Research Projects

2004 - 2006

Status of the German Language in the European Union - German Standard Varieties and Language Policy of the EU

Japan Society for the Promotion of Science  Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)  Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)

Grant number
16520268
Japan Grant Number (JGN)
JP16520268
Grant amount
(Total)
3,000,000 Japanese Yen
(Direct funding)
3,000,000 Japanese Yen

The European Union (EU) is employing an official language policy based upon states, although it seeks to build an intranational organization taking over powers of the member states. At present, it has to deal not only with languages, but also with language varieties. Austria, which gained membership in the EU in 1995, succeeded in making the EU give official status to 23 words of the Austrian variety of German due to the Protocol No.10, though German had already been an EU official language. It is worth mentioning that a part of the Austrian language variety was recognized as official in the EU because Austria is trying to establish its identity through its language variety. Ger-many, taking into consideration the diversity of the German language, has been developing norms of German in the direction of convergence, while Austria is aiming at divergence on account of the theory of pluricentricity of German. Austria, smaller in terms of its population and economy than Germany, emphasizes the diversity. On the other hand, Germany, holding hegemony over German-speaking countries in regard to language norms, is in the pursuit of a unified standardization of the German language. Language policy of the German-speaking countries in the EU is thus characterized by these opposing purposes. Multivarietism which can contribute to developing a democratic language corpus policy brings about, however, a negative effect in relation to a language status policy. It might not be realistic to make the language policy of the EU efficacious, vesting all official languages of the member states with the status of EU official languages. In reality, only some of the EU official languages are used as working languages, where a power struggle is taking place above all under "big languages" such as English, French and German. As far as the identity of the German-speaking countries as a whole does not outstrip each of their national identities, multivarietism will be maintained, so that united language status policy of the German language will hardly be possible.

Link information
KAKEN
https://kaken.nii.ac.jp/grant/KAKENHI-PROJECT-16520268
ID information
  • Grant number : 16520268
  • Japan Grant Number (JGN) : JP16520268