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Вестник Томского государственного университета Культурология и искусствоведение. 2016. № 2 (22)
УДК 811
DOI: 10.17223/22220836/22/9
Laszlo Maracz
THE RELEVANCE OF LANGUAGES AND MULTILINGUAL COMMUNICATION FOR SOCIAL EUROPE?1
The relevance of languages and multilingual communication for social policy and solidarity in the context of the nation state has generally been recognized. However, in the context of Europeanization this factor has been underestimated and neglected in scientific research. This paper argues that languages and multilingual communication are relevant for the design of Social Europe. In order to support this hypothesis the paper relies on an analytical tool, the so-called floral figuration model proposed in De Swaan [1]. This model allows us to isolate social and linguistic actors and track down complex patterns of linguistic and communicative exclusion in Europe's system of multi-level governance. These patterns also refer to international or global English, or its technically adapted Brussels variety "Euro-English" and appear in a case study on the Netherlands.
Key words: European languages and multilingual communication, Social Europe, flower figuration model, Eurostars, national cosmopolitans, Dutch anti-establishment forces, transnational communication.
Introduction
Commentators recognize that there is a close relation between politics, language and solidarity at the level of national political cultures. According to Bo Rothstein [2], although not being completely convinced of the role political cultures play concerning solidarity, social protection is conditioned by the perception of reciprocity. Reciprocity is however guaranteed the best in a system of bounding and bonding, as is outlined in Ferrera [3]. According to Maurizio Ferrera social protection has always been dependent on two social mechanisms: first, the bounding of a territory, nation-state borders and second bonding, the creation of a bond of solidarity or sharing within the boundaries of the national community, which may temporarily include immigrants and relies on factors, like territory, nationality, residence, language, citizenship, and a sense of belonging to community. Note that among the factors inducing solidarity Ferrera refers to language as well. Although this position considers the relation between politics and language to be relevant for solidarity at the national level this relation is seriously underestimated and neglected in research in the context of Europeanization.
Even Philippe van Parijs, the advocate of turning international English into a global lingua franca in order to solve the problem of linguistic diversity and multilingual communication in Europe and the world admits that a common language is a prerequisite for forming a demos, i.e. a nation-state in the sense of Ferrera, and
1 The author is indebted to Jean-Claude Barbier for inspiring discussions on Social Europe and to two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 613344.
that this demos is an important precondition for economic solidarity at a local level [4, p. 195]. Hence, local solidarity is covered in the framework of Van Parijs but solidarity on a European level is left in limbo. In a recent work on "Social Policy in the European Union" published in the prestigious "The European Union Series" by Karen Anderson [5] the term 'language' does not even appear. However, solidarity even within the context of the nation-state including a demos based on a common language remains a difficult matter, as Jeene et al. [6] point out. Dutch deserving-ness opinions fluctuate continuously depending on economic and political factors, like GDP, unemployment rate, and the national political climate. If common language is a building block for solidarity, it is hard to imagine how a social policy at the European level could be realized, when a common language or communication patterns including the European citizen are absent. For now this is the present state of affairs, since linguistic diversity is considered a cornerstone of European identity. But it is not only a neglect of the role of language in the research of social policy at the EU-level that is undermining the design of a genuine European social policy based on solidarity, it is also the rejection of the concept of linguistic diversity all together that is favoring homogeneous language communities. Wang and Steiner [7] argue that there is a relationship between linguistic fragmentation and social capital, where the latter is characterized by trust, common norms and networks. Countries with higher social capital tend to be richer. According to them, the number of languages in a country is significantly negatively correlated with social capital. This claim is not absolute, however. There can be more different languages spoken in a country but important is how many citizens speak the same first language. The higher the number of citizens that speak the same first language the more linguistic homogeneity there is, the better it is for social capital. Wang and Steiner point out that there are countries with high rates of social capital that are not linguistically homogeneous, like Belgium, and Canada. This can be explained by the fact that on the sub-state level, Flemish and Québécois national identity formation, including an independent language are intertwining with social policy. However, introducing homogeneous linguistic communities at the European level causes patterns of exclusion, as I will demonstrate below. From these introductory remarks it is clear that language and communication are relevant for the design of a European social policy and that there is no a priori reason to neglect the role of languages and multilingual communication in research questions on this topic.
