English language in the European Union in the context of brexit

Abstract

Today the EU consists of 27 member states speaking 24 official languages. Formally widespread in the EU, the policy of multilingualism is rarely applied in practice, as keeping official documents in 24 different languages is not an easy task. In recent decades, the main working languages of the EU have been English, French, and German, with a strong predominance of English as the language of intercultural communication. Brexit has drawn the attention of politicians and researchers to the future of English in the EU. There are two radically opposite views among the predictions – complete stop of the use of English in the field of official communication in the EU, the so-called Engxit, or the adoption of a new, European version, the so-called Euro-English. The article demonstrates the results of the content analysis, which was carried out on the basis of the English-language media discourse of 2016-2021. Most of the analyzed publications continue to evaluate English as the main language of the EU and the world; lingua franca; the most popular foreign language to study; the neutral language of global and intercultural communication. The characteristics of the new version of the English language (Euro-English) in media differ – starting from positive to negative, focused on errors and deviations from the standard version of the English language. However, the very existence of such a variant of the English language in the EU is almost beyond doubt for both researchers and citizens. It is likely that the UK’s withdrawal from the European Community could mark the beginning of a process of codification of the European variant of English and its further active use in official EU communication.