Attitudes Towards English in Norway: A Corpus-Based Study of Attitudinal Expressions in Newspaper Discourse

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Attitudes towards English in Norway: A corpus-based study of attitudinal

expressions in newspaper discourse
Article in Multilingua · June 2014

DOI: 10.1515/multi-2014-0014
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DE GRUYTER MOUTON Multilingua 2014; 33(3–4): 291–312
Anne-Line Graedler
Attitudes towards English in Norway:
A corpus-based study of attitudinal
expressions in newspaper discourse
Abstract: This article explores some dimensions of how the role of the English
language in Norway has been discursively constructed in newspapers during
recent years, based on the analysis of data from the five-year period 2008–
2012. The analysis is conducted using a specialised corpus containing 3,743
newspaper articles which were subjected to corpus-based macro-analyses and
techniques, as well as manual micro-level analyses and categorisation. The
main focus of the analysis is on the manifestation of attitudes through various
ways of expression, such as the occurrence of lexical sequences and conceptual
metaphors related to language. The results show that even though positive
perceptions of English were quite frequent in the data, the main part consisted
of expressions where English is seen in a negative light. Hence, a fairly negative
attitude towards the role of English is predominant, as illustrated by the most
frequent conceptual metaphor, language is an invading force, where En-
glish is at war with and seen as representing a threat to the Norwegian lan-
guage.
Keywords: language attitudes, English, Norwegian, newspaper discourse, cor-

pus analysis
DOI 10.1515/multi-2014-0014
1 Introduction
This article explores some dimensions of how the role of the English language
in Norway has been discursively constructed in newspapers during recent
years, using corpus-based methods as a point of departure. The study is based
on the analysis of data from the period 2008–2012, extracted from the media
archive ATEKST (2013). The main focus of the analysis is on the manifestation
Anne-Line Graedler, Hedmark University College, Norway, E-mail: anneline.graedler@hihm.no
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of attitudes through various means of expression, such as the occurrence of

lexical sequences and conceptual metaphors related to language.
First, some background information is presented with respect to the situa-
tion of English in Norway today, and the linguistic climate. Then there follows
an account of the data and methods applied in the study. The findings and
results are presented and discussed, and then used as a basis for the identifica-
tion of attitudinal tendencies in the material.
2 Background: English in Norway

Norway has two official languages, Norwegian and Sami, of which Norwegian
is dominant, and the first language of the majority of the population. In addi-
tion to the official languages, Norwegian sign language and several other na-
tional minority languages are recognised in present-day Norway, alongside new
immigrants’ languages. The English language has been present to some extent
since the technical and industrial revolution, when it was used in connection
with maritime life and trade with English-speaking nations. However, until the
mid-20th century only a small part of the population were exposed to and profi-
cient in English. Since World War II exposure to the English language has
steadily increased through various channels such as education, travel and
tourism, television, movies and popular music, magazines and books, and the
Internet.
English was introduced in some schools as early as the 1860s, but did
not become a compulsory subject in the public school system until the 1960s.
Traditionally, it has been considered a foreign language, but the most recent
national curriculum (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training 2006)
implicitly challenges the traditional categories by presenting a new three-way
distinction between the students’ first language, English, and all other foreign
languages. English is now introduced to pupils at a pre-literate stage, and liter-
acy in English develops alongside the development of literacy in the pupils’
first language. Recent surveys rank Norway among the top nations with the
highest English proficiency level (e.g., EF Education 2012), but it does not have
any official status.
From the earliest contact, English loanwords have found their way into the
Norwegian vocabulary. The bulk of loanwords have come after the Second
World War, and several studies have attempted to measure the impact of En-
glish on Norwegian (see Graedler 2012). One of the most recent studies was part
of the inter-Nordic umbrella project Modern import words in the languages in

