Who owns the capital of English in Europe?

Transnational linguistic capital: Explaining English proficiency in 27 European countries

1. 1. doi: 10.1177/0268580913519461International Sociology January 2014 vol. 29 no. 1 56-74
2. Jürgen Gerhards         Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

1. Jürgen Gerhards, Institute of Sociology, Freie Universität Berlin, Garystraße 55, Berlin, 14195, Germany. Email: j.gerhards@fu-berlin.de

Abstract

Foreign language proficiency in general and proficiency in the world’s most widely spoken language, English, are central resources to participate in the globalisation process. Drawing on a survey conducted in 27 European countries the article attempts to explain the huge differences in English proficiency that exist between and within countries. The author presents a general explanatory model for foreign language proficiency, creates hypotheses from this model and tests them empirically by using multilevel techniques. The findings show that the prevalence of a respondent’s native language, the linguistic difference between one’s mother tongue and English, and age affect language acquisition negatively, whereas a country’s level of education has a positive influence. Using Bourdieu’s theory of social class, the author shows that besides other factors a respondent’s social class position and the level of education are important micro-level factors that help to increase a person’s transnational linguistic capital.

• Europe
   
• globalisation
   
• linguistic capital
   
• multilingualism
 
• multilevel analysis
  
• Pierre Bourdieu
   
• transnationalisation

The statement that the study follows Bourdieu's theoretical framework makes it especially appealing. The variables established to determine the transnational linguistic capital cover an impressively broad area that is also very relevant. At a much more specific level, both the concept of linguistic distance and on the report of the study carried out by Esser in 2006 that proves that self-evaluation can be used as an objective measure of language competence are very interesting. I only regret that the empirical results are so succint after such a detailed presentation of all the variables analysed.

However, I found some points I could not agree with, both from a theoretical and from a more applied point of view. To start with and in relationship to Bourdieu's theory, I was concerned with the concept of motivation. This concept comes from the field of applied linguistics, where it has been extensively used, but its use is not well grounded in the social sciences. The view that motivation can be explained by the respondent's social class together with their level of education is at least incomplete, and two theoretical frameworks are mixed thus producing a somehow blurred picture. When confronted with this question in my research, I decided to take motivation as particular habituses of the respondents, which led me to a more satisfactory approach by considering them either instrumental or integrative/expressive (thus connecting Gardner and Lambert's to Bernstein's approaches). Of course note 5 in your article refers to the fact that the dataset used did not allow for a direct measurement of motivation. I feel it would have been better not to include this concept into the theoretical model and to explore what the concept of habitus could bring to the analysis.

In relation to the theoretical framework and as someone who started off from a sociolinguistic approach, I feel that, even though the analysis one finds in linguistics may be more fine-grained in linguistic terms, it limits itself to individual differences, as you also acknowledge. If we want to deal with the role of language(s) in society, the sociological approach is the appropriate one, although it is true that "explaining foreign language acquisition by natives... is something which social scientists have not really paid attention to".

Still at the theoretical level, I was surprised by your statement: "As is well known, Bourdieu distinguishes three classes that differ from each other due to the amount of capital (the upper class, the middle class and the lower class)". Although Bourdieu does refer to three classes (on pages 16 or 57 in Distinction, for example), I do not think this is what makes him well known, but stating that classes do not exist by themselves in the abstract; what exists is a three dimensional social espace where people are placed according to the type and volume of capitals they own and their changes over time. In any case, the data used in the analysis do not allow for a development of the proposed classification.

As for the assumptions expressed in the paragraph that follows (page 64), I feel some reference should have been made to the table from Eurobarometer 63.4 that classifies the "Respondents able to participate in a conversation in another language than their mother tongue" according to their education and occupation among other variables (page 5 from Eurobarometer 63.4 Special Note). This table gives an empirical basis to the assumptions made.

Moving on to the list of variables considered to explain transnational linguistic capital, I feel they are not all equally justified. I am in particular concerned with the "ex-socialist country" variable that divides the 27 European countries along one single axis, which is only relevant to some of them. Coming from a Southern European country, I was forced to include some reflections in my analysis if only to pay attention to the results reached by this group of countries in all Eurobarometers (page 107 ff in my thesis), since it was not possible to find any single variable that would explain why Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and Greece have always had the poorest results as far as English competence is concerned, both well before 1989 and until today. If we take for example the proficiency shown on Eurobarometer 63.4 (Table 1 from your article) and we only consider countries with a percentage lower than 50%, there appear two distinctively different groups: one formed by all former socialist countries (except Slovenia) and the other one formed by the group of countries I have just mentioned. I therefore feel that the variable chosen in the article only gives part of the explanation, although, as I mentioned, I am aware there is no other single variable (except for their geographical situation, that may hardly be explanatory by itself) that would explain why this other group of countries also show a low competence in English.

In connection with this group of countries, in particular Spain, it might be worth taking into account the fact that it is commonly assumed no one actually learns English within the formal educational institutions. If someone wants to really learn the language, they are going to find other more effective ways: private tuition, extracurricular classes, staying in an Anglophone country, etc. This might change the approach to the role of the institutionalised cultural capital as considered in your study.

In the same vein, it is also commonly assumed in Spain to that our elites do not possess a high transnational linguistic capital, to the point that our politicians' poor knowledge of foreign languages has become a common joke. To what extent politicians belong to the cultural elites remains to be seen.