This paper will investigate the relation between languages, multilingual communication and social policy in Europe, more precisely it offers an analysis of the present state of affairs that is the result of the interplay of Europe's system of multi-level governance and its multilingual identity. This interplay is captured in De Swaan's [1] floral figuration model which is an analytic tool to isolate the linguistic groups and actors in the European Union and their mutual interaction on the different levels of governance, namely the EU, national and local levels. The model also gives insight into the position of international English which is functioning more and more as a bridging language, a lingua franca in the European institutions in Brussels. The floral figuration model will be empirically tested in a case study on multilingualism and multilingual communication in the Netherlands. This country responded to the eurozone crisis by introducing a neoliberal welfare policy and an assimilatory policy towards migrants. These policies had repercussions in the
field of multiculturalism and multilingual communication, as I will discuss below. These repercussions unambiguously involve patterns of exclusion affecting linguistic actors. Hence, these patterns seriously hamper the design of a social policy for Europe that should be based on patterns of inclusion rather than exclusion. Hence, the conclusion that languages and multilingual communication will be relevant for the realization of Social Europe.
Analytical Tool [Box]
The starting point of an analysis of European multilingualism and multilingual communication is the concept of multi-level governance within the European Union, normally described as a tripartite system consisting of the 'macro'-level, i.e. the supranational EU-level, a 'meso'-level, i.e. the level of the Member States and a 'micro'-level, i.e. the local level of government and policy-making [8; 9]. The question is how multilingualism and multilingual communication in Europe fit into the system of multi-level governance? For this purpose, I will adopt the floral figuration model for languages that has been proposed in De Swaan [1]. This model depicts the language competence of social groups and their hierarchical orderings in terms of power [10]. Although De Swaan introduced the floral figuration model to track down the socio-political implications of linguistic relations at the national level it is my conviction that his model can be used as a fruitful analytical frame for European Union purposes as well. Let us briefly introduce this model here.
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Figure 1: The Floral Figuration for Linguistic Actors in the European Union
This figure depicts the language situation in the European Union. In the outer circles, the European masses, the commoners in Europe's Member States are located. The commoners speak a national or regional language as their mother tongue, they have received some sort of basic (elementary and secondary) education in their mother tongue and might speak a European language of wider communication,
such as English, Spanish, French, or German. If they do speak a language of wider communication it is not the standardized variety of these languages. Rather it will be an "anything goes"-variety. The shaded area represent speakers who belong to the European multilingual elites and who have a much better control of their mother tongue and the European languages of wider communication than the commoners. Fligstein [11. P. 156] refers to them as "...the educated, owners of business, managers, and professionals, and the young." These groups form in fact a "class" and participate in transnational networks within Europe. Those in the core star are the European cosmopolitan elites, the Eurostars as Adrian Favell [12. P. 144-145] calls them. They use English as the European communication language. Merje Kuus [13. P. 56] who interviewed a number of European diplomats in the European External Action Service describes this operating language as "a technical language of eurospeak." Note further that in the floral figuration model local speech communities are hardly intersecting with each other but all of them are linked to multilingual local elites through the mediation of one central or national language. These local, regional or national elites - I will refer to them as national cosmopolitans - are acting as interfaces between the commoners who have basically monolingual language and communication skills and the "multilingual" Eurostars. 'Multilingual' means first and foremost "this technical language of euros-prak" which is based on English and functioning as a lingua franca. This adapted version of English in the Brussels institutions is sometimes also referred to as 'Euro-English'. Hence, the shaded area is communicating via Euro-English at the expense of the other official European languages, including standard British English. The floral figuration model depicted in figure one is not sophisticated enough to describe all the position of relevant linguistic actors in Europe. My analysis in terms of this model is to be considered as a first approximation of the various interests that determine sociological aspects of European linguistic diversity. I will leave the detailed elaboration of it, a flower with much more leaves, as a task for further research.