DE GRUYTER MOUTON Attitudes towards English in Norway 293
the Nordic countries (MIN), and it measured the frequency of English loanwords
in newspaper texts from the year 2000. The Norwegian texts in the project
contained 88 loanwords per 10,000 words of running text (Selback 2007: 61),
a higher frequency than in any of the other Nordic language communities
(Graedler and Kvaran 2010: 34).
Another result of influence is so-called domain loss (Haberland 2005),
where the use of English has become so dominant in certain areas or usage
domains that Norwegian has been said to lose its status, such as in academic
prose (see Soler-Carbonell this issue; Kuteeva and McGrath this issue), pop
music lyrics and lifestyle advertising. At present, this aspect of English influ-
ence is the main concern among Norwegian language policy makers:
Previously the concern was focused on English loanwords. An intermediate form is code-
switching, longer elements of English expressions in Norwegian, typical of youth lan-
guage. These can be omens, but domain loss, a full transition to English within a linguis-
tic domain of usage or function, is what represents the great danger to the Norwegian
language today. (Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs 2008a; my translation)
3 The linguistic climate

Linguistic climate is a concept that frequently occurs in discussions of public
attitudes and political discourse concerning language policy and change in the
Nordic countries (e.g., Venås 1986; Omdal 1999; Thøgersen 2004; Duncker
2009). The concept is usually associated with situational factors related to lan-
guage use and its social position, but often lacks a clear and consistent defini-
tion. As Omdal (1999: 5) points out, deciding which factors are perceived as
most important for the linguistic climate among language users represents a
challenge. In one of the research reports from the MIN project (mentioned
above), the concept is construed as encompassing both language-related and
more general ideological identities related to politics, individualism, etc., and
social factors like gender, income level or place of origin. Further, the linguistic
climate is viewed as a set of “pre-packed opinions” which have crystallised and
which one can be for or against (Kristiansen and Vikør 2006: 214).
In what follows, two interrelated facets of the more general linguistic cli-
mate have been chosen as an interpretative backdrop for the data in the study:
official language policy on the one hand, and linguistic awareness in the popu-
lation on the other.

3.1 Official language policy

Language policy is connected to the establishment and maintenance of lan-
guage standards, which may be seen as ideological processes that affect lan-
guage users’ perception of language and normative or prescriptive practices
(Woolard 1998: 21; Milroy and Milroy 1999). This may indirectly affect the way
language users perceive, for instance, English lexical elements in Norwegian.
Features of language contact are often linked with a purist approach to
language. Linguistic purism covers a range of aspects, and with regard to Nor-
wegian, socio-historical changes are considered to have affected the develop-
ment of both formal aspects of the language (morphological and derivational
standards, vocabulary choice, etc.) and language users’ implicit and explicit
assumptions about language in general (Brunstad 2001: 413; Vikør 2010: 20–
23). When the Norwegian language developed into a discrete – standardised –
entity after a long period of Danish rule (1380–1814), it was codified in two
closely related written varieties which received equal official status in 1885,
Bokmål and Nynorsk (see, e.g., Vikør 2001). The Nynorsk community has tradi-
tionally been considered the more purist and less willing to accept words of
foreign origin, since it was based on a nationalist ideology that in principle
excluded any foreign lexical elements (Vikør 2010: 22–23). However, the main
advocate for the precursor of Bokmål in the nineteenth century, Knud Knudsen,
also promoted strong purist views. As mentioned in Section 2, the main focus
of present-day Norwegian language policy in relation to foreign language influ-
ence is expressed through the term domain loss, something that may appear to
be a shift in perspective from a purist ideology to a more knowledge-based
approach to linguistic change (Salö 2013).
Recognition and acceptance of linguistic diversity is another aspect of Nor-
wegian language policy that might affect language attitudes and potentially
generate “enormous societal tolerance for linguistic diversity” in the language
community (Trudgill 2002: 31). No official norm for spoken Norwegian exists,
and local dialects have a high status and are promoted and used in most as-
pects of society. In addition, until recently both of the official written standards
contained a wide variety of optional forms related to orthography and inflec-
tional endings (Language Council of Norway 2012).
3.2 Linguistic awareness

The notion of linguistic climate has also been related to language users’ aware-
ness or consciousness of language (referred to in what follows as linguistic

awareness) as a result of historical, socio-cultural and sociolinguistic factors.

