Multilingualism in the governance of a ‘monolingual’ institution: an explorative study on linguistic diversity and language practices in the University of Hamburg

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper describes and discusses findings from an explorative study on multilingualism among university staff. In a project conducted in the University of Hamburg, 661 members of staff in administrative and technical roles have participated in a survey on their multilingual repertoires, on the usage of different languages as well as multilingual language practices in their daily work routine. The theoretical framework is informed by economic considerations on the value of languages (Grin, F. (2003). Language planning and economics. Current Issues in Language Planning, 4(1), 1–66) as well as sociolinguistic work on language and employability (Duchêne, A., & Heller, M. (Eds.). (2012). Routledge critical studies in multilingualism: Vol. 1. Language in late capitalism: Pride and profit. New York: Routledge; Piller, I. (2016). Linguistic diversity and social justice: An introduction to applied sociolinguistics (1st ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press). Among other things, the descriptive statistics firstly exhibit a wide range of multilingual resources within the workforce with over 60 different languages that are spoken by the participants. Secondly, an extensive and regular usage of languages other than German (LOTG) can be seen with over 75% of the participants indicating to make regular use other languages at work. Thirdly, generally positive attitudes towards the usage of LOTG can be observed. Further analysis and a critical discussion, however, reveals that LOTG usage remains limited to using English in the vast majority of instances, reinforcing the hegemonic role of English (and in some cases French, Spanish and Italian) and disregarding actual linguistic diversity and migrant languages.