Two groups will be relevant in the discussion of the Dutch case study below, namely anti-establishment forces and migrants. The anti-establishment forces who communicate in their vernacular with the commoners have quite often a poor control of English, whatever its variety. Hence, I exclude them from the shaded areas in figure one, although from a political point of view the Eurosceptics and Eurore-jects are represented in the Brussels political arenas but not in the "intermediate sphere" in the sense of Van Middelaar [14]. These are the "populists" referred to by the European elites. The anti-establishment forces use and misuse the power of language, when communicating with the local commoners in their vernacular on sensitive issues, such as the inclusion of internally mobile European citizens or immigrants from outside Europe and other newcomers; or communicating on the eurozone crisis that might endanger the national welfare state. The antiestablishment parties also communicate with the European elites, i.e. both with the Eurostars and the national cosmopolitans but this communication is negative, and exclusionist directed at undermining European integration. The anti-establishment forces compete with the national cosmopolitans by using direct communication lines reaching out to the commoners in their common vernaculars. This pattern forces the national cosmopolitans to adapt to the language and rhetoric used by the
Eurosceptics in order not to lose their electorate to these forces, as the Dutch case study will demonstrate. Migrants are in principle located in the unshaded, outer circles. If they adapt to the host situation and learn the host language they will be able to communicate via the national cosmopolitans with Brussels. If they have a deficient control of the host language they might face isolation in the host country and have no channel to communicate with Brussels. However, they have the possibility to open their own transnational network with peers in the other outer circles. An option commoners in the Member States hardly have. In sum, this set of exclu-sionist patterns that are depicted by the floral figuration model for language and communication cannot form a solid basis for Social Europe.
Languages and multilingual communication in Europe
From its founding treaty in 1958, Europe has stipulated that all the languages of the Member States are official languages. The language regulation 1/1958 turned four languages, official and regional languages in France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux-countries into official European languages [14]. These languages included French (France, Belgium, Luxemburg, and Italy); German (Germany, Belgium, Luxemburg, and Italy); Italian (Italy); and Dutch (the Netherlands, and Belgium). These four languages enjoyed an equal status in the institutions of the European Common Market implying that they were to be used as institutional and working languages. With every new round of expansion, new Member States had the right to propose new official languages. The language regulation remained operative and all official languages of new Member States were recognized as official European languages. At present, the EU recognizes 24 official languages. Linguistic diversity in Brussels is hard to manage, however. Hence, the distinction between "official" versus "working" language has become relevant and this is practically used as a solution for the language issue in the Brussels institutions. The difference between official and working languages is defined in article 6 of the language regulation: the institutions are allowed to freely choose their own language regime. The European Commission acknowledges three working languages, namely English which is used the most, and French and German. The latter is used substantially less than the other two languages [16]. Another example of article 6 is the fact that of the 15 Directorate Generals (DGs) only three use the 24 official languages on their website, including Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (EMPL), Enterprise and Industry (ENTR) and Justice (Just) [17]. All other DGs use a reduced or a monolingual regime consisting of English only.
There are voices to abolish language regulation 1/1958 all together due to the fact that an equal treatment of official and working languages is not possible. The main argument is that the democratic language regime of the EU will hamper an efficient functioning of its institutions. Moreover, the reduction of the number of official languages is underpinned by the fact that international English functions practically as a lingua franca in Brussels and the European educational recommendations for languages favor the learning of English [18]. Hence, monolingualism, i.e. the use of international English is getting more and more the practice in Brussels. But not only the introduction of a variety of international English as a European lingua franca, let us say Euro-English, will
hamper the equality of languages in Brussels it will also render almost impossible the participation of non-speakers of English in the Europeanization project. Let us discuss this claim in more detail.
