Tilburg University Babel Debates Szabo, Peter Publication date: 2021 Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication in Tilburg University Research Portal Citation for published version (APA): Szabo, P. (2021). Babel Debates: An ethnographic language policy study of EU Multilingualism in the European Parliament. [s.n.]. 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Download date: 26. sep. 2021 Babel Debates An ethnographic language policy study of EU Multilingualism in the European Parliament To the memory of Jan Blommaert Babel Debates An ethnographic language policy study of EU Multilingualism in the European Parliament PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan Tilburg University, op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof. dr. W.B.H.J. van de Donk, in het openbaar te verdedigen ten overstaan van een door het college voor promoties aangewezen commissie in de Aula van de Universiteit op vrijdag 26 februari 2021 om 13.30 uur door Péter Károly Szabó geboren te Boedapest, Hongarije Promotores: prof. dr. Jan Blommaert † prof. dr. Sjaak Kroon Copromotor: dr. Massimiliano Spotti Overige leden van de promotiecommissie: prof. dr. Jeroen Darquennes prof. dr. Michal Krzy anowski prof. dr. Teresa McCarty prof. dr. Jos Swanenbergż prof. dr. Sue Wright ISBN 978-94-6416-481-7 Cover photo by Attila Török Cover design by Gábor Palancsa, Kontraszt Plusz Kft. Layout and editing by Karin Berkhout, Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg University Printed by Ridderprint BV, the Netherlands © Péter K. Szabó, 2021 All rights reserved. No other parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any other means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without permission of the author. Preface Immersed in the multilingual setting of the European Parliament as a conference inter- preter since 2004, I have come to sense that I am faced with an intellectual challenge. The urge to explore the nature of multilingual practice and the changes unfolding therein inevitably induced enquiries and analyses, which then lead to writing up this dissertation. Anyone interested in the sociolinguistics of contemporary multilingualism and/or the linguistic anthropology of EU institutions may find something of interest in the outcome, and I hope it would be of inspiration for further research. It is the original intellectual product deriving from my own research and work in the field as a participant observer. All data used and discussed are open and available to the public on the website of the European Parliament, or other European institutions, and the findings, assessments and conclusions constitute my personal opinion. This work could not have been written without the inspiration and support of my tutors at Tilburg University. I am owed to Jan Blommaert, who has opened my mind to take a fresh look at semiotic practices in society, and Sjaak Kroon who has introduced me to the ethnographic study of language policy as a multifaceted and critical analytical per- spective on observed practice. Along with Sjaak, who was the chief reader of the manu- script, I am indebted to Max Spotti for his unwavering support and insights that helped me during the writing up process. I am also grateful for the help I received in completing this book from Karin Berkhout, Emilia Slavova, Kinga Nyuli and Nigel Heavey. Brussels, January 2021 Péter K. Szabó Table of contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1 The conceptual framework of EU multilingualism 9 1.1 The multilingualism in/of the European Union: Conceptualizations in language policy research 9 1.2 Dichotomies in the language policy representations of EUML 19 1.3 Language policy solutions to the “language problem” of EUML in the European Parliament 32 Chapter 2 The concept of language policy 45 2.1 Approximations to language policy for researching EUML: Differentiation and boundaries 45 2.2 The sources of language policy 53 2.3 Language policy as discourse 56 2.4 Language policy as practice 61 2.5 Language policy as performance 65 2.6 Language policy as indexical positionality 68 2.7 Language policy as identification and contextualization by alternating codes 75 Chapter 3 The EP floor as a polycentric and multi-scalar setting of language policy performance 83 3.1 Introduction of the EP floor: Some facts and figures 83 3.2 Communication, resources and communities on the EP floor 87 3.3 The EP floor as a site of discourse production, circulation, and representation 90 3.4 Studies of the EP floor approached as a