Reconstructing over 20 years of language practice, management and ideology at a multinational corporation in Brussels: A scaled socio-historical approach to language policy

• Autores: Fien De Malsche, Mieke Vandenbroucke
• Localización: Language policy, ISSN 1568-4555, Vol. 21, Nº. 2, 2022, págs. 235-259
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • 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.