It is clear that English is on the rise as a global lingua franca. Phillipson [19; 20], De Swaan [21], Grin [22] and Ricento [23] convincingly argue that the expansion of English on a global scale is driven by the hegemonic political and economic positions established first by the British Empire and later on in the twentieth century by the United States. The situation of global English is for a number of reasons not unproblematic, however. Firstly, the conclusion is justified that English is associated with linguistic hegemony and domination at the expense of other languages. Secondly, English cannot function as a real lingua franca, that is a neutral mediator language respecting the linguistic background of all speakers involved in the communicative event due to the fact that English is spoken by native and non-native speakers. Thirdly, there are different versions of English in use, like British English, American English and so on which makes it for the foreign speakers of English difficult to know what the precise norms of English are, although there exists the regularly accepted normative variety of English, standard British English, that is spread by important language mediators, like BBC radio and television, and is taught to foreign speakers of English in formal education. So, the variety of global English functioning as a bridge language among non-natives should be English-as-a-foreign language in fact. However, it has been observed that this normative variety of English is not spoken across the globe, but rather a basic version of English mixing, intermingling and sampling with local languages as an outcome of language use and communication [24. P. 34-38; 25].
Recall that figure one depicts linguistic diversity in terms of a demarcation between European elites and commoners. The European elites, i.e. the Eurostars and the national cosmopolitans, although positioned in different geographical spaces, i.e. the Brussels centre and the Member States are positioned in a common virtual space. They form a connected transnational class and speak the same sort of fluid language for instrumental communicative purposes only, i.e. a European variety of international English, i.e. Euro-English. Euro-English is developing its own characteristics, like misused English words and expressions (European Court of Auditors, 2013) and has adopted artificial expressions, e.g. from the financial world, like "collateralized debt obligations", "asset backed securities", and "credit default swaps" [26. P. 210]. This is "de-contextualized English" pinned down in Barbier [27] or "the technical language of eurospeak" Kuus [13] is referring to. It is hard to imagine that this variety of English will be able to mediate between the different political cultures in Europe that are rooted in language, as Ferrera [3] and Barrier [28; 27] argue for. However, whatever its status or quality according to the last dataset of Eurobarometer [29] roughly 50 percent of the EU citizens do not have any knowledge of English at all. So, a restricted linguistic regime with English or consisting of English-only would privilege the higher educated, the better off in Europe seriously undermining Social Europe [17]. Let us now turn to a case study of the Netherlands.
Dutch responses to the eurozone crisis
The Netherlands has been one of the six founding countries of the common Europe and a strong proponent of the establishment of the single European market and the four cross-border freedoms in the EU [14]. Dutch mainstream political parties have been supporting the establishment of the single market in the Maastricht Treaty in order to profit optimally from a financial-economic policy that is based first and foremost on ever increasing markets, trade and export [30]. This massive mainstream support for transnational concepts, like Europeanization and globalization ties in with the classical Dutch state policy of 'mercantilism' and matches very well with the ideology of 'neoliberalism'.
Barbier [28. P. 71] observes that the Netherlands does not fit into the classical typology of welfare states, elaborated in Esping-Andersen [31], including the three types of liberal, conservative-corporatist and social-democrat. The Netherlands is traditionally of the liberal type characterized by its genuine "mercantile" spirit but it has in due course adopted elements of the other two models as well. This has yielded a hybrid type of welfare state. Recently, under the pressure of the global neoliberal market forces the liberal profile has received the upper hand, though. A liberal policy is considered to be a recipe to solve the eurozone crisis. In a neoliberal state, the state withdraws from the social-economic domains, citizens are expected to become directly responsible for their own social welfare, and the state has no other obligation than facilitating its citizens to obtain more social welfare strictly restricted to its territory. Due to this neoliberal policy the Dutch lower and middle classes fear that they cannot rely any longer on the state for their social welfare and the traditional social protection. Although the neoliberal ideology has dominated thinking about the preservation of the social welfare state in the Netherlands different responses to the challenges of Europeanization, globalization and the ensuing eurozone crisis have also appeared in recent times. Anti-establishment parties have successfully mobilized the fears among the Dutch electorate, especially since the outbreak of the eurozone crisis in 2009 threatening that the Netherlands would leave the eurozone in order to protect its own national welfare system. Furthermore, the absence of positive integration in the domain of migration policy has given anti-establishment parties an extensive electoral agenda [32]. In the traditional neighborhoods of larger Dutch cities the local commoners had to pay the price of worsening social services due to the neoliberal state policy. In these neighborhoods the social relations were already tensed because of a massive influx of migrants, especially those migrants with a different, non-West European cultural background having not been absorbed and assimilated successfully.
