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## G LOBALISATION , ATTITUDES TOWARDS E NGLISH AND PARTY -POLITICAL AFFILIATION -T HE CASE OF D ENMARK

Jacob Thøgersen University of Copenhagen jthoegersen@hum.ku.dk

Bent Preisler Roskilde University

## Abstract

In this paper, we explore the possibility that attitudes toward the use of English in Denmark vary according to party-political affiliation, and that this in turn can help us understand the meanings and values that are associated with English in Denmark today. Traditionally, attitudes towards English have been thought of in terms of a unidimensional  axis  in  which  English  as  opportunity  is  seen  in  opposition  to English as threat. Our analysis, which is based on a representative questionnaire survey (n ≈ 850), shows that these two conceptualisations do not in fact form a unidimensional scale, but a two-dimensional space. We analyse the respondents' declared political affiliation in relation to their positioning in this space, and find that attitudes towards English should be thought of in terms of two axes, 'national protectionism' as one and 'support for market economy' as the other.

Keywords: Language attitudes, Language policy, English in Denmark, Political compass, Globalisation, Survey data, Factor analysis, General Linear models.

## 1. Introduction

Since the end of the Second World War, English has enjoyed a special status among foreign languages in Denmark. As an example, we can look at the curricula for primary schools. Already in 1960, the Teaching Guide for Primary Schools [ Undervisningsvejledning for Folkeskolen ]  suggests that 'It will probably be appropriate, in accordance with previous practice, to choose English as the compulsory foreign language and German as the second  foreign  language'  (Undervisningsministeriet  [The  Ministry  of

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

Education]  1960:189,  authors'  translation).  From  2014,  the  teaching  of English was introduced as early as the 1 st grade. 1

Since the end of the Cold War, the growing internationalisation of Danish society - for example in the media landscape - has allowed Danes to follow news from all over the world (often in English). In addition, the increased integration of the European Union (EU) has led to greater worker and  student  mobility.  For  example,  it  is  no  longer  uncommon  in  major cities  for  service  staff  in  shops  and  cafés  to  speak  English  instead  of Danish.  Finally,  the  development  of  the  internet  and  related  (mobile) technologies  has  virtually  revolutionised  the  way  media  is  consumed  again often in English (see Lønsmann, Mortensen & Thøgersen 2022 for further discussion).

English is thus not just a foreign language used in conversations with native speakers, or used as a lingua franca when Danish speakers speak to non-Danish speakers; English also plays an important role in the everyday lives of Danes in Denmark. Related to the influence of English on the life of Danes, the influence from English on the Danish language (as opposed to the influence on Danish society) has been investigated in a number of studies. The projects Modern Import Words in the Languages of the Nordic Region [ Moderne Importord i Språka i Norden ] (Selback & Sandøy 2007) and  Modern  Import  Words  in  Danish  [ Moderne  Importord  i  Dansk ] (Heidemann Andersen & Jarvad 2018) have shown that about 2% of the words  in  Danish  newspapers  are  English  borrowings;  and  in  Danishlanguage TV the figure is somewhat higher (Heidemann Andersen 2020). If  you  go  for  a  walk  in  a  Danish  city,  you  will  likely  notice  that  the proportion  of  English  texts  and  names  visible  in  public  space  can  be significantly higher still (Heidemann Andersen & Sandst 2022). This has led some researchers to suggest that we should no longer perceive English as  a  foreign  language in Denmark, but rather as a second language that Danes also use in their dealings with each other (see e.g. Gottlieb 2020, Lønsmann,  Mortensen  &  Thøgersen  2022).  As  the  Teaching  Guide  for English  [ Faghæfte  Engelsk ]  (Børne-  og  Undervisningsministeriet  [The Ministry of Children and Education] 2019) puts it:

English is a global language, spoken by many people around the world as their first language and used as a second language or lingua franca

1 https://www.ft.dk/samling/20121/almdel/BUU/bilag/246/1257857/index.htm.

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

by  even  more.  The  use  of  English  is  also  widespread  in  Denmark. English is also to a large extent the common digital language used in social media, games and films. (Børne- og Undervisningsministeriet [Ministry of Children and Education] 2019:37, authors' translation)

It  is  one  thing  to  observe  how  much  English  is  used  in  Denmark.  It  is another to inquire into the Danes' 2 attitudes to English in their everyday lives, or, to put it another way, what values they attach to the presence of English in their everyday lives.

In  the  Nordic 3 countries,  when  dealing  with  attitudes  towards  the presence of English in society, the influence of the English language has often  been  conceptualised  either  as  'a  threat'  or  as  'an  opportunity', borrowing from the title of Höglin (2002): 'Engelska språket som hot och tillgång i Norden' [ The English Language as Threat and Opportunity in the  Nordic  Region ].  On  the  one  hand  English  is  seen  as  a threat to  the Nordic languages and societies. It is feared that the process of 'functional elaboration'  (to  use  Haugen's  1966  term)  characteristic  of  national languages will be impaired, preventing the Nordic languages from being 'complete,  culture-defining  languages'  [ komplette  og  samfundsbærende sprog ] (Kulturministeriet [Ministry of Culture] 2003); that this may lead to a  loss  of  cultural  distinctiveness  and  cultural  heritage;  and  that  Nordic societies will to some extent submit to the cultural imperialism of Englishspeaking societies, especially the USA (Haberland et al. 1991).

On  the  other  hand,  English  is  seen  as  an opportunity for  Nordic societies and populations. People in the Nordic countries by tradition have had  relatively  high  levels  of  proficiency  in  English,  considering  that English has no official second-language status (Peterson 2022). This is seen as a competitive advantage in trade with the rest of the world. By the same token, proficiency in English represents an expansion of educational and career opportunities for the individual. Because their English competencies

2 A note of terminology: We use 'Danes' here to refer to people residing in Denmark irrespective of their ethnicity, place of birth or citizenship status.

3 Another note of terminology: Our study focusses on Denmark and Danes. Results from other Nordic/Scandinavian societies are used only as background. For our purposes, the distinction between Scandinavia (i.e. Norway, Sweden, Denmark) vs. Norden (those three plus (at least) Iceland and Finland) is not important so we use the two interchangeably. We will not go into the reasons why (for political, historical or linguistic reasons) it may be beneficial to distinguish between the two. For a discussion, see Vikør (2004), Östman & Thøgersen (2010).

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

are  construed  as  relatively  high,  residents  in  the  Nordic  countries  are perceived  to  have  good  opportunities  for  international  education  and training  or  for  starting  an  international  career.  In  the  words  of  Peterson (2022:1): 'In the Nordic countries, widespread proficiency in English is positioned  as  a  positive  and  even  critical  component  of  overall  global competitiveness and competence'.

Part of the research into attitudes towards English in Denmark has involved determining which groups were relatively more sceptical of the influence of English (i.e. more likely to see English as 'a threat') and which groups were more positive (more likely to see English as 'an opportunity') (see Preisler 1999, Kristiansen & Vikør 2006, Thøgersen & Preisler 2023). Findings  have  shown  consistently  that  the  young,  the  highly  educated, people in employment and males are relatively more positive; while the elderly, the less educated, the unemployed, retirees and females are more sceptical.  Kristiansen  (2006a)  interprets  these  differences  in  terms  of perceived positions of strength vs. weakness in a rapidly changing society. The young, affluent, highly educated males who are also the most confident speakers of English view English as a further strengthening of their social position; the older, less well-off, retirees who are less confindent speakers of English view English as an intrusion and a further threat to their already vulnerable  position.  To  Kristiansen  (2006a:114)  this  is  'entirely  in  line with our (common) expectations, and hence there is no reason to use space on painstakingly developing the obvious explanations' (authors' translation).  Similar  results  have  been  found  in  other  Nordic  countries. Leppänen et al. (2011) found that the 'English have-nots' (who 'do not know any English; they do not use it and as far as they are concerned they do not need it. Hence, English means very little to them') 'consist of the older respondents […], often living in the countryside […] with a low level of  education  […]  and  doing  mainly  manual  labour'  (Leppänen  et  al. 2011:165).  The  'English  have-it-alls',  conversely,  are  younger,  urban, mostly university-educated and mostly managers and experts.

In  this  study,  we  also  look  at  English  as  both  'a  threat'  and  an 'opportunity'. But instead of seeing these two understandings of English usage as opposites on a one-dimensional scale, we shall argue for seeing them as a two-dimensional space (more on the reasons for this below). And rather than once again seeking to establish which groups are more Englishpositive and English-negative, we ask how 'English as threat' and 'English as  opportunity'  are  related  to  party-political  affiliation.  To  someone familiar with the Danish political landscape and the policies of the (many) different  parties,  we  believe  that  this  gives  us  a  good  illustration  of  the indexical 'meaning' 4 of English to Danes today. For readers not familiar with the Danish political parties, we provide a primer below.

In  addition  to  examining the perception of 'English as threat' and 'English as opportunity', we also ask about respondents' attitudes towards related topics such as the influence of 'English as a corporate language' and as a 'language of instruction', respondents' attitudes towards financial support for 'Danish-language cultural products', towards 'English language teaching in schools' and their 'norms for English competences' that is,  the level of English competencies that should be expected of (other) Danes.

The overall research question for the article is thus: What values and meanings do the presence of the English language in Denmark hold for Danes today? To address this, a quantitative method is employed using statistical analyses of data representative of the Danish (adult) population, deriving from a large-scale questionnaire survey.

## 2. Methodology

In  the  spring  of  2022,  in  collaboration  with  Statistics  Denmark,  a questionnaire  on  English  in  Denmark  was  distributed  to  approximately 2000 randomly selected Danish citizens. The questionnaire as well as the cover letter were written in Danish, and hence respondents who completed the  questionnaire  will  have  had  at  least  some  receptive  competence  in Danish. Approx. 5% of respondents indicated a home language different from Danish, and a few responses were written in English, suggesting that some  respondents  preferred  writing  in  English  rather  than  in  Danish. Notwithstanding,  the  majority  of  respondents  will  have  been  native speakers of Danish.

4 C.S. Peirce introduced the distinction between signs as index , icon and symbol in which the index has meaning by way of causal connection (e.g. smoke indexes fire) and symbol has meaning by convention (the letters spelling out 'f-i-r-e' symbolize the phenomenon fire). When we speak of index and indexical meaning here, we use the words in the sense introduced by Silverstein (2003) who speaks of 'orders of indexicality'. In this sense indexes can point to indexes which are themselves indexes to the n-th order. For example, speaking English may index the speaker's nationality; their nationality may again index their economic status and values (they may be e.g. relatively affluent 'firstworlders' from a capitalist society, etc.). In other contexts, speaking English may index a particular educational background or career, which may again index their status and values, and so forth. When we speak of 'index' and 'indexical meaning' it should be taken in this looser 'post-Peircian' sense, not in a strictly Peircian sense.

