The Future of English after Brexit in European Union

DOI

10.2991/conaplin-18.2019.220How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Brexit; English as a lingua franca; European Union; Euro-English; future English in EU; language policy

Abstract

Britain decided to leave the European Union based on the results of a referendum on June 23, 2016, which is better known as Brexit (Britain Exit). The withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union raises the issue of the English status in the European Union. The issue is to discontinue the use of the English language within the European Union. This may be problematic for several European countries in which English is a more broadly spoken language than French and German and also is the working language in its institutions. This paper discusses the consequences of Britain's exit from the European Union, and whether it will change the position of English as the dominant language of the European Union. To address this issue, a comprehensive literature review was conducted. A number of relevant articles were collected and sorted into some categories: language policy in the European Union, English as a lingua franca, and English before and after Brexit in the European Union. The results show that English will continue to be the European lingua franca, people in Europe will likely choose English as their preferred L2 in purpose to have communication in many aspects, and English will increasingly be promoted as the first foreign language in European schools. It is interesting to note that Brexit will not completely destroy the status of English the EU.

Copyright

© 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Melvina Melvina
PY  - 2019/06
DA  - 2019/06
TI  - The Future of English after Brexit in European Union
BT  - Proceedings of the Eleventh Conference on Applied Linguistics (CONAPLIN 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 25
EP  - 29
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/conaplin-18.2019.220
DO  - 10.2991/conaplin-18.2019.220
ID  - Melvina2019/06
ER  -