Language attitudes of cross-border commuters in multilingual Luxembourg — The Association Specialists
  1. Schedule
  2. SESSION 7: Language and migration
  3. Language attitudes of cross-border commuters in multilingual Luxembourg

Language attitudes of cross-border commuters in multilingual Luxembourg (19934)

Lou Pepin 1
  1. University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette / Esch-Belval, LUXEMBOURG, Luxembourg

Around 212,000 cross-border workers from France, Germany, and Belgium commute to Luxembourg daily (STATEC, 2021). The often monolingual cross-border commuters face a complex multilingual situation arising through institutional, societal, and individual multilingualism, which mainly involve Luxembourgish, German, French and English (De Bres & Franziskus, 2019; Mathä & Pulina & Ziegelmeyer, 2022; Purschke & Gilles, 2023). To discuss possible consequences of this constellation, this project addresses two research questions: First, this study aims to identify what attitudes cross-border workers hold towards multilingualism and the individual languages used in Luxembourg. Second, this research interrogates the reasons that motivate the attitudes.

Investigating language attitudes is paramount to understanding social cohesion within the taxonomy of sociolinguistics (Kircher & Zipp, 2022). Previous research in Luxembourg mainly concerned itself with language ideologies of cross-border commuters and underlines the diversity of these, ranging from monolingual nationalist ideologies to multilingual ideologies (De Bres & Franziskus, 2019; Franziskus, 2017). These lines of research mostly employed qualitative approaches and found that cross-border workers feel discriminated and excluded by Luxembourgers’ language choice and language use (De Bres & Franziskus, 2019; Franziskus, 2017). However, the perception varies depending on the country of residence (Franziskus & De Bres, 2015).

This project aims to gain insight into cross-border commuters’ perception of the sociolinguistic situation in Luxembourg. Besides, the influence of social and biographical variables will be investigated. As method, language attitudes will be measured and analysed using an online questionnaire. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted subsequently for a closer analysis of the elicited attitudes by inquiring about reasons motivating their attitudes and deconstructing discourses about languages and their speakers. The results mainly suggest strong attitudes towards Luxembourgish and multilingualism in general. Nevertheless, there is a conflict between French and Luxembourgish regarding multilingual practices as well as a social desirability bias towards Luxembourgish.

  1. De Bres, J., & Franziskus, A. (2019). Language ideologies in conflict at the workplace. In M. Evans & L. Jeffries & J. O’Driscoll. (Ed..), The Routledge Handbook of Language in Conflict. Oxon / New York: Routledge, 433-448.
  2. Franziskus, A. (2017). ‘Have You Still Not Learnt Luxembourgish?’: Negotiating Language Boundaries in a Distribution Company in Luxembourg. In J. Angouri & M. Meredith & J. Holmes. (Ed.), Negotiating Boundaries at Work: Talking and Transitions. Edinburgh University Press,178-196.
  3. Franziskus, A., & De Bres, J. (2015). Language profiles and practices of cross-border workers in Luxembourg. MIS Working Papers 2. Université du Luxembourg - Faculté des Lettres, des Sciences humaines, des Arts et des Sciences de l'Éducation, http://hdl.handle.net/10993/23620.
  4. Kircher, R., & Zipp L. (2022). An introduction to language attitudes research. In R. Kircher & L. Zipp (Ed.), Research Methods in Language Attitudes. Cambridge University Press, 1-16.
  5. Mathä, T. Y., & Pulina, G., & Ziegelmeyer, M. (2022). Bulletin BCL 2022. Band 1. https://www.bcl.lu/fr/publications/bulletins_bcl/Bulletin_BCL_2022_1/BCL_BULLETIN_1_20221.pdf.
  6. O’Rourke, B. (2022). Researching language attitudes in multilingual communities. In R. Kircher & L. Zipp (Ed.), Research Methods in Language Attitudes. Cambridge University Press, 271-281.
  7. Purschke, C., & Gilles, P. (2023). Sociolinguistics in Luxembourg. In M. Ball & R. Mesthrie & C. Meluzzi (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Sociolinguistics around the World. Routledge, 542-549.
  8. STATEC. (2021). Luxemburg in Zahlen – 2021. https://statistiques.public.lu/dam-assets/catalogue-publications/luxembourg-en-chiffres/2021/luxembourg-chiffres-21-fde.pdf.