## 2.1. Respondents

Participants  were  selected  via  the  'CPR  register'  (the  Central  Citizen Registry), and the invitation to participate in the survey was sent to the participants'  electronic  mail  boxes  for  mail  from  the  authorities, eBoks . Approximately 800 respondents filled in the questionnaire online. In order to increase participation and especially to minimise non-response bias (i.e. the effect of certain groups being more likely than others to choose not to respond to a circulated questionnaire), some of the selected respondents were also contacted by telephone, after which they chose either to respond online  or  to  answer  the  questions  by  telephone.  This  led  to  a  total  of approximately 850 (more or less) completed questionnaires. Despite the efforts to minimise non-response bias, this was not always possible. The actual  respondents  are  older  than  the  national  average,  and  so  there  are more pensioners than might have been expected. In the analyses below, this probably does not matter much because we are not trying to generalise distributions in the sample to distributions in society as a whole. We are not  trying  to  determine,  for  example,  what  proportion  of  the  Danish population is 'English positive' or 'English negative' (an extrapolation that would  be  very  sensitive  to  variations  in  the  representativeness  of  the sample).  Instead,  we  are  analysing  how  political  beliefs  may  influence attitudes  towards  the  use  of  English  in  Denmark.  This  kind  of  question makes it less critical  if  the  relative  size  of  a  social  group  exceeds  or  is slightly smaller than in the population as a whole.

## 2.2. Questions

The  questions  which  form  the  dependent  variables  in  this  study  are organised into six thematic blocks:

- 'English as threat'
- 'English as opportunity'
- Areas of practice (or 'domains') in which English is used
- Support for Danish-language cultural product

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

- English in school
- Norms of English competence

These themes are selected because they represent various aspects of the debate about English presented above. This was a debate which was highly active in the 1990s and 2000s, and to some extent, the echoes of which are still  felt  today  (see  e.g.  Lønsmann,  Mortensen  &  Thøgersen  2022, Mortensen & Haberland 2021). The position of English in Danish society as  well  as  the  ideologies  surrounding  English  which  are  entwined  in debates  over  'internationalisation'  and  'globalisation'  are  still  present (Mortensen forthc.). The themes 'English as threat' and 'as opportunity' are the typical way English has been discussed, and they are themes which are couched in debates about social justice (i.e. positions of strength and weakness) and economy. The theme 'areas of practice' resonates with the fear  of  'domain  loss'  which  was  hotly  debated  in  the  early  2000s  and warned against by for example Haberland et al. (1991) as mentioned above. 'Support  for  Danish-language  cultural  products'  marks  the  opposite,  a deliberately protectionist culture policy in which market forces are being reigned in. The theme 'English in school' highlights the relative position of Danish and English in formal training, and in an indirect way the status of English as a de facto second language in Denmark. The same can be said to be the theme of 'norms of English competence' which asks respondents what  level  of  English  competence  should  be  demanded  of  people  in Denmark. The questions range from the very general and quite abstract (e.g. 'English is a threat to Danish culture') to the more concrete (e.g. on the number of teaching hours allocated to English in relation to Danish).

It is important to bear in mind that all questions are ideological or political  questions  posed  in  the  abstract.  The  study  is  in  that  sense  an opinion poll. No attempt is made to investigate how respondents would actually act in a real-life situation; also no attempt is made to investigate so-called subconscious attitudes with indirect measures (see e.g. Kristiansen 2006b, Thøgersen & Kristiansen 2006). The respondents must have  been  aware  that  they  were  expressing  attitudes  and  opinions,  and hence  'social  desirability  bias'  must  be  taken  into  account.  That  is, respondents  are  affected  by  their  beliefs  about  what  is  a  desirable  (or 'politically correct') response. In this case, we posit that social desirability bias is not a problem. Whether respondents give a certain answer because

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

they truly, deeply believe it to be the case, or because they are reproducing ideological standpoints they perceive to be socially desirable, they are still expressing  certain  ideologies  that  are  maintained  by  different  opposing groups and interests in society.

Each theme is examined using a block of 2-4 questions. The internal consistency  between  questions  in  each  block  and  between  questions  in related  blocks  is  examined  using  Factor  Analysis  and  reliability  tests (Cronbach's alpha ).  The reasoning is that responses to a single question are highly sensitive to the specific wording  of a question.  Some respondents may misinterpret terminology or have strong responses to for example a modal like 'should' or 'must'. If, however, a statistical analysis of responses to several questions shows correlations between responses, that is, a high level of agreement on one question correlates with a high (or for  that  matter  low)  level  of  agreement  on  other  questions  which  are thematically related, there is a high likelihood that respondents are in fact reacting  to  the  same  underlying,  latent,  construct.  This  is  what  is  in psychometrics referred to as 'construct validation', and it is indicated by: 'evidence that different indicators of theoretically similar or overlapping constructs are strongly interrelated; for example, symptoms purported to be manifestations of a single mental disorder load on the same factor' (Brown 2015:2).  According  to  Brown  (2015:1):  'CFA  [Confirmatory  Factor Analysis] is almost always used during the process of scale development to examine the latent structure of a test instrument (e.g. a questionnaire)', and this is also the practice we follow here. A further benefit of Factor Analysis  is  that  it  converts  a  number  of  ordinal-level  scales  (e.g.  four questions with four levels each) into one more fine-grained ratio scale. The resulting scale is not a true ratio scale (there are still only so many discrete levels on  the scale), but  it  is  an  approximation,  and  we  use  this approximation to conduct parametric statistical analyses (e.g. ANOVA and T-tests).

The question formulations are highly inspired by, and in some cases repeat, the questions asked by Preisler in an earlier study (Preisler 1999). The  purpose  of  this  approach  was  to  facilitate  a  longitudinal  study  of Danes' attitudes to English, which has been published elsewhere (Thøgersen  &  Preisler  2023).  In  the  present  study,  however,  we  look exclusively at the 2022 survey and in particular at the relationship between attitudes  and  party-political  standpoint  -  something  that  was  not  asked

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

about  in  Preisler's  original  survey.  In  the  following,  we  describe  the question blocks one by one.

## 2.2.1. 'English as threat' and 'English as opportunity'

The perception of 'English as threat' and as 'opportunity' was investigated by means of a total of six questions which had the following introduction in common: 'To which extent do you agree that the presence of the English language in everyday life...'. Answers were given on a 4-level Likert-type scale  with  the  labels  'strongly  agree',  'somewhat  agree',  'somewhat disagree' and 'strongly disagree'.

- 'threatens the Danish language?'
- 'threatens Danish culture?'
- 'threatens other foreign languages in Denmark?'
- 'is a practical consequence of greater interaction with the rest of the world?'
- 'makes Danes more competitive internationally?'
- 'broadens the cultural horizon of Danes?'

Here as in other questions, we tried to specify that the questions regarded 'the English language' as opposed to 'English loanwords in Danish'. There were  in  fact  no  questions  at  all  in  the  questionnaire  which  focused  on English words in Danish (as opposed to e.g. Kristiansen & Vikør 2006, Heidemann Andersen & Jarvad 2018). From the free-text responses we received to other questions in the questionnaire, this seems to have been understood  by  the  respondents.  Still, we  cannot  entirely  reject the possibility  that  some  respondents  have  at  some  point  had  English loanwords in mind.

A Factor Analysis (see Table 1) shows that the six questions do not form  a  one-dimensional  scale  with  'English-positive'  at  one  end  and 'English-negative'  at  the  other.  In  other  words,  knowing  what  a  person answers to the 'English as threat' questions, does not allow us to predict what she will answer to the 'English as opportunity' questions. This lack of  a  straightforward  relationship  is  also  evident  in  the  analysis  of  the correlation  between  the  two  dimensions.  There  is  only  a  very  weak negative correlation (-.081) between the Factor made up of the first three questions and the Factor made up of the last three questions, despite the fact that the Factor Analysis was carried out using a rotation method (Direct Oblimin) which does not limit the correlation between factors.

Table 1: Factor Analysis of 'threat' and 'opportunity' questions .

|                                                                                       | Factor     | Factor          |
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|------------|-----------------|
|                                                                                       | 1 'Threat' | 2 'Opportunity' |
| Threatens the Danish language                                                         | .879       | -.047           |
| Threatens Danish culture                                                              | .856       | -.108           |
| Threatens other foreign languages in Denmark                                          | .740       | .112            |
| Is a practical consequence of greater interaction with the rest of the world          | .183       | .754            |
| Makes Danes more competitive internationally                                          | -.075      | .840            |
| Broadens the cultural horizons of Danes                                               | -.134      | .738            |
| Cronbach's alpha                                                                      | .772       | .666            |
| Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Oblimin with Kaiser |            |                 |
| Normalisation.                                                                        |            |                 |

Based on these results, we constructed two new scales, 'English as threat' and 'English as opportunity', which are the Factor scores for each of the two Factors for each respondent (we used SPSS version 28's 'Regressions' method). The Factor scores can be thought of as a weighted average of the three questions included in the Factor, that is, an average that takes into account that some questions are closer to describing the underlying attitude than other questions. The Factor scores are constructed so that the average for the whole population always equals 0. For an introduction to Factor Analysis, see Brown (2015); for a hands-on guide to SPSS' implementation of Factor Analysis, see Field (2013, chapter 17). Cronbach's alpha reported in  the  bottom  row  is  a  measure  of  the  reliability  of  the  resultant  scale. Cronbach introduced the measure in 1951, and there has been and is still intense debate about the relevance of the measure and the appropriate cutoff point. A rule-of-thumb reported for example in Field (2013:709f.), is that an alpha of .7 to .8 is an acceptable value.

## 2.2.2. 'Domains'

The  concept  of  'domain'  is  an  often  used  (see  e.g.  Jarvad  2001, Kulturministeriet [Ministry of Culture] 2003) and often criticised (see e.g. Preisler 2005, 2009, Haberland 2005, 2019) concept in the exploration of the  influence  of  English  in  the  Nordic  countries.  The  domain  concept entails that one should not see English loanwords in the Nordic languages

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

as a threat to those languages. What should be considered a threat is rather the possibility that certain social and communicative 'domains' could be more or less 'taken over' by English. This has been called 'domain loss'. In particular, the 'domain of business' and the 'domain of science' have been referred to as such 'vulnerable' domains under threat from English (Jarvad 2001, Kulturministeriet [Ministry of Culture] 2003:10-11).