In 2001-2002, on the waves of these social tensions Dutch anti-establishment politician Pim Fortuyn succeeded in mobilizing large groups of commoners to strengthen Dutch national identity, to put a more restrictive migration policy and an anti-European stance on the political agenda. After Fortuyn's assassination in May 2002, his heritage has been taken over by Geert Wilders, a liberal politician and former member of the VVD (People's Party for Freedom and Democracy) who established the PVV (Party for Freedom). The PVV has been successfully challenging the mainstream political parties with anti-establishment, strong antiimmigration, anti-Islam, and Eurosceptic rhetoric. The party entered the Dutch Par-
liament in 2006 and doubled its mandates in the 2010 parliamentary elections. As an outcome of these elections, the party agreed to back a centre right-liberal minority government of liberals (VVD) and Christian democrats (CDA, the Call of Christian Democracy) resulting into the First Rutte cabinet. This cabinet had to step down however due to the fact that the PVV withdrew its support for new austerity measures. Since then the relation between the PVV and the mainstream parties cooled down because it became clear that the PVV does not want to take any responsibility for electorally delicate measures. This has led to a clear division between the mainstream left-liberal parties and anti-establishment parties.
In fact, this political demarcation correlates with a societal demarcation, as has been observed in a recent study entitled "Separate Worlds" [33]. Boven et al. who conducted this research on behalf of the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP) and the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) have studied opposing social-cultural values, including universalist versus particularistic opinion, global versus local orientation, integration versus demarcation, Europhile versus Eurosceptic stance, perspectives with conflicts versus perspectives without conflicts, reflexive versus direct communication style, trust in politics versus distrust in politics, social trust versus social distrust and found that these values are correlating with higher and lower educated groups in Dutch society respectively. Furthermore, they discovered that these values correlate with party preference. The former values being popular among the electorate of mainstream left-liberal parties, while the latter ones among the electorate of anti-establishment parties, like the PVV and its socialist counterpart Eurosceptic SP (Socialist Party).
With respect to the Dutch case, I will discuss two patterns of multilingual and communicative communication in the framework of the floral figuration model. The first pattern concentrates on the communication between the Brussels core and the Dutch commoners that is mediated via the national cosmopolitans. I will demonstrate that it involves a pattern of exclusion. A second pattern of linguistic and communicative exclusion concerns the migrants in the Netherlands.
Forked tongue speak
A key role is played by the national cosmopolitans who are acting as an interface between the Brussels Eurostars and their peer commoners. The Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, representative of the liberal VVD is a typical mainstream Dutch politician who is in office from 2010. Between 2010 and 2012 he headed a centre right minority government together with the Christian democratic CDA that was backed by Wilders' PVV. From 2012, Rutte is in charge of a coalition government with the Dutch Labor Party PvdA. PM Rutte is an active player in the Brussels political arena, the intermediate sphere referred to above. Rutte and his liberal supporters who can be classified as national cosmopolitans are acting as interfaces between the Eurostars and the Dutch electorate that has been growing more sympathetic to Euroscepticism over the years.
Rutte is generally viewed as a "Janus-faced politician" and speaking with a "forked tongue". This means he is a Europhile in Brussels and a Eurosceptic in The Hague (De Bruijn, 2012). His VVD party tries to sell this double-position of the Dutch PM as a clever negotiation strategy: "If you say in Brussels always yes they
will like you. If you say once in a while no they take you serious. They take Mark serious in Europe"[34]. The argument of Rutte's supporters is that an Eurosceptic attitude in Brussels is necessary to get a better negotiation position and to convince Dutch Eurosceptic voters that the South European countries will be financially supported in the end but not at any price. The Dutch PM, who is aware of his Janus-faced position, is playing tactical language games in media performances. Rutte attended the European summit of 22-24 November 2012 where the Union's long term budget and the Greek financial crisis was discussed, as he stated with "a loaded gun in his pocket" but he quickly added that he will not use it, however: "If you put it on the table, you put the negotiations under such a pressure that they will have no result" [35].