multicultural anthropological setting 98 3.5 The EP floor as a polycentric and multi-scalar setting for discursive and semiotic meaning-making 104 3.6 The analysis of a multi-scalar and polycentric EP speech 108 3.6.1 The data sample 108 3.6.2 Data analysis 109 3.6.3 Discussion and results 111 3.7 Conclusions 115 Chapter 4 Data and methodology 117 4.1 The ethnographic language policy research design applied to the EP floor 118 4.2 Data and methodologies of the ethnographic language policy analysis 124 4.3 The conference interpreter’s potential position in ethnographic language policy research 132 viii Babel Debates Chapter 5 Languages and their societies: The discursive construction of EUML as a societal language policy 139 5.1 The data and their contexts 140 5.2 The analysis of the speech 146 5.3 Fixing meanings of EUML on the floor: Intertextual sources and interdiscursive voices in the speech 153 5.4 Discussion: Constitutive boundaries in policy representations of language and society 160 5.5 Conclusions 168 Chapter 6 The European Parliament, its languages, and managing the deluge 171 6.1 The data and the concepts of their analysis 171 6.2 Analysis of the discourse sample 177 6.3 Results and discussion 190 6.4 Conclusions 194 Chapter 7 The grilling: EUML performed in the encounter of an EP hearing 197 7.1 The institutional setting and the participants 197 7.2 The speech event 200 7.3 A diachronic epilogue 217 7.4 Discussion and results 219 7.5 Conclusions 224 Chapter 8 Conclusions 227 8.1 Introduction 227 8.2 The three speech events 228 8.2.1 “Multilingualism an asset for Europe and a shared commitment” 228 8.2.2 “Towards more efficient and cost effective interpretation in the European Parliament” 229 8.2.3 The speech event of the Economic Dialogue 231 8.3 Mobile resources, shifting boundaries and social spaces emergent in/as Babel debates 232 References 235 Appendices 1 The English translation of transcripts in Dutch 259 2 The official English verbatim transcript of the speech analyzed in Chapter 5 261 3 The text of, and amendments to, the EP Report ‘Multilingualism: an asset for Europe and a shared commitment’ 263 4 The Plenary Speech analyzed in Chapter 6 277 5 The text of, and amendments to, the EP Report ‘Towards more efficient and cost effective interpretation in the European Parliament’ 279 Summary 291 Introduction Babel Debates The title of the present study, “Babel Debates” has a threefold meaning. ‘Debates’ un- derstood as a qualified noun, the designation “Babel debates” intends to launch the fol- lowing analyses of European Union (EU) Multilingualism (henceforth EUML) into the stream of language ideological debates opened in the programmatic collection of studies edited and introduced by Blommaert (1999) which has set the scene of a research per- spective for explorations of multilingualism. My study is meant to be a contribution to the debate. Moreover, the practices the study approaches as targets of linguistic ethnographic obser- vation and analysis are themselves Parliamentary debates. In this sense, the title identifies the data, and the defining epistemological entry point of the study by the ethnographic observation of recent public speeches and multilingual exchanges on the European Par- liament (EP) floor, a setting where the discursive (re)production of language ideologies unfolds in debates about language policy (henceforth LP) per se, as well as in multilin- gual debates about other policies. Thirdly, debates understood as a third person verb with an emphasis, the title hints at the important fact that Babel does debate. In spite of LP discourses that for the last decade or so have been diagnosing EU Multilingualism to be doomed to crisis and collapse into chaos, inherent in the recurring topos metaphor of Babel, the EP has been continuing to operate without the slightest interruption as a multilingual institution of discursive law making, albeit undergoing changes in the ideologies and practice of multilingualism. These changes, some of them declared and evident, some of them tacit and unintended, are what the following analyses embark on exploring. The subject of the study The multilingualism of the European Union is a unique phenomenon in modern history. Its objectives, functions and entities are conceptualized and organized in complex LP regulations and arrangements. LPs, on the other hand, are always about more than lan- guage use per se, and have deep seated and far reaching social, political, economic, psy- chological and ideological roots and consequences in social life.