Language and Identity Practices among Multilingual Western European Youths

“The more languages, the more English.” These words were written by the Dutch sociologist Abram de Swaan (De Swaan, 2001:144). He sketched one of the possible linguistic outcomes in encounters between speakers of different languages in the European Union (EU), with its 28 member states and 24 official languages. In reality, next to the use of English as a lingua franca, many other scenarios have become common practice. Educated people have had the opportunity to learn standard languages, but there are other forms of multilingualism where less prestigious languages play a role (Jaspers, 2009). This article is dedicated to one of the highly creative ways young people express their identities in urban societies in a globalizing world, namely by expanding their linguistic repertoires using available languages or varieties.
In the EU, 24 official languages are spoken, in addition to numerous regional minority and immigrant languages. The number of languages of the "New Europeans", exceeds 250 and is thus much larger than the number of indigenous and officially recognized minority languages in the EU (about sixty). The distribution of these languages across the regions of Europe is very uneven. With regard to native languages, the ratio of diversity increases from west to east. In the case of immigrant languages, the distribution is exactly the opposite: the majority of immigrant languages are concentrated in the countries of Western Europe (Haarmann, 2011, individual countries not specified).