Due to the interface position of national cosmopolitan politicians they are necessarily Janus-faced politicians who speak with a forked tongue. Being part of the intermediate sphere in Brussels and at the same time participating in their home political arena they target their messages to different audiences simultaneously and address their electorate in a reflexive communication style [33]. Rutte's sentences are long and the topics are complicated, when Rutte refers to his model of Social Europe as "the participation society", which implies the participation of every citizen in "a complex network society" in fact [36]. Here a complex network society is understood in the sense of Castells [37; 38]. However, such concepts are rather difficult to grasp for common citizens. Eurosceptics have a more transparent position in the level-playing field which is the outer circles in the floral figuration model. Although they are present in the Brussels arena they do not really participate in it, they are not part of the intermediate sphere where Brussels politics is made and hence there is no need for "doublespeak" [39]. Anti-establishment politicians can address the electorate in their own vernacular, in language easier to process, and in a direct communication style. Wilders and his PVV express a clear anti-European stance, even though they are represented in the EP, when they warn the electorate for the Netherlands becoming a "province of the European super-state." [40. P. 26].
The mainstream Janus-faced parties, like the liberal VVD, the Christian democratic CDA, and the social democratic PvdA that support the European project have a hard time struggling with Eurosceptic parties, like the PVV or SP, when European topics in the Dutch arena are at stake. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, accused the mainstream Dutch parties of not protecting the EU in the Dutch referendum on the European Constitution in 2005, when more than 60 percent of the Dutch electorate voted against it. According to him, the mainstream political parties imitate the "populist" parties: "In the end the European Parliament will only have Eu-rosceptics. That would be a catastrophe" [41].
Migrants must speak Dutch
The Netherlands has been actively supporting mobility and other forms of migration as an outcome of the four European freedoms and the liberal state doctrine. With respect to the inclusion of migrants two periods of policy-making in the Netherlands can be distinguished.
The first period started in 1983, when the official policy document on migration stated that migrants had the right to preserve their heritage languages and cul-
tures. As an outcome of this policy it was possible for migrant children to receive education in their home language in elementary schools paid for by the government. This educational policy gave contents to the concept of a multicultural society. However, in-depth studies on the language proficiency of migrants children, who had participated in home language education in elementary school, radically changed the policy perspective. It turned out that especially Turkish and Moroccan youngsters in their last year of elementary education at the age of twelve faced serious deficient language skills in Dutch compared to their Dutch classmates [42]. Due to the delay in language development migrant children had to qualify for lower types of secondary education resulting into a much worse position on the labor market. The government led by the Christian democratic PM Balkenende concluded that this situation was caused by the fact that migrant children were also educated in their home language at elementary school and by the fact that they spoke with their parents, who also faced deficient language skills in Dutch, their heritage language at home. Hence, the second Balkenende cabinet decided to abolish the state-sponsored heritage language education of migrant children in elementary school in 2004. From then on, all educational efforts were concentrated on teaching migrants and their children Dutch at school and preferably also in the home context. The switch from a multicultural to an assimilatory language policy was motivated first and foremost on economic ground. It was argued that improving Dutch language proficiency among migrants and their children was needed for strengthening their position on the labor market [43]. However, this switch did not imply that migrants and their children were integrated successfully into the Dutch society. The outer circle of the floral configuration model became a space for 'Oth-ering' and exclusion of migrants. Anti-establishment politicians, like Wilders used the mobilizing power of language in the political messages targeted at "his" commoners, who were affected by the eurozone crisis most, and discriminated internally mobile European citizens, like Poles, and immigrants from outside Europe, or other newcomers, especially Muslims with language games. Consider some of these examples.
