English in a Post-Brexit EU

The status of English as the working language within the EU is not undisputed anymore: a number of voices have said that with the UK leaving, the status of English will not be related to the Cambridge-status that it once had, because the check on this language will leave with the UK. A scholar like Modiano has argued that there will be a different kind of Euro-English as soon as the UK leaves for numerous reasons, e.g. the status of English within the European education and the development of Euro-English within the EU. Because of this development, English will eventually have its own place within the EU, more status as a working language than its status right now.

One thing that bugs me about Modiano’s approach is that Modiano neglects the fact that, even though the U.K. had the largest native English speaking population of the EU, there are still the Republic of Ireland and Malta, both countries having English as one of their official languages. In fact, in the case of Ireland, Modiano adopts almost a cynical approach regarding their stance about English within the EU (p. 316, 2017), days after the Brexit referendum.
However, everything that has been discussed above leads to questions, with the following being highlighted:

Is there English language ‘imperialism’?

The topic of language imperialism, or linguistic imperialism as called by Phillipson, can be sensitive to touch upon: essentially, it is the situation in which a language is favoured over the other and to put it more bluntly, it is not unusual that within this context, a language has been imposed upon a certain population. There are numerous characteristics of language imperialism that are applicable to the EU: English within the EU is structural and hegemonic, meaning that the infrastructure of English is better in relation to other languages, while internally English has been normalized as the main language of the EU, both in its communication and legislation. The weak to language imperialism is, in my opinion, not that strong and most definitely not imposed: I agree that it holds the most resources, yet this came from a functional and, most importantly, a voluntary standpoint rather than being imposed upon the EU. Since English is the main language in the world, it would simply be better for foreign communication to adhere to the use of English. Besides, English is not the only working language within the EU, with French and German being established as other working languages within the EU. I therefore think that it is not entirely rightful to speak of English language imperialism in the EU.

European english and its contemporary status

So when you talk about English within the EU, how would one define this kind of English? There are different approaches towards this phenomenon: Modiano’s interpretation is that Euro-English will be its own language with the exit of the UK. I think that this is, to an extent, perhaps true: with the UK leaving, there is certainly a possibility to introduce a set of rules regarding Euro-English, with own characteristics so that it differs from UK-English. However, David Crystal’s trail of logic is one I tend to agree with: Modiano tends to see Euro-English as something that is going to be very different when Brexit happens and Crystal contradicts this, saying that the English we currently speak is already different from written English, with intonations on different syllables and more code-switching integrated within their speech.
From a personal standpoint, I have to say that the point Crystal makes regarding his daughter living in Amsterdam and speaking English with  her friends there: during my semester abroad in Barcelona, I met many people from different backgrounds and I noticed that initially, the native English speakers (which were mostly Canadians or British) did struggle with the different backgrounds and different pronunciations of the whole group. Although my accent is not that rough, other friends of mine had very present accents and the result was that we all needed some time to get used to each other’s way of speaking English and eventually, I even adopted some ways of pronouncing words (perhaps unconciously).

Conclusion

From the way I see it, English does hold some power over other languages and even though it might not entirely be rightful to say that there is ‘imperialism’ of English within the EU, it surely is the most important language of our union and Brexit is not likely to change that status, simply because the way things are right now is, for most people, good enough. Even though the way English is spoken right now within the EU is different (a little bit of a descriptive claim), I believe that written English is not going to change that much from the English we are already using at the moment. Furthermore, with Malta and Ireland still in the EU, English still holds some right that it is one of the main languages and, like I said before, it would not be sensible to people why the whole infrastructure has to be changed, just to accommodate another language with perhaps more speakers within the EU.

Bibliography

Crystal, D. (2017). The Future of new Euro-Englishes. World Englishes. pp. 330-335

Modiano, M. (2017). English in a post-Brexit European Union. World Englishes. pp. 313-327

Phillipsen, Robert (2012), ‘Imperialism and colonialism’ to appear in The Cambridge Handbook of Language Policy (2012), ed. Bernard Spolsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.