Språk som dörröppnare i Europa : en kvalitativ analys av EU:s flerspråkighetspolitik

Författare

Linnea Polito

Summary, in English

This thesis is a mapping of the European Commission's multilingualism policy, as it is manifested in five official documents. The purpose is to investigate whether the policy is working according to the vision and multilingualism policy of the Commission. In other words are the EU citizens learning more languages according to the policy? A narrative analysis with strong influence from content analysis has been used as a method. Theories arguments about identity, languages, culture, European identity and multilingualism are defined and used in the analysis as they are all core values within the EU. The conclusions drawn are that one of the strongest goals of the Commission's policy is that all its citizens should speak more than two foreign languages in addition to their mother tongue. The average percentage of citizens speaking more than two foreign languages has not increased between 2005 and 2012. However, there is a significant difference regarding their abilities to learn more languages between the average for young people and old (55+) people and also between citizens using the internet or not regarding their abilities to speak more languages. The people most likely to be multilingual, are young people, who are also using internet on a daily basis.

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