This form of awareness can cover a wide range of aspects, such as “language
purism, pro-neologism, pro-dialect sentiments, anti-English sentiments, etc.”
(Thøgersen 2004: 24–25). The Norwegian language community has been de-
scribed as linguistically aware partly as a result of the socio-historical develop-
ment of Norwegian. According to Thøgersen, in the Nordic region, language
communities’ linguistic awareness correlates with purism towards English in
the sense that language users who are more aware of their own use of language
and of official language policy also tend to favour their “language of identity”
and avoid foreign influence (cf. Gnutzmann et al this issue). Thøgersen cites
Lund’s (1986: 35) ranking of the Nordic countries according to their linguistic
awareness: the Faroes – Norway – Swedish-Finland – Finland – Sweden –
Denmark (Thøgersen 2004: 25). In this context, Norway tends towards the more
linguistically aware end of the scale, and, as a consequence, is more purist and
less accepting of foreign linguistic influence.
4 Language attitudes
As indicated in the title, this study attempts to disclose underlying attitudes
based on language data from newspapers. Attitudes are commonly defined as
people’s positive or negative opinions or feelings about something and will
here be related to the expression of perceptions of the English language in a
Norwegian linguistic context, and of the role of English in Norwegian language
society.
Attitudes can be both explicit and implicit, as illustrated by two of the sub-
projects in the Nordic MIN project (mentioned above), one of which was a
survey investigation where language users express their attitudes towards En-
glish through an opinion poll (Kristiansen and Vikør 2006), while the other
was a matched-guise test attempting to expose the informants’ subconscious
attitudes (Kristiansen 2006). Interestingly, these two projects produced conflict-
ing results: “Norway and Swedish-speaking Finland change from being the
champions of consciously expressed English-negativity into the most English-
positive of the communities in the subconscious condition” (Kristiansen 2010:
86). This apparent contradiction between implicit and explicit attitudes among
Norwegian language users provides an interesting setting for the present study,
which will supplement the MIN project results with data based on public ex-
pressions related to English.
From a research point of view, newspapers represent an important channel
for linguistic exploration (Crystal 2003: 3; Andersen and Hofland 2012). They

also contribute to making issues of language and language use visible in the
public sphere and are presumed to play a substantial role in the expression
and mediation of a society’s language attitudes (Blommaert and Verschueren
1998; Duncker 2009). Although general views and conceptions are conveyed
by journalists (and editors), Norwegian newspapers are traditionally seen as
mediators of public opinion, in addition to being open to readers’ contributions
in the form of letters to the editor and feature articles. The number of different
Norwegian print media and the rate of readership are both relatively high, and
around 550–600 copies are sold per 1,000 inhabitants (Østbye 2010). Therefore,
a newspaper corpus was chosen as the basis for uncovering attitudes towards
the English language.
5 Methods
In accordance with principles for corpus research as a form of cyclical proce-
dure (Biber 1993; Baker et al. 2008), a pilot project was carried out in order to
identify relevant points of interest and adjust research parameters according to
the practical limitations of the material. A ten-year period (2001–2010) was cho-
sen as the observation period for the pilot study, and after searches based on
various query terms, a limited selection of articles was extracted for more in-
depth analysis of the expression of attitudes. The findings in the pilot study
confirmed that the corpus linguistic approach was an effective method for ex-
tracting relevant data and identifying key lexical expressions and categories
that are used in texts dealing with the topic in question. The study also gave
clear indications that a sifting of the material to create an even more focused
corpus would produce clearer and more relevant results.
5.1 Data collection

The data used in this research are a corpus of newspaper articles collected from
the media archive ATEKST, which at the beginning of 2013 comprised more
than 300 million articles and has a growth of approximately 80,000 articles per
day (Magne Eggen, personal communication, March 8, 2013). The media archive
includes most of the Norwegian newspapers with the largest circulation, and
both national and regional newspapers of different political leanings. However,
very few of the smaller local newspapers have been present in the archive until
recent years. Several previous studies indicate that attitudes towards English
differ somewhat depending upon sociolinguistic factors related to urban/rural

Table 1: Newspapers included in the study.
Newspaper Circulation 2011 Newspaper type
Aftenposten 235,795 national

VG 211,588
Dagbladet 98,989
Dagens Næringsliv 82,595
Morgenbladet 26,365
Vårt Land 24,448
Klassekampen 15,390
Nationen 12,824
Bergens Tidende 79,467 regional