In the annual general political debate in the Dutch Parliament on 16 September 2009 Wilders proposed to tax the Muslim headscarf as an expression of his disgust for this symbol of Muslim faith among women. He expressed this by his newly coined Dutch word 'hoofddoekjestaks'. Note the typical use of the Dutch diminutive plural '-jes' suffix attached to 'hoofddoek' "headscarf' and the Dutch spelling, i.e. 'taks' for English "tax" emphasizing the opportunistic nature of this form of taxes at purpose and not using the Dutch ordinary word 'belasting' for "taxes". His proposal was received with unbelief in the Dutch Parliament. At some point it was considered as a sick joke but then it all got the humiliating exclusive contents by replacing 'hoofddoekjestaks' with 'kopvoddentaks' that means "head-ragtax" where the Dutch word 'kop' has a clear pejorative meaning compared to the normal Dutch word for "head", i.e. 'hoofd'. According to Wilders, the 'kopvoddentaks' actually implies that any Muslim women who wants to wear a headscarf would have to apply for a license, and pay one thousand euro for the privilege. Wilders claimed the money raised would be used to support women's emancipation programs [44, p. 34-36]. Another neologism with the intention of Othering and exclusion of Muslim immigrants is Wilders' term 'haatbaard', i.e. "hate-beard":
"Our streetscape starts to look in some places more like the one of Mekka and Teheran. Headscarves, hate-beards, burqas, men in weird long white dresses. Let us do something against this." Wilders refers with the expression "heat-beard" to Muslims who distribute hate speech and/or wear a beard [44. P. 96]. With the newly coined term 'straatterroristen', i.e. "streetterrorists" Wilders is referring to street gangs of Dutch-Moroccan youngsters. However, instead of associating these gangs with acts of crimes he associates them with ideologically motivated acts of violence, like the killing of the Dutch film director Theo van Gogh by the Dutch-Moroccan Muslim fundamentalist Mohammed Bouyeri [40. P. 198] and the "Islamic intifada", i.e. the political-ideological struggle of the Palestinians in Israel [45. P. 26]. In sum, Wilders' rhetoric language is used as a political tool [39] to mobilize "his" electorate, the Dutch commoners and to exclude migrants.
However, not only Dutch anti-establishment forces use language to demarcate socio-political positions, also the national cosmopolitans who are representing the state power use language for purposes of demarcation and exclusion as well. They use their power positions by controlling the normative variety of the official language of the Dutch state. This allows them to include their own clientele and to exclude migrants and newcomers on the labor market. The study of Ghorashi and Van Tilburg [46] among hundred highly educated refugee women, especially from Iran and Afghanistan who had gained the highest possible language skills for foreigners in the Netherlands demonstrate that these language skills seem to be the main obstacle to enter the labor market in the Netherlands. When applying for a job with a better organization or company they received the response "our company stands for high quality and people with accents do not fit the image of the organization." Ghorashi and Van Tilburg conclude that "neither knowledge of the Dutch language, nor obtaining a higher degree in the Netherlands is enough for integration in the Dutch labor force." Hence, the Dutch assimilatory policy may give entrance to the labor market but discrimination is practiced by controlling the normative variety of the Dutch language. In conclusion, national cosmopolitan elites use in much more subtle manner the normative variety of Dutch than their antiestablishment counterparts.
Conclusions and a Research Agenda
So far Europeanization has been a project that has served the interests of the European elites, i.e. of those that can make optimally use of the European freedoms, mobility and markets. In the framework of the floral figuration model, I referred to the European elites as Eurostars and national cosmopolitans. However, the challenge is to keep Europe attractive not only for its elites but also for its commoners. Wallace et al. [47] observe that social policy within the EU is still a matter of the Member States. Hence, the task is to develop a genuine Social Europe that offers solidarity for all of its citizens. Although the diverging interests between the European elites and commoners has been noticed in the literature, such as in Neil Flig-stein's "Euro-clash" [11], it has gone unnoticed that the Euro-clash between social groups involves unbridgeable language conflicts as well. These language conflicts have been intensified due to the eurozone crisis.