The  critics  of  this  view  point  out  that  'domain'  is  used  as  an undefined, subjective and generalising social category, which is therefore often misleading (see Preisler 2005, 2009, Haberland 2005, 2019). Both 'scientific  language'  and  'business  language'  refer  to  a  multiplicity  of different practices within  each  'domain'.  Each  practice  is  distinctively defined,  for  example,  by  its  values,  goals,  activities,  social  hierarchies, recipient  groups,  communication  patterns,  and language  use ,  and  when several pratices combine to complement each other within the same social community or structure, for example, a university, a hospital or a business corporation, this enables us to delimit and describe such a community in concrete and objective terms, as an area of practice. The use of English in for example science or business has in most cases either a lingua franca function  (i.e.  English  allows  communication  between  colleagues  who would otherwise not be able to communicate) or English functions as a symbol of identity and value (e.g. in marketing or in self-presentation). There are very few 'domains' in Denmark which in themselves, by law or convention, dictate the use of English. In fact there are few domains where language is dictated at all; the court of law being one case in which the use of Danish is regulated by law (Karrebæk & Kirilova 2021). When the use of English is functionally and/or individually conditioned, a personal and pragmatic  choice,  it  makes  little  sense  to  talk  about  Danish  'losing domains' to English. This is also to say that when we argue that English has become a 'second language' in Denmark, it has nothing to do with the concept of 'domain loss' (i.e. that Danish should have 'lost domains' to English). Put bluntly, a language does not possess domains; language users choose a  language  for  the  task  at  hand  depending  primarily  on  the interlocutors they are addressing. To quote Preisler (2010:111): ''domain' and  'domain  loss'  are  pseudo  terms  […].  They  have  their  root  in  a metaphorical conflation of language and nation and a false perception of linguistic sovereignty which can be violated' (authors' translation).

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

Still, in spite of our critique of the 'domain' concept, we have opted to use the word 'domain' because 'domain' - as opposed to for example 'area of practice' - is a well-established informal term that most people can relate to.

In  this  study,  in  addition  to  (the  language  of)  'business'  and  (the language of) 'science', we include a third example of a 'domain', that is, (the language of) 'instruction in primary school'. The topic of 'domain' was operationalised using three questions, one for each of the mentioned 'domains':

-  'In  some  Danish  companies,  English  has  become  the  working language. What is your opinion on this?'

- 'In some Danish higher education programmes, English has become the language of instruction. What is your opinion on this?'

- 'It has been proposed that pupils in lower secondary school should be taught in English, as the language of instruction, in subjects other than English, such as geography. What is your opinion on this?'

There  is  a  high  degree  of  correlation  between  the  answers  to  the  three questions (Cronbach's alpha = .771). Again, we used the Factor score as a measure of the individual respondent's attitude to the domain questions.

## 2.2.3. Support for Danish-language cultural products

As described above, the perception of 'English as threat' is closely related to  a  perception  of  Danish  culture  being  threatened  by  English-language culture  and  cultural  products.  This  perceived  threat  is  largely  driven  by market forces. The Danish-language cultural market is a relatively small one.  Marketing  English-language  cultural  products  (e.g.  books,  films, magazines, TV)  in English to Danish consumers is economically beneficial. Conversely, corporations producing Danish-language cultural products to a small market do not have the economic potential to compete with 'international' English-language corporations on production value on pure market terms. The upshot is that Danish-language culture (literature, theatre and the film industry) 5 and media (e.g. newspapers, magazines, TV and radio) 6 are state subsidised. The subsidies have traditionally not had

5 https://kum.dk/kulturomraader/kultur-og-kunststoette/kunststoette

6 https://slks.dk/omraader/medier/tilskud-til-medier/

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

language  stipulations,  meaning  that  English-language  films  produced  in Denmark  are  eligible  for  subsidies  -  in  other  words  the  subsidies  are supporting  the  film  industry  rather  than  any  particular  language.  This policy  has  been  challenged  by  Dansk  Folkeparti 7 [The  Danish  People's Party]  in  Parliament  debates.  The  party  has  suggested  subsidising  only films in Danish, Faeroese and Greenlandic. 8

When it comes to written media such as newspapers and magazines, the subsidies are entwined in ideals about public debates and democracy. 'The purpose is to contribute to democratic debate, cultural and societal information  […].' 9 (authors'  translation).  No  language  stipulations  are made, but stipulations could be made in line with Dansk Folkeparti's [The Danish People's Party] suggestion regarding film subsidies. The questions pertaining to support for Danish-language cultural products pick up on this debate and ask respondents about their support for financial subsidies as well as whether language should be stipulated in the rules. We ask (in two of  three  questions)  about  financial  funding  to  'raise  the  stakes'  for respondents. Asking merely if they support the idea that films should be made  in  Danish  could  give  very  high  levels  of  agreement  across  all respondents.  This  would  make  the  question  in  effect  worthless  for distinguishing between different (political) groups and ideologies.

When  it  comes  to  TV  and  radio,  Denmark  has  two  national broadcasters, Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) and TV2. Both are tax funded. TV2 supplements with commercials, while DR is not allowed to  broadcast  commercials  and  is  funded  exclusively  by  the  state.  Both broadcasters  have  clear  stipulations  on  the  use  of  Danish  (though  not necessarily Danish exclusively) (Thøgersen 2021). To Danish respondents it  would  seem obvious that national Danish-language radio and TV can only exist if they are subsidised. That has been the tradition going back to the  founding  of  DR  in  1925.  Asking  whether  state-funded  broadcasters should  broadcast  in  Danish  would  only  be  stating  the  obvious.  This

7 When not quoting other sources, we use the Danish names of the parties with official English names in brackets. For historical reasons some parties' names are poor reflections of the current policies of the parties (e.g. Venstre [The Liberal Party] (literally 'the left') is an economically liberal/right-wing party, and Radikale Venstre [The Social Liberals] (literally 'the radical left') is arguably the most center of all parties). This may lead to confusion if we were to use translated names.

8 https://www.ft.dk/samling/20121/beslutningsforslag/B13/BEH1-29/forhandling.htm

9 https://slks.dk/omraader/medier/skrevne-medier-trykteweb/bladpuljen

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

question is therefore posed as a question about the value of Danish radio and TV per se and not about whether state-funded radio and TV should have  language  stipulations.  To  sum  up,  we  asked  about  respondents' attitude towards (financial) support for different kinds of Danish-language cultural products. In two of the three questions, financial support was stated explicitly, in the third only indirectily which may make the questions less than ideally comparable. All three questions begin with 'To which extent do you agree that...':

- 'only films in Danish should be eligible for Danish film funding?'
-  'only  newspapers  and  magazines  written  in  Danish  should  be eligible for media subsidies?'
-  'it  is  important  that  there  are  Danish-language  radio  and  TV channels?'

Again, there is a relatively high degree of correlation between the answers to the questions (Cronbach's alpha = .676). The last question, about radio and TV, stands out slightly compared to the others. Its factor loading is in the  order  of  .5,  compared  to  the  other  two  questions  which  have  factor loadings in the order of .9. We can speculate that this is because the two first questions involve direct financial support for Danish-language cultural products,  whereas  the  latter  takes  a  more  idealised  non-interventionist stance.  Without  asking  respondents  about  their  reasoning,  it  is  hard  to know. We could have opted to omit the question or to treat it separately, but  chose  to  keep  it  in  with  the  other  questions  related  to  support  for Danish-language cultural products. Again, we used the factor score as a measure of each respondent's attitude.

## 2.2.4. English in school

One measure of the status of English in Danish society is how important English  is  considered  to  be  in  primary  and  lower  secondary  school. Teaching a language mandatorily to all students shows that the language is considered important or being actively promoted  to a position of importance.  Thus,  in  the  introduction  above,  we  discussed  the  primary school  curriculum  as  a  measure  of  the  role  of  English.  And  in  the questionnaire, we asked respondents about their attitude by means of two questions, each beginning with 'To which extent do you agree that...':

- 'the subject of English should be given as many teaching hours as Danish in school?'

- 'the subject of English should be given more teaching hours than Danish in school?'

The correlation between the two questions is relatively high (Cronbach's alpha =  .634),  and  again  we  used  the  Factor  score  as  a  measure  of  the individual respondent's attitude.

## 2.2.5. Norms of English competence

The last block of questions that we include in this study is closely related to  the  question  of  the  present  and  future  status  of  English  in  Denmark, which we briefly discussed above: whether English is a foreign or second language in Denmark. Here, the questions are about the extent to which respondents believe that (other) Danes should to be competent in English. All four questions begin with 'To which extent do you agree that all adult Danes should be able to...':

- 'speak English without any problems?'
- 'read English without any problems?'
- 'understand spoken English without any problems?'
- 'write English without any problems?'

The correlation between the answers to the four questions is extremely high (Cronbach's alpha = .922). So, for respondents, it is effectively the same question asked in four different ways. Again, we used the Factor score to reduce the four questions to a single measure of respondents' attitudes.

## 2.3. Social variables

As described above, previous studies have shown that attitudes towards English  can  be  related  to  age  and  educational  attainment  in  particular. These measures are also included in this study because they are found to be  the  best  predictors  of  (reported)  English  competence  and  attitudes towards English (Thøgersen & Preisler 2023). However, we are particularly interested  to  know  whether  respondents'  political  party affiliation  correlates  with  their  answers  to  the  attitude  questions  when

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

controlling for other factors such as age and education. We believe that party affiliation can be seen as an index for many of the socio-ideological views that may otherwise be difficult to express. Kristiansen and Vikør (2006)  operationalised  respondents'  socio-ideological  stance  by  asking whether respondents thought that 'solidarity' or 'individual freedom' was the most important social ideal. The underlying idea was that 'solidarity' would be chosen by traditional left-wingers, while 'individual freedom' would be chosen by traditional right-wingers.

