The European Language Monitor: ELM

In the course of its activities, it became increasingly clear to EFNIL that national and European language policy concepts and measures are still lacking a satisfactory empirical basis. The available data on the present linguistic situation of the various countries are rather heterogeneous, incomplete, and in part outdated. The valuable results of some national projects and of European surveys such as Eurobarometer and Eurydice are only a partial remedy because they are limited to foreign language learning and foreign language competence. Politicians on the national and the European level, language planners, educationalists, linguists, and the general public are obviously in need of a reliable and up-to-date linguistic picture of all the member states, that is, of the European Union as a whole and, if possible, also of the associated countries. In order to create an instrument to provide such an empirical basis for national and European language policies, EFNIL has been planning as a major project the design and construction of a European Language Monitor (ELM).

What is the European Language Monitor (ELM)?
The ELM intents to provide a rich and complex empirical basis for the development and evaluation of national and European language policies. It is conceived as an online system to collect data and provide detailed up-to-date information on the linguistic situation and its development in the various member states of the European Union and possibly, also, of other European countries. As a long-term aim, ELM should provide longitudinal information on the linguistic development of Europe and its member states. The data to be collected and presented by the ELM address domains that relate directly or indirectly to linguistic status planning, acquisition planning, and corpus planning in the individual countries. The following domains and aspects are considered:

• Official national language(s) vs. dialects, autochthonous and allochthonous (indigenous) minority languages;
• Language legislation and administrative language regulations of the country and its regions including regulations for immigration and citizenship;
• Instruction in and use of national and other language(s) in primary and secondary education and in vocational training;
• Instruction in and use of national and other language(s) in tertiary education and research;
• Use of language(s) in national and regional politics, public administration, and judiciary institutions;
• Use of language(s) in mass media and cultural institutions within the country;
• Use of national language(s) in Internet communication;
• Use of national language(s) in national and international industries and commerce;
• Use of national language(s) for dubbing and/or subtitling of imported films and TV broadcasts;
• Language use in families;
• Use of national language(s) as official language(s) in other countries and/or regions;
• Instruction in and use of the national language(s) as foreign language(s) in other countries and regions;
• Use of national language(s) in international institutions;
• Official and/or publicly financed language institutions;
• Private organizations for the national and/or other language(s);
• Available language technology products such as online dictionaries, spelling and grammar checkers, monolingual and multilingual corpora.

Not all of these domains and aspects are covered in the beginning of the project. At first, the ELM will focus on those languages that are used in their respective countries and within the institutions of the EU as official languages. In a later phase, it will also consider regional and minority languages. Since the European linguistic situation is not static, but changes along political, economical, social, and cultural developments, the ELM is not conceived as a one-time survey, but as a continuous monitoring process; that is, the relevant data will have to be up-dated and analyzed in three- or five-year intervals.

For whom is the ELM?
Target groups of the ELM are primarily policy makers at the national and the European level. ELM should also be of use for linguists, sociologists, publishers, journalists, and other persons who are more or less involved or interested in language development and language policy. Although a core of data types will have to be kept constant to allow comparisons and the description of changes some questions of the repeated surveys may have to be adapted to the changing needs of the users of the ELM after the exploratory phase,.

Feasibility study
In 2004 EFNIL has already conducted a one-year feasibility study to explore the possibility of language monitoring on a European scale. The countries that were covered by that limited study were France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden, that is, five dominantly monolingual countries. A pilot monitor was successfully developed and can be viewed at www.europeanlanguagemonitor.org (user name: efnil, password: efnil). As a result of recent developments in the participating countries, part of the information given by the pilot monitor is outdated, which is one of the arguments for a monitoring system that will have to be updated at short intervals.

Relation to Eurobarometer or Eurydice
As mentioned, the ELM is not intended as a replacement for other European information services such as the Eurobarometer or Eurydice. While these surveys concentrate on (foreign) language learning, the ELM will provide detailed information on the use of the various languages in essential national and transnational domains at a given time and on how language use in these domains changes in the course of time. The ELM group of EFNIL will make contacts with these surveys to agree on a clear division of labour. Scope and details of the ELM should be comparable to those of the European Social Survey (ESS).
The member institutions of EFNIL are willing and prepared to cooperate in the sociolinguistic development of ELM and the collection of the data on the linguistic situation of their individual countries. However, the considerable costs of coordination, technical development, and permanent operation of the ELM cannot be financed from the limited budgets of the participating language planning and research institutions. Sufficient funding by the European Union is needed and will be applied for.

Questionnaire 2009
In November 2007 the General Assembly of EFNIL constituted a committee to conceive a questionnaire and set up the ELM. In august 2009 this so called ELM group send the first questionnaire concerning the European Language Monitor to the EFNIL members. Since the 1st of October the questionnaire is online. The members of EFNIL are asked to fill in as many answers as possible before the end of October.  The data will be collected and handled by the Valsts valodas komisja in Latvia, the organization that is represented by our member Ina Druviete.

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The ELM group will give a first impression of the results at the next conference in November. On that occasion it will also explain how it will proceed. Anyhow the group aims to have collected all the answers at the end of 2009 and to produce a report of the results at the annual conference in 2010.

The questionnaire: http://www.efnil.org/projects/elm/elm-questionnaire-1

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Composition of the ELM group

Ina Druviete/Janis Valdmanis (Latvia)
Sabine Kirchmeier-Anderson (Danmark)
Birgitta Lindgren  (Sweden)
Cecilia Robustelli (Italy)
Gerhard Stickel (Germany)

Coordination: Ellen Fernhout (Nederlandse Taalunie:Belgium/Netherlands)

efernhout@taalunie.org