In this paper, I have argued that language issues are vital for the development of Social Europe. Although the importance of language and communication is recognized at the state level this topic is quite often neglected, when it comes to the European level. The interplay between multi-level and linguistic governance in Europe can best be analyzed in terms of the floral figuration model in the sense of De Swaan [1]. The typology of social actors, their language skills, their communication channels and styles, and their positioning in this model demonstrate that in the present constellation transparent, efficient and fair communication is impossible. The multilingual communication patterns are first and foremost group-specific and exclusivist, as the case study of the Netherlands demonstrates. This country has recently opted for a neoliberal welfare system to address the eurozone crisis, it has been unable to coop with recent mass immigration and as a consequence it has experienced a Euro-clash in which anti-establishment parties have become fixed political forces. The types of patterns of linguistic and communicative exclusion that turn up in the Dutch case will block any form of genuine solidarity or any relevant initiative for a common social policy in Europe. The introduction of an English based lingua franca in Europe referred to as Euro-English will not be sufficient to solve the linguistic and communicative deficits. English as a code of functional communication is not equipped to bridge the subtle semantics and concepts inherent in the social and political cultures of Europe. A standardized variety of English, i.e. BBC-English is also unfit to function as a European bridge language due to native speaker involvement excluding non-natives from native norms. Hence, the absence of a neutral, transparent and accessible lingua franca jeopardizes the development of Social Europe.
As a task for further research I will elaborate on the refinement of the floral figuration model against the background of the typology of welfare states proposed by Esping-Andersen [31]. It is to be expected that much more patterns of linguistic and communicative exclusion will turn up in the process of fine-tuning. Another challenging task for further research is to elaborate on multilingual and transnational communication codes based on fairness. Here I agree with Jean-Claude Barbier [28, p. 21] that these codes must include plural idioms that are bridged by multilingual and transnational communication strategies, like neutral lingua franca communication, intercomprehension and translation and interpretation.
References
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László Marácz (European Studies, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands).
E-mail: [email protected]
Tomsk State University Journal of Cultural Studies and Art History, 2016, (2) 22, p. 83-97. DOI: 10.17223/22220836/22/9
THE RELEVANCE OF LANGUAGES AND MULTILINGUAL COMMUNICATION FOR SOCIAL EUROPE?
Key words: European languages and multilingual communication, Social Europe, flower figuration model, Eurostars, national cosmopolitans, Dutch anti-establishment forces, transnational communication.
The relevance of languages and multilingual communication for social policy and solidarity in the context of the nation state has generally been recognized. However, in the context of Europeanization this factor has been underestimated and neglected. This paper argues that languages and multilingual communication are relevant for the design of Social Europe. So far Europeanization has been a project that has served the interests of the European elites, i.e. of those that can make optimally use of the European freedoms, mobility and markets. However, the challenge is to keep Europe attractive not only for its elites but also for its commoners. The task is to develop a genuine Social Europe that offers solidarity for all of its citizens. Although the diverging interests between the European elites and commoners has been noticed in the literature, it has gone unnoticed that the Euro-clash between social groups involves unbridgeable language conflicts as well. These language conflicts have been intensified due to the eurozone crisis. The interplay between multi-level and linguistic governance in Europe can best be analyzed in terms of a Venn-diagram, like the floral figuration model. This model allows us to isolate social and linguistic actors and track down complex patterns of linguistic and communicative exclusion in Europe's system of multi-level governance. In the framework of the floral figuration model, I referred to the European elites as Eurostars and national cosmopolitans.
The typology of social actors, their language skills, their communication channels and styles, and their positioning in this model demonstrate that in the present constellation transparent, efficient and fair communication is impossible. The multilingual communication patterns are first and foremost group-specific and exclusivist, as the case study of the Netherlands demonstrates. This country has
recently opted for a neoliberal welfare system to address the eurozone crisis, it has been unable to coop with recent mass immigration and as a consequence it has experienced a Euro-clash in which antiestablishment parties have become fixed political forces. The types of patterns of linguistic and communicative exclusion that turn up in the Dutch case will block any form of genuine solidarity or any relevant initiative for a common social policy in Europe. The introduction of an English based lingua franca in Europe referred to as Euro-English will not be sufficient to solve the linguistic and communicative deficits. English as a code of functional communication is not equipped to bridge the subtle semantics and concepts inherent in the social and political cultures of Europe. A standardized variety of English, i.e. BBC-English is also unfit to function as a European bridge language due to native speaker involvement excluding non-natives from native norms. Hence, the absence of a neutral, transparent and accessible lingua franca jeopardizes the development of Social Europe. It is concluded that these patterns of linguistic and communicative exclusion must be rendered first into inclusive ones before a European social policy can be realized.