The Danish political landscape, like that of Scandinavia in general, is 'one of multi-party parliamentary democracy dominated by strong social democratic parties and consensus'. 10 Historically, there were three large parties. '[T]he Right [The Conservative Party] represented landed proprietors and  civil  servants,  the  United  Left  [The  Liberal  Party] represented farmers, and the Social Democrats represented workers'. 11 It is fairly easy to establish a new party, as the minimum percentage of votes necessary for a party to be represented in parliament is only 2%, 12 so it is not uncommon for parties to split up or for new parties to emerge and be elected  into  parliament.  For  example,  several  left-wing  parties  have emerged  after  various  schisms  in  the  traditional  Marxist  parties:  'the Socialist People's Party (now the Green Left) was established after a rift in the  Communist  Party  of  Denmark  […],  the  Left  Wing  Socialists  was formed  as  a  splinter  group  of  the  Socialist  People's  Party'. 13 And Kristendemokraterne [The Christian Democrats] formed as a single-issue reaction to the lifting on the ban on pornography in the 1970s (Ibid.). In more recent times, several new parties have emerged around the question of  immigration  and  multiculturalism.  Dansk  Folkeparti  [The  Danish People's Party] is 'focussed on the issue of immigration  and  on nationalistic appeals' (Bjørklund & Andersen 1999:1). The party states on its  website  that  its  core  issues  are  1)  tough  immigration  policy  [stram udlændingepolitik],  2)  healthcare,  3)  stop  for  asylum  seekers,  4)  senior citizens,  5)  law  and  order  and  6)  animal  rights.  Dansk  Folkeparti  [The Danish People's Party] can be seen as a proponent of a broader movement

10 https://nordics.info/themes/the-nordic-model

11 https://www.thedanishparliament.dk/en/political-parties

12 https://www.thedanishparliament.dk/en/democracy/elections-andvoting#AD497FE3950C4C7E8497E0DC8594CDAB

13 https://www.thedanishparliament.dk/en/political-parties

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

of emerging populist anti-immigration parties. When the questionnaire was conducted, Nye Borgerlige [New Right] was the other proponent of antiimmigration policies. Since then Danmarksdemokraterne [The Denmark Democrats] have also emerged. All three of the current parties mention immigration policy as their central focus. The emergence of several antiimmigration parties is an indication of a trend affecting the entire political spectrum. In a survey reported by Bjørklund and Andersen (1999:3-4), the proportion of voters mentioning immigration as the most important issue for their party choice was '4 per cent in 1987, 8 per cent in 1994 and ends with  an  explosion  to  14  per  cent  in  the  1998  election  survey  when immigration was one of the most important single issues, mentioned by 35 per  cent  of  the  respondents  as  among  the  two  or  three  most  important issues'. The 'trend' has been observed by international media as well, for example by Al-Jazeera who in relation to the most recent election in 2022 wrote that: 'the governing Social Democratic party has adopted the right's anti-immigration agenda to the extent that its asylum policies have inspired European  far-right  parties  such  as  Alternative  for  Germany  (AfD)  in Germany and the Sweden Democrats in Sweden'. 14

This  highlights  another  characteristic  of  Danish  politics,  viz.  the tendency  for  consensus  and  the  dynamic  coalitions  between  parties. Traditional political 'enemies' (such as Venstre [The Liberal Party] and Socialdemokratiet [The Social Democratic Party]) may form coalitions (as they have done from December 2022 and do at the time of writing, April 2024), and it is not unheard of for parties to change alliances during the negotiations following an election. Because of this 'stable instability' of the system in which traditional political enemies may form coalitions in spite of (what one would  imagine  to  be) fundamental  ideological disagreements, it can be hard to pin down exactly what a party's political line  is.  Can  Socialdemokratiet  [The  Social  Democratic  Party]  still  be viewed as a social democratic party, and can Venstre [The Liberal Party] still be viewed as proponents of free markets when the two collaborate on economic policies? Additionally, because of the multiplicity of parties, it becomes  possible  for  more  complex  oppositions  than  a  simple  onedimensional  left-right  scale  to  emerge.  Some  analysts  and  political commentators have therefore argued that it is no longer meaningful to view

14 https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/10/25/denmark-set-to-keep-anti-migrantpolicy-regardless-of-vote-result

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

the Danish parties on a single right-left scale. Skjæveland (2005 referring to  Borre  2003)  suggests  a  two-dimensional  political  space  composed  of 'old politics' and 'new politics'. 'Old politics measures [parties'] attitudes to  social  reforms,  distribution  of  income,  government  regulation  of corporations  and  progressive  taxation.  New  politics  is  measured  as attitudes  towards  immigration,  development  aid,  judicial  policy  (violent crime)  and  environmental  politics' 15 Skjæveland  (2005:  412,  authors' translation). A party such as Dansk Folkeparti [Danish People's Party], for example,  is  best  characterised  as  having  a  centre-left/social-democratic policy  when  it  comes  to  economy  (or  'old  politics'),  but  a  rightwing/nationalist policy in terms of values (or 'new politics'); and a party such as Radikale Venstre [The Social Liberals] is characterised in terms of economy  by  having  a centre-right/social-liberal policy, but a leftwing/liberal policy in terms of values (Skjæveland 2005:418-419). Such analyses have led political commentators such as altinget.dk ,  which is a respected news website reporting on Danish politics independent of partypolitical  affiliation  (Altinget  2016),  and  textbook  authors  (Andersson 2022) to propose a two-dimensional party-political compass (see Figure 1). Rather than try to explain the history and values of each party, we refer (and will return) to this illustration of the Danish political landscape. In our analyses and discussions below, we use the Danish names for the parties, along with their letter designation, which should make it easy to locate the party in the political spectrum/spectra.

15 'Gammel politik måles således som holdningen til sociale reformer, indkomstudligning, statsregulering af erhvervslivet og progressiv beskatning. Ny politik måles som holdningen til indvandring, ulandshjælp, retspolitik (voldskriminalitet) og miljøpolitik'.

tion

A

B

Socialdemokratiet (A)

Radikale Venstre (B)

C

Det Konservative Folkeparti (C)

S

Nye Borgerlige (D)

SF

KD

LA

(OF)

veritne Socialistisk Folkeparti (F)

Kristendemokraterne (K)

Liberal Alliance (I)

Dansk Folkeparti (O)

Venstre (V)

Enhedslisten (Ø)

Alternativet (À)

Figure 1: The party-political compass according to Andersson (2022) 16 .

<!-- image -->

Of course, the precise placement of each party depends to some extent on the issues on which one focuses (e.g. rights for sexual vs. ethnic minorities, economic  redistribution  to  pensioners  vs.  to  students,  etc.).  Similarly, slightly different positions may emerge depending on whether one focuses on  what  the  parties say  during  elections as  opposed  what they  do/what proposals they support . But the distribution shows a landscape where some parties seem to relate to a traditional left-right scale (most pronounced in the cases of Nye Borgerlige and Enhedslisten on opposite wings), while others  are  at  different  places  on  the  political  spectrum  depending  on whether  focus  is  on  economic  policy  or  cultural/value  policy  (Dansk

16 The illustration is cited from https://portals.clio.me/dk/samfundsfag/emner/politik/detpolitiske-landskab/det-nye-politiske-landskab/. We want to express our gratitude to Alinea/Clio for permission to use the illustration.

SF

Fordelingspolitisk venstre Værdipolitisk venstre

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

Fordelingspolitisk højre Folkeparti and Radikale Venstre have  already been  highlighted as examples of parties with opposing 'mixes' of economic and value policies).

In the questionnaire survey, we asked: 'Regardless of whether you have the right to vote or not, we would like to know who you would vote for if  a  general  election  took  place  today?' Respondents were given the options in Table 2 (= the eligible parties as of spring 2022, listed by party letter).

Table 2: Percentage of supporters for each party in case of a hypothetical general election.

|                                |                                      |   N |     % | Valid%   |
|--------------------------------|--------------------------------------|-----|-------|----------|
| A. Socialdemokratiet           | A. The Social Democratic Party       | 197 |  24.1 | 34.9     |
| B. Radikale Venstre            | B. The Social Liberal Party          |  37 |   4.5 | 6.6      |
| C. Det Konservative Folkeparti | C. The Conservative Party            |  91 |  11.1 | 16.1     |
| D. Nye Borgerlige              | D. The New Right                     |  33 |   4.0 | 5.9      |
|                                |                                      |  54 |   6.6 | 9.6      |
| G. Veganerpartiet              | G. The Vegan Party                   |   0 |     0 |          |
| I. Liberal Alliance            | I. The Liberal Alliance              |  16 |   2.0 | 2.8      |
| K. Kristendemokraterne         | K. The Christian Democrats           |  12 |   1.5 | 2.1      |
| O. Dansk Folkeparti (DF)       | O. The Danish People's Party         |  14 |   1.7 | 2.5      |
| Q. Frie Grønne                 | Q. Free Greens                       |   3 |    .4 |          |
| V. Venstre                     | V. The Liberal Party                 |  68 |   8.3 | 12.1     |
| Ø. Enhedslisten                | Ø. The Red-Green Alliance            |  42 |   5.1 | 7.4      |
| Å. Alternativet                | Å. The Alternative                   |   1 |    .1 |          |
| En kandidat uden for partierne | A candidate from outside the parties |   3 |    .4 |          |
| Et andet parti                 | Another party                        |   3 |    .4 |          |
| Ville stemme blankt            | Would cast a blank vote              |  16 |   2.0 |          |
| Ville ikke stemme              | Would abstain from voting            |  15 |   1.8 |          |
| Total                          |                                      | 605 |  74.1 | n=564    |
| Refused to answer              |                                      |  84 |  10.3 |          |
| Do not know                    |                                      | 128 |  15.7 |          |
| Total                          |                                      | 212 |  25.9 |          |
| Total                          |                                      | 817 | 100.0 | 100.0    |

Table 2 shows the political party affiliations in the sample. A few parties have so few 'votes' among the respondents that they are excluded from the

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

calculations (marked in grey). The same applies to the those who answered that they would cast a blank vote or abstain from voting. Notice also the rather large proportion (10.3%) of respondents who refused to answer the question (i.e., did not simply give a 'don't know' answer). This is probably indicative of the fact that political conviction is a somewhat sensitive topic. Again we want to point out that the responses are  influenced  by  social desirability bias, that is, respondents are not just giving objective, truthful answers about their voting habits, but are affected by considerations about the image their answers project of them. When respondents who gave these answers or answered 'don't know' or refused to answer are excluded, we are left with a sample of 564 respondents who have indicated a party they would vote for.

The  majority  of  the  following  analyses  are  based  on  these  564 respondents,  and  questions  about  which  party  they  would  vote  for  are labelled 'Party affiliation n > 10' to indicate that only parties that had at least 10 'supporters' are included.

## 3. Analyses

In the following, we analyse the various dependent attitudinal Factors as indicators of party affiliation. In other words, we are interested in whether party  affiliation  can  predict  attitudes  towards  English  in  Denmark  as expressed by the six attitudinal dimensions presented above ('English as threat', 'English as opportunity', 'Domains', 'Support for Danish-language cultural products', 'English in school' and 'Norms of English competence'). It is important to bear in mind that our analysis is not based on  the  political  programmes  of  the  parties  or  on  the  parties'  voting  in parliament. The analysis is based solely on correlations between respondents' responses to questions regarding English and their responses about what party they would vote for in a hypothetical general election. It is very possible that respondents will disalign with 'their' party on some questions, and we should not expect that the party programme explicitly states the language political positions that their supporters ascribe to. What we say about the supporters of a given party is based solely on responses in the questionnaire and need not reflect the party's official line.

We first analyse the attitudinal Factors independently of each other, we then examine the relationship between the different Factors, and finally we discuss how attitudes towards English can be understood in relation to a two-dimensional party-political compass.

## 3.1. 'English as threat' and 'English as opportunity'

Above  we  constructed  the  Factor  'English  as  threat'  based  on  three questions. Table 3 and Figure 2 show the mean scores for this factor for each party's supporters. The higher the score, the more respondents agree that English is a threat. As can be seen, it is especially respondents who indicate that they would vote for Kristendemokraterne, Dansk Folkeparti and Nye Borgerlige who perceive English as a threat. The overall effect size of political affiliation is small (η 2 = .033) but significant (p = .021) measured by a general linear model (GLM).