Adresseavisen 71,657
StavangerAftenblad 63,283
Fædrelandsvennen 36,604
Nordlys 23,627
Romerikes Blad 31,897 local

Byavisa Tønsberg 28,000
Trønder-Avisa 21,975
Agderposten 21,262
Harstad Tidende 11,587
iTromsø 8,304
Altaposten 4,923
Fanaposten 4,681
Brønnøysunds Avis 3,955
Eikerbladet 2,792
Bygdebladet 2,691
life and central/peripheral regions (Ljung 1985; Selback and Kristiansen 2006).
Hence, the wide variety of local newspapers in Norway might represent atti-
tudes and opinions that are less frequently expressed in the larger national
newspapers. The data were therefore drawn from eight national, five regional
and eleven local newspapers published during the five-year period 2008–2012
(Table 1). In contrast, a study of images of English in the French press (Deneire
2012) concludes that “[l]anguage questions are heavily present in the national
press but not in the regional press”, which may reflect the variety in press
culture in different parts of Europe (see, e.g., Elvestad and Blekesaune 2008).
5.2 Compilation of a sub-corpus

While some searches were possible using the ATEKST interface, a sub-corpus
was compiled for further investigation, using specific query terms based on the

Table 2: Size of the sub-corpus.
No. of articles No. of words
National newspapers 2,062 2,732,675

Regional newspapers 1,156 1,289,716
Local newspapers 525 767,560
Total 3,743 4,789,951
results of the pilot study. The compilation of a representative and reliable cor-
pus from a large and varied amount of text requires carefully considered criteria
for text extraction and will in any case result in a “trade-off ... between a corpus
that can be deemed incomplete, and one which contains noise (i.e. irrelevant
texts)” (Gabrielatos 2007: 6).
For the extraction of texts that deal with the role of English in Norway, the
obvious query term is engelsk* (‘English’), which returned 64,831 hits (i.e. arti-
cles) from the newspapers chosen. In the process of narrowing down the mate-
rial, norsk* (‘Norwegian’) was used as another query term, since the relevant
texts tend to deal with the relationship between the two languages. Both en-
gelsk* and norsk*, however, are slightly problematic in this respect since they
function as adjectives merely referring to nationality (and other things, such as
the dog breed English Setter), in addition to adjectival and nominal reference
to the languages. For this reason, the query term språk (‘language’) was added
to increase the relevance. Lastly, a decision was made to remove a batch of
irrelevant texts by excluding 5,458 of the articles containing the word fotball*
(‘football’). The final search string: engelsk* norsk* AND (språk OR sprog) AND-
NOT fotball* resulted in a total of 3,743 articles, with a distribution as shown
in Table 2.
5.3 Data analysis

The first steps of the sub-corpus processing involved macro-analyses and tech-
niques generating linguistic information and lexical patterns in the form of
concordance lists, word frequencies, collocates, clusters and keywords, by the
use of the program WordSmith Tools 6 (Scott 2013). The findings generated by
the corpus tools then underwent manual micro-level analyses and categorisa-
tion based on the content of the text extracts.
Although the extraction of relevant data is carried out using corpus analy-
sis tools, quantitative results have not been given particularly strong emphasis

in this study. Only some aspects of the multifaceted material are discussed and
analysed, and figures and percentages could easily change on the inclusion of
other aspects in the analysis. However, the attempt at identifying public atti-
tudes in the material makes the consideration of dominant tendencies a key
issue.
6 Findings
The following section presents some of the results from various forms of analy-
ses based on the newspaper corpus. Several aspects of the data have been
chosen for analysis, but special focus is devoted to two aspects, viz. co-textual
patterns and conceptual metaphors. The patterns that co-occur with the core
query term engelsk*, including verb constructions, adjectives, etc., give an indi-
cation of ways in which the English language is represented in the texts. The
metaphorical expressions that are used to describe the languages involved pro-
vide further documentation of underlying attitudes towards the role of English.
Before approaching these two focus areas, some other aspects of the corpus
texts will be discussed.
6.1 Newspaper focus on English during 2008–2012

