language choice and language ideologies in an international company in Denmark. Roskilde: Roskilde University dissertation.Google Scholar
Lønsmann, Dorte (2014). Linguistic diversity in the international workplace: Language ideologies and processes of exclusion. Multilingua 33(1–2):89–116.Google Scholar
Lønsmann, Dorte (2015). Language ideologies in a Danish company with English as a corporate language: ‘It has to be English’. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 36(4):339–56.Google Scholar
Lønsmann, Dorte (2017a). A catalyst for change: Language socialization and norm negotiation in a transient multilingual workplace. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 27(3):326–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lønsmann, Dorte (2017b). Embrace it or resist it? Employees’ reception of corporate language policies. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management (Special issue on language in global management and business) 17(1):101–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mahili, Ifigenia (2014). ‘It's pretty simple and in Greek…’: Global and local languages in the Greek corporate setting. Multilingua 33(1–2):117–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marschan-Piekkari, Rebecca; Welch, Denice; & Welch, Lawrence (1999). In the shadow: The impact of language on structure, power and communication in the multinational. International Business Review 8(4):421–40.Google Scholar
Martin-Jones, Marilyn (2015). Classroom discourse analysis as a lens on language-in-education policy processes. In Hult, Francis M. & Johnson, David Cassels (eds.), Research methods in language policy and planning: A practical guide, 94–106. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar
Millar, Sharon; Cifuentes, Sylvie; & Jensen, Astrid (2013). A social representational perspective on languages and their management in the Danish corporate sector. In Berthoud, Anne-Claude, Grin, François, & Lüdi, Georges (eds.), Exploring the dynamics of multilingualism: The DYLAN project, 101–120. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Moore, Sarah Catherine K., & Wiley, Terrence G. (2015). Interpretive policy analysis for language policy. In Hult, Francis M. & Johnson, David Cassels (eds.), Research methods in language policy and planning: A practical guide, 152–65. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar
Mortensen, Janus (2014). Language policy from below: Language choice in student project groups in a multilingual university setting. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 35(4):425–42.Google Scholar
Neeley, Tsedal B. (2012). Global business speaks English: Why you need a language strategy now. Harvard Business Review May:117–24.Google Scholar
Neeley, Tsedal B. (2017). The language of global success: How a common tongue transforms multinational organizations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Nekvapil, Jiří, & Sherman, Tamah (2013). Language ideologies and linguistic practices: The case of multinational companies in Central Europe. In Barát, Erzsébet, Studer, Patrick, & Nekvapil, Jiří (eds.), Ideological conceptualizations of language: Discourses of linguistic diversity, 85–117. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Northrup, David (2013). How English became the global language. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, Joseph Sung-Yul (2009). The local construction of a global language: Ideologies of English in South Korea. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Park, Joseph Sung-Yul, & Wee, Lionel (2012). Markets of English: Linguistic capital and language policy in a globalizing world. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Piller, Ingrid, & Cho, Jinhyun (2013). Neoliberalism as language policy. Language in Society 42(1):23–44.Google Scholar
Ricento, Thomas (2010). Language policy and globalization. In Coupland, Nikolas (ed.), The handbook of language and globalization, 123–41. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Salö, Linus (2015). The linguistic sense of placement: Habitus and the entextualization of translingual practices in Swedish academia. Journal of Sociolinguistics 19(4):511–34.Google Scholar
Salö, Linus (2016). Languages and linguistic exchanges in Swedish academia: Practices, processes, and globalising markets. Stockholm: Stockholm University dissertation.Google Scholar
Salö, Linus (2017). The sociolinguistics of academic publishing: Language and the practices of homo academicus. Cham: Springer.Google Scholar
SanAntonio, Patricia M. (1987). Social mobility and language use in an American company in Japan. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 6(3–4):191–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanden, Guro R. (2015). Language strategies in multinational corporations: A cross-sector study of financial service companies and manufacturing companies. Frederiksberg: Copenhagen Business School dissertation.Google Scholar
Saulière, Jérôme (2014). Corporate language: The blind spot of language policy? Reflections on France's Loi Toubon. Current Issues in Language Planning 15(2):220–35.Google Scholar
Seargeant, Philip (2009). The idea of English in Japan: Ideology and the evolution of a global language. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Shohamy, Elana G. (2006). Language policy: Hidden agendas and new approaches. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Simon, Roger (1982). Gramsci's political thought: An introduction. London: Lawrence and Wishart.Google Scholar
Skinner, Chris M. (2012). The world's global language is English. Online: https://thefinanser.com/2012/09/the-worlds-global-language-is-english.html/; accessed January 2, 2018.Google Scholar
Strauss, Anselm L., & Corbin, Juliet M. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.Google Scholar
Tange, Hanne, & Lauring, Jakob (2009). Language management and social interaction within the multilingual workplace. Journal of Communication Management 13(3):218–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tollefson, James W. (2009). Critical theory in language policy. In Ricento, Thomas (ed.), An introduction to language policy: Theory and method, 42–59. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wright, Sue (2016). Language policy and language planning. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Yanow, Dvora (2000). Underlying assumptions of an interpretive approach: The importance of local knowledge. In Yanow, Dvora (ed.), Conducting interpretive policy analysis, 1–27. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.Google Scholar