Table 3: Mean scores for the 'English as threat' Factor for supporters of each party.

| Party affiliation n > 10        |   Mean |   N |   Std. dev. |
|---------------------------------|--------|-----|-------------|
| F. SF - Socialistisk Folkeparti |  -.230 |  54 |         .82 |
| Ø. Enhedslisten                 |  -.204 |  42 |        1.18 |
| B. Radikale Venstre             |  -.196 |  37 |         .96 |
| I. Liberal Alliance             |  -.097 |  16 |        1.28 |
| V. Venstre                      |  -.043 |  68 |         .93 |
| A. Socialdemokratiet            |   .066 | 197 |         .95 |
| C. Det Konservative Folkeparti  |   .089 |  91 |        1.01 |
| K. Kristendemokraterne          |   .351 |  12 |         .84 |
| O. Dansk Folkeparti (DF)        |   .391 |  14 |        1.22 |
| D. Nye Borgerlige               |   .531 |  33 |        1.11 |
| Total                           |   .028 | 564 |        1.00 |

1.50000

1.00000

.50000

.00000

-.50000

-1.00000

Ø. Enhedslisten

- Socialistisk Folkeparti

cialistis

Figure 2: Mean scores for the 'English a threat' Factor for the supporters of each

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

<!-- image -->

party. The whiskers, I-lines, indicate a 95% confidence interval.

Figure 2: Mean scores for the 'English a threat' Factor for the supporters of each party. The whiskers, I-lines, indicate a 95% confidence interval.

Overall, the differences are statistically significant (ANOVA, p = .015). This  can  be  interpreted  to  mean  that  if  party  affiliation  played  no  role whatsoever,  there  would  only  be  about  a  1.5%  chance  of  getting  a distribution with such large between-group differences as these and such small  within-group  differences.  However,  this  does  not  mean  that  all differences  between  parties  are  statistically  significant.  We  therefore conducted  post  hoc  T-tests  between  all  combinations  of  parties  to  find significant  differences  between  pairs.  Table  4  shows  which  differences between  parties  (or  rather  between  'party  affiliates')  are  significant. Respondents who would vote for Nye Borgerlige clearly regard English as a threat, to a much higher degree than those who would vote for any party other than Dansk Folkeparti and Kristendemokraterne. The difference is statistically significant. Apart from this, only the difference between Dansk Folkeparti and SF supporters is significant.

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

<!-- image -->

|    | Ø   | B   | I   | V   | A   | C   | K   | O   | D   |
|----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|
| F  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | *   | *** |
| Ø  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | **  |
| B  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | **  |
| I  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | *   |
| V  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | **  |
| A  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | *   |
| C  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | *   |
| K  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| O  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |

* = p<.05; ** = p<.01: *** = p<.001

Table 4. Significant differences between supporters of each party on the 'English as threat Factor' .

Table 5 and Figure 3 show the mean scores of the 'English as opportunity' questions. Again, higher scores indicate higher levels of agreement. Thus, it is respondents who indicate that they would vote for Kristendemokraterne and Liberal Alliance who to the greatest extent see English as a 'practical consequence of greater interaction with the rest of the world'; as something that 'makes Danes more competitive internationally'; and as something that 'broadens Danes' cultural horizons'. Again the effect size of political affiliation as measured by a GLM is small (η 2 = .046) but highly significant (p = .001).

2.00000

1.00000

.00000

-1.00000

-2.00000

D. Nye Borgerlige O. Dansk Folkeparti (DF)

## Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

V. Venstre I. Liberal Alliance K. Kristendemokraterne

| Party affiliation n > 10        |   Mean |   N |   Std. dev. |
|---------------------------------|--------|-----|-------------|
| K. Kristendemokraterne          |   .408 |  12 |         .72 |
| I. Liberal Alliance             |   .404 |  16 |         .85 |
| B. Radikale Venstre             |   .365 |  37 |         .85 |
| V. Venstre                      |   .295 |  68 |         .77 |
| C. Det Konservative Folkeparti  |   .098 |  91 |        1.02 |
| A. Socialdemokratiet            |   .011 | 197 |        1.01 |
| F. SF - Socialistisk Folkeparti |  -.035 |  54 |         .88 |
| Ø. Enhedslisten                 |  -.116 |  42 |         .91 |
| O. Dansk Folkeparti (DF)        |  -.390 |  14 |        1.09 |
| D. Nye Borgerlige               |  -.521 |  33 |        1.15 |
| Total                           |   .047 | 564 |         .98 |

Table 5: Mean scores for the English as opportunity Factor for supporters of each party.

Figure 3: Mean scores for the English as opportunity Factor for the supporters of each party. The whiskers, I-lines, indicate a 95% confidence interval.

<!-- image -->

Again, the overall differences are statistically significant (ANOVA, p < .001), and again the differences are mainly between those who indicate that they  would  vote  for  Nye  Borgerlige  and  (to  a  lesser  extent)  Dansk Folkeparti, and those who indicate that they would support one of the other

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

parties.  However,  there  are  also  differences  between  the  supporters  of Radikale Venstre and Venstre on the one hand and Socialdemokratiet and Enhedslisten on the other.

|    | I   | B   | V   | C   | A   | F   | Ø   | O   | D   |
|----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|
| K  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | *   |
| I  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | *   | **  |
| B  |     |     |     |     | *   |     | *   | *   | *** |
| V  |     |     |     |     | *   |     | *   | *   | *** |
| C  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | **  |
| A  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | **  |
| F  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | *   |
| Ø  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| O  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |

* = p<.05; ** = p<.01: *** = p<.001

Table 6: Significant differences between supporters of each party on the 'English as opportunity' Factor.

Perhaps  the  most  interesting  result  is  that  we  do  not  find  the  same distribution  of  parties  on  the  'English  as  threat'  questions  and  on  the 'English as opportunity' questions. As shown earlier, there is very little correlation between the two blocks of questions. The analysis shows that this is also true when looking at groups of respondents, and not only when looking at the whole sample.

Inspired by the two-dimensional party-political compass presented in Figure  1,  we  have  plotted  the  location  of  the  responses  in  a  twodimensional coordinate system, presented here in Figure 4. Responses to the  'English  as  opportunity'  questions  are  presented  along  the  X-axis, responses to the 'English as threat' questions are presented on the Y-axis.

-0.6

Nye Borgerige

Fioure 4. The narty-nolitical comnass of Fnolish attitudes.

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

LA

Figure 4: The party-political compass of English attitudes.

<!-- image -->

The figure shows respondents who would vote for (the anti-immigration party) Nye Borgerlige to be those who, to the greatest extent, see English as a threat, and, to the least extent, as an opportunity. What is even more interesting is that the parties are not aligned along a single line: the model is  clearly  two-dimensional.  Thus,  respondents  who  would  vote  for  (the Marxist) Enhedslisten or SF do not see English as a 'threat', but they also do not see English as an 'opportunity' to any great extent. On the other hand, respondents who would vote for Kristendemokraterne see English as both a 'threat' and an 'opportunity'. When looking at the positioning of the parties, if  one is  familiar with the Danish party-political landscape, it is tempting  to  think  of  the  Y-axis  in  terms  of  a  'value-political  axis'  (or

VENSTRE

DF

-0.4

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

Skjæveland's 2005 'new politics') similar to the Y-axis in Figure 1; that is, an axis in which primarily immigration and international relations are the relevant topics. Nye Borgerlige and Dansk Folkeparti define themselves largely as anti-immigration parties; however, we interpret the placement of SF and Enhedslisten  to  mean  that  to  their  voters,  nationalism  rings  too much of chauvinism, and internationalism is a core value in Marxism in which SF and Enhedslisten have their roots. We could say, then, that the Y-axis  indicates  'protectionism'.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  tempting  to interpret the X-axis in terms of a 'distributional policy or market economy axis'  (Skjæveland's  'old  politics')  similar  to  the  X-axis  in  Figure  1.  In particular, it is the respondents who would vote for the economically liberal parties,  Venstre,  Radikale  Venstre  and  Liberal  Alliance,  and  those  who would vote for Kristendemokraterne, who see English as an 'opportunity'. At the other end of the axis we find the traditional left-wing parties (in terms of economy) such as Enhedslisten, SF and Dansk Folkeparti. The positioning  of  Nye  Borgerlige  is  puzzling.  Considering  Figure  1  above, where Nye Borgerlige was defined as the party with the most right-wing economic  policy,  one  would  expect  to  find  them  alongside  the  other economically liberal parties. We could speculate that the position here is an  expression  of  the  fact  that  the  X-axis  is  not  only  about  the  market economy. Perhaps it is an expression of the fact that Nye Borgerlige is first and foremost a party of values. Their economic liberal policies are not what attract their voters - or at least not the 33 in the sample here who said they would vote for Nye Borgerlige.

In the centre of the figure are Socialdemokratiet and Konservative, who are at the middle of both the protectionist and the market economy axes.

## 3.2. Does party affiliation add anything extra?

An obvious objection at this point is that party affiliation is to a large extent an expression of some of the social variables that we already know the effect  of.  We  know  that  the  core  voters  of  Dansk  Folkeparti  have  little education and a higher than average age profile (Professor Kasper Møller Hansen for Altinget.dk 2023 17 ). We also know that they tend to live outside the  major  urban  areas.  With  respect  to  the  general  election  in  2019, Statistics  Denmark  reported  that  Dansk  Folkeparti  'had  relatively  more

17 https://www.altinget.dk/christiansborg/artikel/moed-partiernes-typiske-vaelgere

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

votes  in  the  municipalities  in  Southern  Jutland  and  in  Mid  and  West Zealand' (authors' translation) and the lowest proportion of the votes in the major cities of Copenhagen and Aarhus 18 .  Conversely, Enhedslisten was 'over  twice  as  big  in  Copenhagen  as  in  the  country  in  general'  (Ibid.). Since we also know that the elderly and the less educated are the most sceptical in terms of the presence of English (see references to Kristiansen 2006a and Preisler 1999 above), it is hardly surprising that respondents who say they would vote for Dansk Folkeparti are also among the most sceptical with regard to the use of English. It is worth investigating whether the question of party affiliation provides something new, or whether it is just measuring the same bio-social factors with a different operationalisation.

To answer this, we first look at whether our assumptions about the demographics of the different parties fit our sample, and then at whether party  affiliation  is  still  significant  when  controlling  for  other  social variables.

Figures  5,  6  and  7  show  the  average  age,  average  population  of respondents' hometowns and average educational level of the supporters of each party. Of course, there is no reason to assume that a simple statistics of the population size of one's hometown bears any direct correlation with one's political affiliation. The connection is at best indirect in that larger cities and their suburbs tend to attract more educated, career-oriented and internationally  minded  residents  because  there  are  opportunities  for specialist jobs. Additionally, larger cities tend to be more expensive places to live, further skewing the demographics towards the more educated and affluent.

