THE SPECIFICITY OF THE EU LANGUAGE POLICY IN THE GLOBALIZED INFORMATION CONTEXT

 

Tarnavska Iryna,  

an undergraduate,

Sukhenko Inna,  PhD

Oles Honchar Dnipropetrovsk

 National University

THE SPECIFICITY OF THE EU LANGUAGE POLICY IN THE GLOBALIZED INFORMATION CONTEXT


Globalization as a process of destruction of information boundaries and a way of expanding cross-border cooperation changes the nature of linguistic communications, first and foremost due to the change of space-time and personal characteristics. The use of modern information technologies gives an opportunity of overcoming the temporal and spatial distances between the participants of communication, providing a high level of interactivity to it. And we face a phenomenon of multilingualism right here that is defined as the real social-linguistic situation – a coexistence and interaction of a few languages ​​within a language group. [8, p. 13]

Multilingualism is considered to be one of the key foundations of the contemporary Europe, one of the manifestations of its bright identity. On its developing, the EU faced the problem of languages’ functioning that belong to the members of the European Union in institutions and in the space of their common markets. The activity of the EU in this area got a concentrated expression in the concept of multilingualism that is considered to be their political slogan, their main program and an implementation of the EU language policy. 

It is declared that the purpose of the EU language policy within this field is to preserve the linguistic diversity and help the EU citizens to become proficient in foreign languages. [13, p. 10]

While speaking about the "language regime", the notion "regime" can be distinguished as a "system of rules, measures set with a view to achieving a certain purpose" [5, с. 68], while "language regime" is defined as a set of measures of selection, use, functioning of a certain language in the society.

The "language regime" can be defined as a set of organizational and methodological requirements that are touched upon the use of language, the use of which contributes to the development of culture and language themselves. [7]

In this view, language policy is considered to be a set of ideological postulates and practical measures that are aimed at regulation of linguistic relations in the country or at the development of linguistic systems in a certain direction. [3]

Language problems became a separate policy of the European Union in the 1990s and were called the EU language policy. The main tasks of the EU language policy are a guaranteeing of integrity, clarity and transparency in the fundamental documents of the United Europe, transparency in communications on the territory of the European community. 

Despite attempts to avoid inequality in use of any language, the real facts testify to the use of English in most cases. As for other languages that are in use​​ in the European countries, I’d like to say that it encourages them to balance some aspects and keep to a political and cultural ethics in language policy.

The problem of multilingualism formed a need in multilingualism management and an establishment of EU language regime. [12, p. 126]

So this situation deals with many things from different areas like legal, political, cultural, functional and budgetary ones. On stressing different parts of speech mode, we can determine different solution.

Here we can stress the following basic modes of the EU language:

- Monolingualism – it is regarded as knowledge of only one language, native or foreign one. [4]

- Nationalization – it is considered to be a process of taking an industry or assets into government ownership by a national government or state. [1] In lingualism this phenomenon can be defined as the usage of national language in a particular ethnic territory.

- National multilingualism –the implementation of several languages ​​in a particular social community. [8, p. 26].

- Individual multilingualism – the use of several languages by one person. [8, p. 27].

All these modes at their multilevel representation can be developed at different speeds and in different directions.

Being established in 2008 by the EU, the Commission Level Group on Multilingualism defines multilingualism as "a co-existence of different language communities within geographic or geopolitical zones of political communities, in ability of societies, institutes, groups and individuals in communicating in a few languages". [13, p. 42]

The institutional policy has one of the most important elements that have not been mentioned yet. And this element deals with translations. The EU set a special department that is called “General Directorate” that provides written translations of documents, different papers and verbal translations of meetings and conferences as well.

Also they are created a special program-translator with a view to translating documents of the EU, which include 1 million words and expression of the 23 languages ​​of the European Union. With this software, any EU citizen can conveniently translate a document that is important for him (her) to his (her) native language (mother tongue).

In order to control the implementation of language policy, the EU imposed an indicator of linguistic competence. It is a test specifically developed for children under 16 who have a chance of testing their knowledge in the most popular EU languages. It helps them to find out the level of their competence and improve it then. [10]

Thus the more the EU institutions are regarded in the member states as relevant political decision-making arenas, the higher the symbolic value, acquired by the internal language regulations in the perception of outsiders, is. In the contemporary multilingual as well as information context,  the potential for tension between the instrumental and expressive aspects of linguistic communication increases in accordance with the degree to which the EU is supposed to evolve from an international regime into a “genuine” transnational multilingual community. [11, p. 120]

Taking into account all the information mentioned here, we should stress that all these measures have concrete results nowadays. It is 60 languages that are under usage among the Europeans. The main ones are English, French and German. The European Union is taking some essentional steps to promote other languages, encourage citizens to learn not only their native language, but also foreign ones which helps to develop personal skills and the level of mentality. But now these plans are not fully implemented, because it is quite a complex process that requires some efforts not only from the national governments but also from common people. Thus, this issue is under urgent study, because some aspects of policy regulate the speech regime, the system of co-existence of different languages. But the issue requires to be developed carefully and thoroughly in order to shape favorable conditions for progressive spiritual wealth and material well-being of the population of EU member-states.

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