ENGXIT OR EURO-ENGLISH: NEW REALITIES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN EU
Abstract
Britain's exit from the European Union, known as Brexit, has drawn much attention to the future of English in the EU. Despite the announced policy of multilingualism, the main working languages of the European Union in recent decades have been English, French and German, with a strong predominance of English as the language of intercultural communication. Among the predictions on the future of English in the EU after Brexit, there are two radically opposite views – from the complete cessation of its use in the official communication of the European Union, to the adoption of a new, European version other than standard English. The article, based on the analysis of the English-language media discourse of the EU 2016–2021, proposes the definition of the term ENGXIT; a review of media and scientific publications on the functioning of the English language in the European Union before and after Brexit is made. The results of the empirical material analysis, as well as the official statements of politicians and scholars responsible for the EU language policy, demonstrate that in the near future English will remain one of the 24 official languages and three active working languages of the European Community. Given that the term ENGXIT is rarely used in the analyzed EU English-language media publications after 2016, and the European version of the English language, the so-called Euro-English, is particularly common, we suggest that Brexit may trigger codification of a new version of the English language with its further active use in the official communication of the European Union. The results of the study also demonstrate the unique, unifying role of the English language in today's globalized EU society and the unwillingness of EU citizens to abandon its use in a wide range of life situations, starting from education and culture to politics and economics.
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