Education was measured on a 6-level scale, 'primary school', 'lower secondary',  'upper  secondary/vocational',  '2-year  tertiary',  'bachelor's degree', 'master's degree' 19 .  It  could be argued that average educational attainment  is  at  best  an  'ordinal'  measure  and  cannot  meaningfully  be measured on a 'ratio' scale. In other words, it might be more meaningful to operate with the proportions of respondents who have different educational d vv m

18 https://www.dst.dk/da/Statistik/nyheder-analyser-publ/bagtal/2019/2019-02-20landkort-viser-forskelle-i-partiernes-stemmeandele

19 Grundskole 7./8. kl., Grundskole 9./10. klasse, Ungdomsuddannelse (Gymasial, Erhvervsfaglig), Kort videregående uddannelse, Mellemlang videregående uddannelse, Lang videregående uddannelse.

400000

300000

100000

I. Liberal Alliance V. Venstre B. Radikale Venstre O. Dansk Folkeparti (DF)|

Vul·

Ø. Enhedslisten

C. Det Konservative Folkeparti V. Venstre levels  rather  than  a mean value.  However,  as  a  rough  estimate  of educational attainment, we believe that a numerical mean is still indicative of the educational differences between groups.

Party affiliation (n > 10)

Fioure 5. Mean dop of the sunnorters of each narty, The whiskers Ilines indica O. Dansk Folkeparti (DF)

Figure 5: Mean age of the supporters of each party. The whiskers, I lines, indicate a 95% confidence interval.

<!-- image -->

Figure 6: Mean population of hometown of supporters of each party. The whiskers, I lines, indicate a 95% confidence interval. 20

<!-- image -->

20 Respondents were asked to indicate the postcode in which they live. This allows us to calculate the population of their hometown. Larger urban areas such as Aarhus, Odense,

D. Nye Borgerlige A. Socialdemokratiet I. Liberal Alliance

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

C. Det Konservative Folkeparti V. Venstre

Party affiliation (n > 10)

Rom 7 Moa ducational attainmont of to connortors of oach nart, Th

Figure  7:  Mean  educational  attainment  of  the  supporters  of  each  party.  The whiskers, I lines, indicate a 95% confidence interval.

<!-- image -->

The demography of the sample corresponds roughly to our preconceptions. Respondents  who  would  vote  for  Dansk  Folkeparti  live  in  the  smallest towns,  are  less  educated  and,  together  with  those  who  would  vote  for Socialdemokratiet  and  Kristendemokraterne,  are  the  oldest  respondents. Respondents who would vote for the 'value-liberal' parties Enhedslisten, SF and Radikale Venstre live in larger cities and have a higher educational level, and, together with those who would vote for Liberal Alliance, are on average the youngest respondents.

To  investigate  whether  party  affiliation  is  in  fact  just  another measure  of  age,  education  and  'urbanicity',  we  conducted  a  Multiple Regression Analysis (General Linear Model) with the two Factor scores as dependent variables, party affiliation as the independent factor, and age, education and urbanicity (in terms of the size of the population defined by the postcode) as covariates. In other words, we ask whether party affiliation predicts  attitudes  towards  English  even  after  taking  into  account  the

Aalborg and Copenhagen/Frederiksberg have been merged so that, for example, the postcodes 8000, 8100, 8200 and 8210 are counted as one area with a total population of about 108,000. The boundaries were drawn according to whether the postcode contained the name of the city, so that 8210 Aarhus V is considered part of Aarhus, while 8220 Brabrand is not.

K. Kristendemokraterne F. SF - Socialistisk Folkeparti Ø. Enhedslisten B. Radikale Venstre respondent's  age,  education  and  the  size  of  the  town  they  live  in.  The outcome is given in Tables 7 and 8.

Table 7: General linear model for the 'English as threat' Factor.

|                            |   Type III Sum of Squares |   Partial η 2 |   df | Sig.   |
|----------------------------|---------------------------|---------------|------|--------|
| Corrected Model            |                    56,528 |         0.097 |   12 | <0.001 |
| Intercept                  |                    14.167 |         0.026 |    1 | 0.000  |
| Party affiliation (n > 10) |                    14.998 |         0.028 |    9 | 0.064  |
| Age                        |                    37.743 |         0.067 |    1 | <0.001 |
| Population of hometown     |                     1.302 |         0.002 |    1 | 0.235  |
| Education                  |                     0.058 |         0.000 |    1 | 0.801  |
| Error                      |                   524.119 |               |  569 |        |
| Total                      |                   581.861 |               |  582 |        |
| Corrected Total            |                   580.647 |               |  581 |        |

Table 8: General linear model for the 'English as opportunity' Factor.

|                            |   Type III Sum of Squares |   Partial η 2 |   df | Sig.   |
|----------------------------|---------------------------|---------------|------|--------|
| Corrected Model            |                    42,385 |         0.078 |   12 | <0.001 |
| Intercept                  |                     0.282 |         0.001 |    1 | 0.572  |
| Party affiliation (n > 10) |                    19.074 |         0.037 |    9 | 0.011  |
| Age                        |                     4.819 |         0.010 |    1 | 0.020  |
| Population of hometown     |                     0.116 |         0.000 |    1 | 0.717  |
| Education                  |                    12.925 |         0.025 |    1 | <0.001 |
| Error                      |                   502.367 |               |  569 |        |
| Total                      |                   545.688 |               |  582 |        |
| Corrected Total            |                   544.752 |               |  581 |        |

For the 'English as threat' questions, party affiliation is almost statistically significant (p = .064) when controlling for age (p < .001), education and town size (n.s.). For the 'English as opportunit y ' questions, party affiliation is statistically significant (p = .011) also when controlling for age (p = .02), education (p < .001) and town size (n.s.). In other words, party affiliation does add something extra, in particular for the 'opportunity' questions. The effect sizes as indicated by η 2 are again small, on the order of .03-.04  It is also interesting to see that attitudes to 'English as threat' are best predicted by age, whereas attitudes to 'English as opportunity' is best predicted by education.

## 3.3. Other attitudinal factors

The analysis so far has shown that attitudes towards English in Denmark today can be conceptualised along (at least) two orthogonal dimensions. Skjæveland  (2005)  uses  the  terms  'old  politics'  and  'new  politics', Andersson (2022) and Altinget (2016) use the terms 'distributional policy' and 'value policy'. Our interpretation of these scales in relation to English influence  is  that  they  could  tentatively  be  called  'position  on  cultural protectionism' and 'position on market economy'. We have also shown that questions about party affiliation add an extra ideological dimension that cannot be found simply by asking about respondents' age, education and place of residence.

As presented in the methodology section, we also asked a number of other attitudinal questions that to a greater or lesser extent are related to economic  and  value  politics.  In  the  following,  we  present  them  before finally looking at the correlation between the different blocks of questions.

## 3.3.1. Areas of practice/'domains'

Table 9 and Figure 8 show the correlation between party political affiliation and responses to the questions on 'domains', that is, 'English as a business language' and as a language of instruction in primary and higher education.

Table 9: Mean scores on the Domain Factor for supporters of each party.

| Party affiliation n > 10        |   Mean |   N |   Std. dev. |
|---------------------------------|--------|-----|-------------|
| I. Liberal Alliance             |   .656 |  14 |         .71 |
| B. Radikale Venstre             |   .411 |  34 |         .86 |
| V. Venstre                      |   .267 |  65 |         .98 |
| F. SF - Socialistisk Folkeparti |   .073 |  49 |         .80 |
| C. Det Konservative Folkeparti  |   .065 |  88 |        1.03 |
| K. Kristendemokraterne          |  -.025 |  10 |         .68 |
| A. Socialdemokratiet            |  -.131 | 167 |        1.02 |
| Ø. Enhedslisten                 |  -.261 |  38 |         .92 |
| O. Dansk Folkeparti (DF)        |  -.263 |  12 |        1.36 |
| D. Nye Borgerlige               |  -.632 |  32 |         .93 |
| Total                           |  -.011 | 509 |        1.00 |

2.00000

.00000

-2.00000

D. Nye Borgerlige O. Dansk Folkeparti (DF)

Hiouro 8. Moan Ø. Enhedslisten

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

K. Kristendemokraterne I. Liberal Alliance B. Radikale Venstre V. Venstre F. SF - Socialistisk Folkeparti

<!-- image -->

A. Socialdemokratiet

Figure 8: Mean scores on the Domain Factor for supporters of each party. The whiskers, I lines, indicate a 95% confidence interval.

The  distribution  is  statistically  significant  (p  <  .001),  and  there  are statistically significant differences at both the upper and lower ends of the scale. Supporters of Nye Borgerlige are significantly more negative than all  but  Enhedslisten  and  Dansk  Folkeparti,  and  supporters  of  Liberal Alliance  are  significantly  more  positive  than  all  but  Radikale  Venstre, Venstre  and  Kristendemokraterne.  The  distribution  of  parties  is  quite similar  to  the  distribution  of  'English  as  opportunity'.  The  only  major difference is that supporters of Kristendemokraterne are less positive about English  in  business  and  education  than  they  were  about  'English  as opportunity'.

## Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

|    | B   | V   | F   | C   | K   | A   | Ø   | O   | D   |
|----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|
| I  |     |     | *   | *   |     | **  | **  | *   | *** |
| B  |     |     |     |     |     | **  | **  | *   | *** |
| V  |     |     |     |     |     | **  | **  |     | *** |
| F  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | **  |
| C  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | *** |
| K  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| A  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | **  |
| Ø  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| O  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |

Table  10:  Significant  differences  between  supporters  of  each  party  on  the 'Domain' Factor.

|                            | Type III Sum of Squares   |   Partial η 2 |   df | Sig.   |
|----------------------------|---------------------------|---------------|------|--------|
| Corrected Model            | 42,373a                   |         0.082 |   12 | <0.001 |
| Intercept                  | 1.024                     |         0.002 |    1 | 0.295  |
| Party affiliation (n > 10) | 32.915                    |         0.065 |    9 | <0.001 |
| Age                        | 4.008                     |         0.008 |    1 | 0.039  |
| Population of hometown     | 0.005                     |         0.000 |    1 | 0.944  |
| Education                  | 0.339                     |         0.001 |    1 | 0.547  |
| Error                      | 473.992                   |           509 |      |        |
| Total                      | 516.478                   |           522 |      |        |
| Corrected total            | 516.365                   |           521 |      |        |

Table 11: General linear model for the 'Domain' Factor.

Party affiliation is a significant predictor of attitude towards the Domain Factor (p < .001), also when controlling for age (p = .039), education and town size (n.s.).

