‘It is this diversity that makes the European Union what it is: not a ‘melting pot’ in which differences are rendered down, but a common home in which diversity is celebrated, and where our many mother tongues are a source of wealth and a bridge to greater solidarity and mutual understanding. (A new framework…, 2005: […]
Brussels’ Linguistic Landscape: A Paradox?
I have spent most of my life in Brussels, a culture rich capital that is very well known for its diverse linguistic landscape. Growing up there, it was impossible to overlook the balanced abundance in signs, elements and cultural aspects that, on a day to day basis, pointed towards Brussels’ International character. However, the city’s official […]
Language and Identity
“Every time we speak we are negotiating and renegotiating our sense of self in relation to the larger social world, and reorganising that relationship across time and space.” (Norton, 2010, p.350) The recent phenomenon of globalisation has gradually transformed the concept of Identity into something even more dynamic than ever before. The gradual erosion of […]
German Media in Belgium
“It seems astonishing, (to some extent unimaginable) for us to conceive a country like this. Straddling the boundary between Germanic and Latin Europe, Belgium is deemed as the real ethnic melting pot and the crossroads of Europe.” Those were the words of Alexander Homann, the director of the representation of the German-Speaking community in Brussels […]
To Study or not to Study in English ?
English is nowadays widely recognised as the “language of globalisation” because of the dominant status it has over other major languages such as French, Spanish, German and Chinese. The fact that it is now the only language with more non-native speakers than native speakers illustrates this phenomenon quite well (Trudgill). One direct consequence of this […]
My Language Identity
Languages and more specifically the learning of new languages have fascinated me from a very early stage. Indeed I can trace back this attraction to my early childhood. I was born in Brussels and have lived in Belgium my entire life before I moved to University in Maastricht. Nevertheless, I was brought up in an […]