English in the Czech Republic

This article reflects on the presence of English in the Czech Republic and its influence on the Czech language situation. The aim of the article is: (1) to synthesize the previous research on English in the Czech Republic and (2) to contribute new empirical findings from the perspective of linguists working at a national language institute, the Czech Language Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The first section discusses language policies applied to English in law, education, multinational companies, and the mass media. Attention is then also devoted to previous research on the influence of English on Czech. The empirical part of the study is based on 10 interviews with researchers from different departments of the Czech Language Institute as well as on autoethnographic observations. It is argued that the spread of English as a global language and the most common lingua franca in the Czech Republic is facilitated by the supportive attitude of Czech language users towards English and by the ideologies they associate with it. The interviewees admit that English does influence the structure of Czech, but they do not think that Czech requires any special protection. They are confident that the Czech language is able to absorb and adapt new items resulting from language contact. Similarly, they do not think that English generally threatens the status of Czech in the Czech Republic. They admit, nevertheless, that the status of Czech may be threatened in some spheres of communication, especially in business and science

Czech · Linguistics · Political science · Sociology · History · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity · Philosophy

• The sociolinguistic dynamics of Russian and English in post‐1990 Lithuania

  Open Access•Loreta Vaicekauskienė•World Englishes•2022

  Add to list