## 3.3.2. English in school

The distribution of responses on the teaching of English in primary school is non-significant overall (p = .111). In other words, there is about an 11%

chance of finding the same distribution if respondents were divided into random  groups.  However,  there  are  significant  differences  between respondents who would vote for Liberal Alliance on the one hand, and respondents who would vote for Dansk Folkeparti and Venstre on the other hand.

Table 12: Mean scores for the 'English in school' Factor for supporters of each party.

| Party affiliation n > 10        |   Mean |   N |   Std. dev. |
|---------------------------------|--------|-----|-------------|
| O. Dansk Folkeparti (DF)        |   .418 |  14 |        1.44 |
| V. Venstre                      |   .237 |  68 |        1.02 |
| C. Det Konservative Folkeparti  |   .049 |  91 |        1.09 |
| B. Radikale Venstre             |   .046 |  37 |         .98 |
| A. Socialdemokratiet            |  -.031 | 197 |         .98 |
| K. Kristendemokraterne          |  -.057 |  12 |         .85 |
| F. SF - Socialistisk Folkeparti |  -.153 |  54 |         .89 |
| D. Nye Borgerlige               |  -.190 |  33 |        1.04 |
| Ø. Enhedslisten                 |  -.275 |  42 |         .88 |
| I. Liberal Alliance             |  -.370 |  16 |         .73 |
| Total                           |  -.019 | 564 |        1.00 |

2.00000

1.00000

.00000

-1.00000

I. Liberal Alliance

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

D. Nye Borgerlige V. Venstre

Ø. Enhedslisten

Fiouro O. Monn scores for tho 'Enolich in school' Factor for tho sunnartors of oach

<!-- image -->

Figure 9: Mean scores for the 'English in school' Factor for the supporters of each party. The whiskers, I lines, indicate a 95% confidence interval.

|    | V   | C   | B   | A   | K   | F   | D   | Ø   | I   |
|----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|
| O  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | *   |
| V  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | *   |
| C  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| B  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| A  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| K  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| F  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| D  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| Ø  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |

* = p<.05; ** = p<.01: *** = p<.001

Table 13: Significant differences between supporters of each party on the 'English in school' Factor.

The  distribution  of  the  three  parties  is  puzzling.  Whereas  the  other questions have shown Dansk Folkeparti among the most English-sceptical

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

and Liberal Alliance among the most English-positive, the picture here is the  opposite.  Respondents  who  would  vote  for  Dansk  Folkeparti  most strongly  believe  that  more  English  should  be  taught  in  primary  school, while  respondents  who  would  vote  for  Liberal  Alliance  most  strongly disagree with this. Our best guess is that this reflects personal experiences among the respondents. Remember that Dansk Folkeparti's supporters are typically older, with less formal education, whereas supporters of Liberal Alliance are typically younger. It may be that the older people who support Dansk  Folkeparti  have  personal  experience  of  not  being  able  to  speak English, and would have liked to learn more - and for future generations to  learn  more - whereas the younger Liberal Alliance supporters regard English as easily acquired, even outside of school.

As mentioned above, the overall distribution is not significant - nor even when controlling for age, education and town size (p = .134). In other words, it is difficult to interpret the ranking of the other parties. It seems more or less random. Perhaps this is an indication that parties' position on English in school are not as central as e.g. their position on threats to Danish culture or to economic globalisation. Notice also the quite large standard deviations which indicate high disagreement within each group of party supporters.

## 3.3.3. Support for Danish-language cultural products

The penultimate block of questions is about financial support for Danishlanguage  cultural  products,  that  is,  whether  there  should  be  language stipulations for films and magazines receiving state funding and whether radio and TV should continue to be subsidised. Overall, the distribution is statistically significant (p < .001).

2.00000

1.00000

.00000

-1.00000

-2.00000

B. Radikale Venstre I. Liberal Alliance

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

Table 14: Mean scores for the 'Support for Danish-language cultural products' Factor for the supporters of each party.

| Party affiliation n > 10        |   Mean |   N |   Std. dev. |
|---------------------------------|--------|-----|-------------|
| B. Radikale Venstre             |  -.548 |  37 |         .74 |
| I. Liberal Alliance             |  -.323 |  16 |        1.19 |
| Ø. Enhedslisten                 |  -.274 |  42 |         .99 |
| F. SF - Socialistisk Folkeparti |  -.086 |  54 |         .95 |
| V. Venstre                      |  -.029 |  68 |         .95 |
| A. Socialdemokratiet            |   .056 | 197 |        1.00 |
| C. Det Konservative Folkeparti  |   .149 |  91 |        1.00 |
| K. Kristendemokraterne          |   .213 |  12 |        1.15 |
| D. Nye Borgerlige               |   .412 |  33 |         .73 |
| O. Dansk Folkeparti (DF)        |   .527 |  14 |         .98 |
| Total                           |   .008 | 564 |         .99 |

Figure 10: Mean scores for the 'Support for Danish-language cultural products' Factor  for  the  supporters  of  each  party.  The  whiskers,  I  lines,  indicate  a  95% confidence interval.

<!-- image -->

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler

## Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

|    | I   | Ø   | F   | V   | A   | C   | K   | D   | O   |
|----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|
| B  |     |     | *   | **  | *** | *** | *   | *** | *** |
| I  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | *   | *   |
| Ø  |     |     |     |     | *   | *   |     | **  | **  |
| F  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | *   | *   |
| V  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | *   |     |
| A  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| C  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| K  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| D  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |

* = p<.05; ** = p<.01: *** = p<.001

Table 15: Significant differences between supporters of each party for the 'Support for Danish-language cultural products' Factor.

There are statistically significant differences between, in particular, Nye Borgerlige  and  Dansk  Folkeparti  at  one  end,  and  Radikale  Venstre, Enhedslisten  and  Liberal  Alliance  at  the  other.  The  positioning  of  the parties is very similar to the positioning on the 'English as threat' questions, or, in other words, the value-policy axis. It is especially the supporters of the  'anti-immigration'  parties  who  support  Danish-language  cultural products, while the supporters of the internationally-oriented parties do not see  language  requirements  as  a  prerequisite  to  the  same  extent.  The difference is statistically significant (p = .023) also when controlling for age (p < .001), education and population of the hometown (n.s.) (see Table 16).

Table  16:  General  linear  model  for  the  'Support  for  Danish-language  cultural products' Factor.

|                            |   Type III Sum of Squares |   Partial η 2 |   df | Sig.   |
|----------------------------|---------------------------|---------------|------|--------|
| Corrected Model            |                    47,877 |         0.085 |   12 | <0.001 |
| Intercept                  |                     2.085 |         0.004 |    1 | 0.129  |
| Party affiliation (n > 10) |                    17.500 |         0.033 |    9 | 0.023  |
| Age                        |                    14.910 |         0.028 |    1 | <0.001 |
| Population of hometown     |                     0.001 |         0.000 |    1 | 0.974  |
| Education                  |                     2.822 |         0.005 |    1 | 0.077  |
| Error                      |                   512.495 |               |  569 |        |
| Total                      |                   560.650 |               |  582 |        |
| Corrected Total            |                   560.372 |               |  581 |        |

## 3.3.4. Norms of English competence

The last block of questions is, as mentioned earlier, qualitatively slightly different from the others. The question here is not of grand socio-political ideals, but of what linguistic expectations one can have of others and of oneself, that is, 'all Danes should be able to speak/understand/read/write English'. Or as we argued above, the perception of English as a second (vs. foreign) language for Danes.

The difference is far from being statistically significant (p = .747), especially when taking into account age (p < .001), education and urbanity (n.s.).

Table  17:  Mean  scores  for  the  'Norms  of  English  competence'  Factor  for  the supporters of each party.

| Party affiliation n > 10        |   Mean |   N |   Std. dev. |
|---------------------------------|--------|-----|-------------|
| I. Liberal Alliance             |   .389 |  16 |         .79 |
| V. Venstre                      |   .287 |  68 |         .91 |
| B. Radikale Venstre             |   .173 |  37 |        1.10 |
| C. Det Konservative Folkeparti  |   .173 |  91 |        1.02 |
| F. SF - Socialistisk Folkeparti |   .142 |  54 |         .81 |
| K. Kristendemokraterne          |   .022 |  12 |        1.15 |
| Ø. Enhedslisten                 |   .021 |  42 |         .96 |
| D. Nye Borgerlige               |  -.012 |  33 |         .97 |
| A. Socialdemokratiet            |  -.050 | 197 |        1.01 |
| O. Dansk Folkeparti (DF)        |  -.275 |  14 |        1.15 |
| Total                           |   .075 | 564 |         .99 |

1.00000

.50000

.00000

- 50000

-1.50000

1. Liberal Alliance

V. Venstre

B. Radikale Venstre

Ø. Enhedslisten

K. Kristendemokraterne

D. Nye Borgerlige

A. Socialdemokratiet

4 | O. Dansk Folkeparti (DF)

Fioure 1l. Mean scores for the 'Norms of Fnolish comnetence' Factor for the

<!-- image -->

Figure 11: Mean scores for the 'Norms of English competence' Factor for the supporters of each party. The whiskers, I lines, indicate a 95% confidence interval.

|    | V   | B   | C   | F   | K   | Ø   | D   | A   | O   |
|----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|
| I  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| V  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | *   |     |
| B  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| C  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| F  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| K  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| Ø  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| D  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
| A  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |

* = p<.05; ** = p<.01: *** = p<.001

Table 18: Significant differences between supporters of each party for the 'Norms of English competence' Factor.

Only one difference  is  statistically  significant,  namely  between  the  two current government parties. Respondents who would vote for Socialdemokratiet  to  a  lesser  degree  believe  that  all  Danes  should  be competent in English, and respondents who would vote for Venstre believe that all Danes should be competent in English. Otherwise, the results show a relatively high degree of agreement between supporters of all the parties - that is, no major differences between respondents who would vote for different  parties  -  and  on  the  other  hand  relatively  large  disagreement within each of the parties, as can be seen from the very wide confidence intervals. So here is a question that is only to a very small extent related to party-political conviction.

## 3.4. Correlation between factors

The analysis so far seems to show that some blocks of questions have a similar distribution, while others (e.g. 'English as threat' and 'English as opportunity')  are  only  very  weakly  correlated.  As  a  final  step  in  the analysis,  we  now  look  at  the  correlation  between  the  different  question blocks. For this analysis, we compare the entire set of respondents who answered the attitudes questions. As will be recalled, above we excluded about 25% of respondents because they provided no valid response to the question about party affliation (because they responded for instance that they  did  not  know  which  party  they  would  vote  for  or  they  refused  to answer the question about political affiliation). We see no reason to think that the attitudes towards English should be composed differently between respondents who stated which party they would support, and those who preferred to keep their political convictions secret or who had not decided on  a  party.  The  supporters  of  different  parties  may  have quantitatively different attitudes (i.e. some are more positive than others), but there is no reason to think that they would disagree on the internal structure of the attitudes.  For  example,  we  argued  above  that  'English  as  threat'  and 'English  as  opportunity',  which  have  previously  been  seen  as  opposing sides  of  the  same  argument,  are  in  fact  two  orthogonal  attitudinal dimensions. Different respondents position themselves differently in the space, but they share the perception that there is a two-dimensional space to place oneself in. We see no reason why this would not also be the case for respondents who did not state their political affiliation. Therefore, we include  all  respondents  in  the  analysis  of  the  internal  composition  of attitudes.

