Abstract
Research that considers the relevant temporal, spatial, and societal contexts of a corporate language policy remains scarce to date within the field of sociolinguistics. In contrast to approaches that take companies as static entities, this article focuses on a Belgian multinational corporation over the course of over 20 years and contextualizes the perceived changes and developments within the company’s socio-historical context, corporate structural changes and complex functioning across regional, national, and international spatiotemporal scales. On the basis of archival data, in-depth interviews with corporate managers, and screenshots of the company website over time, our case study uncovers the complexities of linguistically navigating different scalar levels of embeddedness in a globalized marketplace, taking into account both pride- and profit-based language ideological convictions. The discursive approach we adopt provides detailed insight into the development of corporate language practice, management and ideology, and we argue that companies function as multiscalar entities and should therefore be researched as such.
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Data availability
Data will not be shared due to ethical considerations.
Notes
Past versions of websites were accessed via The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
For the sake of the privacy of the participants and in line with both the company’s wishes and the ethical clearance obtained for this study, their specific roles at the company are not disclosed. However, all of them operate at a managerial level within FinCorp or FinCorp Brussels overseeing the departments that play a deciding role in the language practices of the company.
Translated from Dutch original: “Je moet niet vergeten, FinCorp is Vlaams he, is niet Belgisch he, dat is Vlaams. Dus ook vanuit de achterliggende aandeelhouderstructuren in het verleden was dat uitgesproken Vlaams. En vandaar is dat volgens mij te kaderen. Dat is enerzijds plotseling die confrontatie van ‘oei, allez, wij hebben altijd hier in het Nederlands gewerkt en nu moeten wij ook in het Engels beginnen? Maar daar heb ik geen goesting voor hoor, dat ga ik niet doen, ik ken dat ook niet, en oh, wat moet ik- dat die een keer Nederlands leren.’ Dat is de eerste reactie. (…) Twee, ‘ik wou carrière maken, maar mijn collega naast mij wou ook diezelfde carrière maken, die kent Engels en ik niet, dus ik heb hier mogelijk een nadeel.’”.
Translated from Dutch original: “Eén, dat is een compromis belge. Daarmee moet je niet kiezen voor FinCorp of FinCorp Wallonië, wat in Brussel bijzonder gevoelig ligt. Dus en FinCorp Brussels geeft eigenlijk ook wel een soort, ja, gevoel over Brussel weer, want Brussel is een internationale stad, Brussel is een metropool, Brussel is de hoofdstad van Europa. Dus op zich waren dat eigenlijk twee elementen die meegespeeld hebben: niet moeten kiezen en kleur bekennen op vlak van taal en cultuur, en anderzijds de internationale context van Brussel onderstrepen.”.
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Acknowledgements
We wish to thank prof. Els Tobback, prof. Dieter Vermandere and prof. Geert Jacobs for their invaluable advice and feedback on earlier drafts of this article. We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers as well as the editors, Kate Menken and Miguel Pérez-Milans, for their insightful comments. Any errors remain our own.
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This study was funded by Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds (grant number 542300005).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Data collection and analysis were performed by Fien De Malsche. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Fien De Malsche and all authors commented on and edited previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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De Malsche, F., Vandenbroucke, M. Reconstructing over 20 years of language practice, management and ideology at a multinational corporation in Brussels: A scaled socio-historical approach to language policy. Lang Policy 21, 235–259 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-021-09609-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-021-09609-w