Germany has embraced the “craze for English” relatively readily (Wächter and Maiworm 2014), increasing the use of English in education in all forms: as a foreign language, as medium of instruction, and in content and language integrated learning: a phenomenon described as Englishization. However, much controversy remains over the pace, manner and degree with which English is taught in Germany. This article investigates how the topic of Englishization in education – in the broadest sense – and in all sectors (from primary to tertiary sector) is discussed in printed German media. Using the database Nexis, a dataset comprised of 156 German language news articles on the controversies around English in the German education system was established. The dataset includes news outlets with national as well as regional coverage, and spans the period from 1 February 2000 to 23 March 2017. Corpus linguistics methods (frequencies, concordances) and thematic discourse analysis were used to analyse the body of the texts. The results were compared across educational sectors covered, and the level of geographical coverage of the newspaper/ source (regional, federal). The discussion considers how debates around Englishization in education vary depending on the education sector. Results are interpreted within the context of a) contested jurisdictions pertaining to language education in Germany (especially sovereignty of the 16 Bundesländer to determine their education policy, i.e. Kulturhoheit) b) tensions between institutional (school, university), individual (staff, students), national and international agendas (e.g. Bologna, the European aim of mother tongue+2 language skills) c) tensions between attitudes of protectionism (bordering on reminiscence) towards the German language on the one hand, and pragmatism and internationalism on the other.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)