Table 19 shows the correlation between the different question blocks for all approx. 850 respondents who answered the attitude questions. We also tried to conduct the analysis with only the 564 respondents who stated their  political  affiliation.  The  differences  between  the  two  analyses  are negligible and would not change the interpretation below.

Many of the correlations are significant. This is probably mainly due to the large number of respondents. A correlation does not have to be strong to be significant as long as it is systematic. In other words, the correlation will  come  out  statistically  significant  if  there  is  predictable  connection between the two blocks of questions, even if the connection is rather weak.

Table 19: Correlation between the different attitude Factors.

|                        |                                 | English as an opportunity   | Domains            | English in school     | Support for Danish-language cultural products   | Norms of English competence   |
|------------------------|---------------------------------|-----------------------------|--------------------|-----------------------|-------------------------------------------------|-------------------------------|
| English as threat      | Pearson corr. Sig. (2-tailed) N | -.079 * .024 817            | -.292 ** <.001 719 | -.157 ** <.001 817    | .326 ** <.001 817                               | -.126 ** <.001 817            |
| English as opportunity | Pearson corr. Sig. (2-tailed) N |                             | .371 ** <.001      | .215 ** <.001         | -.079 * .024 817                                | .327 ** <.001 817             |
| Domains                | Pearson corr. Sig. (2-tailed) N |                             | 719                | 817 .377 ** <.001 719 | -.273 ** <.001 719                              | .308 ** <.001 719             |
| English in school      | Pearson corr. Sig. (2-tailed) N |                             |                    |                       | -.133 ** <.001 817                              | .379 ** <.001 817             |
| Support for            | Pearson corr. Sig. (2-tailed)   |                             |                    |                       |                                                 | -.144 **                      |
| Danish-language        |                                 |                             |                    |                       |                                                 | <.001                         |
| cultural products      | N                               |                             |                    |                       |                                                 | 817                           |

A common interpretation  of  the  Pearson  correlation  measure  ( r )  is  that correlations below .3 are considered 'weak' and correlations between .3 and .5 are considered 'medium effects' (Field 2013:267). By this measure, the majority of the correlations are 'weak', but some (highlighted in bold font)  are  'medium'.  In  other  words,  there  is  a  relatively  low  degree  of correlation  between  the  different  blocks  of  questions,  all  of  which  are

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

supposedly about 'attitudes to English in Denmark'. If Danes thought of English  usage  as  one  'thing',  we  would  expect  to  see  high  correlation between the  question  blocks.  Or,  in  other  words,  we  would  expect  that one's  attitude  as  expressed  in  one  set  of  questions  would  be  highly predictable when we know the attitude as expressed in another block of questions. That is not what we find. Instead, we find that respondents may be English-positive under  one  set of perspectives, but negative  or indifferent  under  another  set  of  perspectives.  One  must  conclude  that 'attitudes to English' are anything but one-dimensional. The respondents' attitudes  seem  very  dependent  on  the  perspective  that  each  block  of questions has.

To understand  this  complexity  of  (opposite)  attitudes,  we  need  to think  of  Danes'  attitudes  to  English  in  a  larger  theoretical  frame.  We propose  that  the  complex  attitudes  are  related  to  the  various  processes refered to under the heading of globalisation and to 'the sociolinguistics of globalization'  (Blommaert  2010).  The  period  since  the  collapse  of  the Eastern  European  Communist  bloc  has  been  described  as  'the  end  of history' (Fukuyama 1989), a period in which there is (or was) no worldspanning  competition  between  'great  ideologies'  over  the  best  way  to design  society.  In  the  past,  Communism  and  Liberalism  fought  for hegemony, but now (alledgedly) political liberalism and market capitalism has triumphed and stand uncontested. And, crucially for this study, English is the language  of  this 'new  world  order'  of  global  trade,  global communication and global competition. 'English the language' (or rather the 'English the word ' because there are of course many Englishes in the world today, Bolton forthc.), come to stand for these various processes. But more than that, the opposition to globalisation is also a global movement with English as its medium of communication. Whether this opposition to global capitalism comes from an environmental perspective (e.g. Extinction Rebellion), from a feminist perspective (e.g. #METOO) or from Marxist perspectives (e.g. Occupy Wall Street see also Burbach, Nunez & Kagarlitsky  1996),  it  is  involved  in  and  dependent  on  a  global  media environment in which English is the medium of communication. 'English' (the language and the name of the language) can therefore stand as symbol of both late stage capitalism and its opposition, for global competition and global  collaboration,  for  multinational  corporations  and  for  grassroot movements and so forth. And the negation of English - in this case Danish

(the language and the name of the language) therefore come to stand for the  symbolic  negation  of  these  symbols:  Social  justice  in  the  face  of globalisation's social injustices, and also national narrow-mindedness as opposed to globalisation's all-encompassing scope.

It  is  therefore  not  surprising  that  some  question  blocks  are  more interrelated than others - highlighted in bold face in Table 19: 'English as opportunity' is related to 'domain' (English as a corporate and business language) and to 'norms of English competence' (English as an expected competence among Danes). 'English as threat' is related to 'support for Danish-language culture'. Finally, the questions on 'English in school' are related to expected 'norms for English', although this was only to a small extent reflected in the analysis of party-political affiliation. As suggested earlier,  it  is  tempting  to  view  these  relationships  as  a  'market'-  or 'competition-orientated'  view  of  English  influence  versus  a  'cultural protectionist' or 'nationalist' one. What is most striking about the analysis here, however, is that one of the weakest correlation between any question blocks  is  that  between  'English  as  threat'  and  'English  as  opportunity'. Whereas in the past the two positions have tended to be seen as extremes on the same axis, this analysis shows emphatically that they are not.

## 4. Conclusion

In this article, we have analysed the relationship between attitudes to the use of English in Denmark, as expressed in responses to 18 questions posed in a nationwide survey questionnaire, on the one hand, and declared partypolitical affiliation, that is, answers to the question of how one would vote in a hypothetical general election, on the other.

The analysis proposes two central conclusions:

(1)  Only  with  strong  reservations  can  'attitudes  to  the  use  of English' be described in dichotomous terms: it is not the case that Danes view  the  use  of  English  as either a  'threat  to  Danish  culture' or as  an opportunity  to  'expand  their  cultural  horizon'  or  'make  Danes  more competitive  internationally'.  English  can  easily  index  both  of  these meanings - and others. If we want to describe what English means to Danes in the 2020s, English must be contextualised. In other words, we need to ask: 'what frame do you have in mind in which English should be viewed?' or 'in what context should I understand the question?'. It is quite obvious that  there  is  a  need  for  further  and  more  qualitative,  emic  studies  of

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

different contextualisations and practices in which the use of English takes on values and meanings as for example a threat and an opportunity. Preisler (1999) attempted to do so for the contextualisations of English in the 1990s; Lønsmann et al. (forthc.) attempt to do so for the 2020s.

(2) We have also seen for the majority of the questions that there is a correlation  between party-political affiliation  and  attitudes  to  English  in Denmark. In a 'rich' party-political landscape such as the Danish, it is to be expected that there are blocks of like-minded parties that share attitudes to the use of English, while the attitudes of other blocks are different. As an example of this, we saw how the supporters of the 'anti-immigration parties' (Dansk Folkeparti and Nye Borgerlige) are often aligned, and so are the supporters of the traditional Marxist parties (Enhedslisten and SF); while supporters of the largest parties (Socialdemokratiet and Konservative) are usually found together around the middle of the scale. Thinking of attitudes to English in terms of a two-dimensional space and against  the  backdrop  of  English  as  a  symbol  of  globalisation  helps  us understand why the supporters of the different parties position themselves as they do, and also brings depth to the meaning and values English has in Scandinavia today. English is a symbol of market capitalism, and questions which frame English in this light are supported by economically liberal parties  and  opposed  by  socialist  parties.  English  is  at  the  same  time  a symbol of global exchange, communication and migration and questions which frame English in that  light  are  supported  by  value-liberal  parties (which may or may not be economically liberal parties) and opposed by value-conservative parties (which may or may not be economically liberal).

As we have stated, attitudes towards the use of English are not one thing; the attitude depends on the specific contextualisation or framing of the  issue.  In  other  words,  'what  kinds  of  values  does  the  influence  of English hold in this particular question?'. Is English for  example conceptualised as an index of 'internationalism' or of 'late-stage capitalism'? In this light, it would also be wrong to talk about 'Englishpositive'  vs.  'English-negative'  parties,  because,  as  we  have  seen,  the supporters of one party may be the most 'English-positive' on one set of issues, but the most 'English-negative' on others. It is more illuminating to understand the 'presence of English in Denmark' as a sign embedded in a multidimensional political space. In this space, English indexes on the one hand something 'international' as opposed to something 'national(ist)', and

## Jacob Thøgersen & Bent Preisler Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(1), 2024 (1-52)

on  the  other  hand  something  'economically  liberal'  as  opposed  to something 'economically socialist'. In this way, English can at the same time index both co-operation and competition, community and elitism, and so forth. Again, more in-depth qualitative analyses of Danes' understanding of the phenomenon of English in Denmark are needed to really understand what is going on.

## ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The  article  is  a  product  of  the  project  English  and  Globalisation  in Denmark: A Changing Sociolinguistic Landscape, a 4-year project funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark - Culture and Communication, https://engerom.ku.dk/forskning/centre/english-and-globalisation-in-

denmark/. The authors would like to thank the other project participants, Associate Professor Dorte Lønsmann, Professor Janus Mortensen, Assistant  Professor  Kamilla  Kraft  and  PhD  student  Marianne  Haugaard Skov,  as  well  as  the  project  advisory  board,  Nikolas  Coupland,  Sari Pietikäinen,  Jette  G.  Hansen  Edwards,  Tore  Kristiansen  and  Barbara Soukup, for their valuable input and fruitful comments on the analysis. We would  also  like  to  thank  two  anonymous  peer  reviewers  for  extremely valuable and constructive feedback and suggestions!

The article is the result of an equal collaboration between the two authors: Bent laid the groundwork for the study already in the 1990s, Jacob participated in the adjustment of the question wording in 2021-2022. Jacob provided  the  statistical  analyses,  and  we  discussed  the  interpretations together on several occasions. The article was essentially finalised when Bent passed away in the late summer of 2023, but he is not responsible for the final version of the article including some interpretations and the details in phrasing.

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