One of the initial aims of this project was to determine to what extent Norwe-
gian newspapers devote space to the issues of English in Norway and English
influence on Norwegian. Based on previous research on the impact of English
(see Graedler 2012), a possible hypothesis would be that the focus on the En-
glish language in newspapers has increased. A frequency analysis of occurren-
ces of the query term engelsk* in the pilot project suggested that interest in the
topic had been fairly stable during the ten-year period 2001–2010, with some
variations that could be associated with identifiable external criteria such as
the launching of official language policy documents (Language Council of Nor-
way 2005; Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs 2008b). As shown in Figure
1, the number of hits of the query term engelsk* somewhat surprisingly de-
creased during the five-year period 2008–2012, which might indicate that inter-
est in the topic is on the wane.
However, since this probe includes uses of the word in all possible textual
contexts, the results in Figure 1 do not indicate very much about the actual
focus on the role of English during these years.

Figure 1: Frequency of the query term engelsk*.
The application of the corpus concordancer (Scott 2013) returned a list of

11,745 occurrences of the query term engelsk*. A manual analysis of the con-
cordance list resulted in the deletion of a large number of occurrences, such as
texts containing descriptions of specific persons or countries, reports about
various aspects of English as a school subject, book and film reviews, articles
about translation and the international book market, about English word forms
and their etymology, etc. Only those occurrences were kept where the textual
context indicated relevant topics, either of the whole or parts of the text in
question. As a result of the removal of irrelevant articles, a specialised corpus
containing 3,014 occurrences remained for analysis.
6.2 Lexical characteristics of the chosen texts

The texts kept for further analysis all deal with some aspect of the role of
English in Norway. In order to detect specific lexical characteristics of these
texts, a keyword analysis was conducted using WordSmith 6. Keyword analyses
compare selected texts with a larger reference corpus and identify lexical items
that occur with a high frequency in the selected texts, compared to the refer-
ence corpus. In this study, the specialised corpus was compared to a reference
corpus consisting of all kinds of newspaper articles, downloaded from the same
source (ATEKST). Table 3 presents the words that occurred in the list of the 100
most frequent keywords from the specialised corpus, after the deletion of the
query terms (English, Norwegian, language) and a number of grammatical func-
tion words.1
As expected, some of the keywords are meta-linguistic terms that enable
the description and discussion of language (Category 1). Although most of them
1 All translations of the lexical data from the Norwegian newspaper corpus are mine.

Table 3: Keyword categories.
1 Meta-linguistic terms word(s), the words, the word, expression, texts, loan-
word(s), dialect, communication, written language
2 Words related to the expression say(s), think (= be of the opinion), continual/
of opinions and attitudes incessant, adequate (of full value), think (= believe)
3 Words related to Norwegian the Language Council, the Language Council’s, the
language policy language policy report, language policy, domain
loss, personal names that reference various
language policy makers
4 Words related to language Nynorsk, the mother tongue, mother tongue, Bokmål,
standards and national identity the Bokmål, Norway (Nynorsk word form), foreign
language, Norwegians, internationalization, foreign,
Latin, German, English (English word form)
5 Words related to usage domains technical language, academia, trade and industry,
artists, teaching language, domain loss, subject(s)
6 Words related to the usage of sing, sings, students, the students, the usage,
English usage, use, uses, speak(s), write, example, teach/
learn, master(s), v.
are general and not very advanced, the specific term loanword indicates a form
of linguistic awareness where the standard national language is perceived as
an immutable structure that may be affected by vocabulary from other lan-
guages. The keywords in Category 2 are more specifically related to the expres-
sion of opinions and attitudes, and include some reporting verbs and qualita-
tive adjectives.
Furthermore, again not surprisingly, a number of the keywords are linked
to language policy documents or authorities (Category 3). Names have a ten-
dency to occur in keyword lists, and this list contains names of Language Coun-
cil directors as well as a minister who oversaw one of the recent national lan-
guage policy reports. The prominence of the term domain loss, like loanword,
may be seen as an indication of linguistic awareness, but is first and foremost
heavily associated with language policy documents, where this is one of the
focus areas (cf. the quote in Section 2).
The significance of the conception of language as a carrier of national iden-
tity is clearly visible in the keyword list. Category 4 contains several terms
denoting varieties of language standards (e.g. Bokmål, German) as well as ex-
pressions related to national identity (e.g. mother tongue, foreign language).
Finally, the keywords in Category 5 are related to usage domains that are
specifically associated with the use of English, which shows that discussions
tend to focus on those specific domains in particular. Category 6 consists of
several verbs and some other words related to the use of the English language:

singing, speaking, writing, mastering another language, or words that are associ-
ated with education (e.g., students, teach/learn). Although the keywords give
an indication of the focus areas in the selected texts, they do not signal any
specific language attitudinal tendencies on behalf of the newspaper writers.
6.3 Perceptions of the English language

In the pilot study, frequent word clusters reflected some information similar to
Category 6 in Table 3, about the usage of English, and a highly frequent two-
word string (... that English ...) indicated that a large part of the texts contained
allegations and claims about the English language. In the specialised corpus
for the main study, however, the ubiquity of the query terms made cluster
analysis more problematic and less informative because of the predominance
of clusters such as Norwegian and English or in English and. For this reason
analyses based on concordance lists were preferred in the pursuit of expres-
sions of language attitude.
The discursive patterns used in connection with engelsk* indicate a number
of underlying perceptions of the role of English. One type of example that may
serve as an illustration of this is the pattern in which the core word is followed
by a verbal construction. This results in statements of the kind displayed in
Table 4. The categories are ranked according to size; however, since not every
occurrence of the pattern displays evidence of perceptions of English, and sev-
eral examples are borderline cases, only an approximate percentage is included
in the table.
As Table 4 shows, the largest category (Category 1) contains statements
where English is described and perceived as an expanding language, often in
the process of taking over important usage domains in Norway, or even in
the entire world. Several of the statements contain predictions about future
developments, and most of these have a negative slant where English is fre-
quently seen as an invading force, for example, English has forced its way in
everywhere. Statements about the increasing use of English in various contexts
tend to be more neutrally expressed, for example, English will become a natural
second working language.
Another large category (Category 2) contains statements that mention spe-
cific usage areas where English is increasing or dominant, such as academia,
finance, the oil industry, culture and net-based communication. The same areas
tend to recur in many of the statements, and the focus is on English as a
language that takes over domains previously covered by Norwegian. Again, the
majority of the statements occur in negatively biased texts. In some cases the

Table 4: Categories based on the core word engelsk* + a verbal construction.
The role of English Examples
1 as an expanding language English makes itself increasingly assertive

(≈ 23 %) English will become a first language
English pushes its way forward
2 as predominant in various English is young people’s net language
usage domains English is the international medical language these days
(≈ 19 %) English takes over vulnerable domains
3 as superior to Norwegian English is a much richer language than Norwegian
(≈ 16 %) English is more figurative than the Norwegian languages
4 as a world language English has become a universal language
(≈ 12 %) English is our days’ Latin
5 as a dominant language English is the number one language
(≈ 11 %) English is in a unique position
6 as a negative or English is the main threat to the Norwegian language
destructive force (≈ 8 %) English takes over and ruins other languages
7 as a natural language English is a language that feels natural
(≈ 7 %) English is not a problem
8 as an essential resource English will remain important
(≈ 4 %) English is an indispensable means of communication
role of the varieties of Norwegian is perceived as slightly different, as in exam-

ple (1). Here, the description of how English affects the two written standards
in different ways is used as a rationale for the persisting strength and useful-
ness of the minority standard Nynorsk:
(1) ... Bokmål is more exposed to anglicisation than Nynorsk ... The reason
is that English has become a working language primarily in areas that
used to belong to Bokmål, for instance trade and industry. Also, Nynorsk
has not been used much in research. So to all those who thought that
Nynorsk was on its way out: The position of Nynorsk is as strong as it
was thirty years ago, while the use of Bokmål decreases. (Berg 2008)
As shown in Category 4, many of the articles in the material describe English

as a world language, dominant in international communication, or as a lingua
franca on a par with or surpassing the previous role of Latin in academic cir-
cles. Category 5 contains more biased statements that focus on the omnipotence
of English, both globally and with particular focus on Norwegian users, for
example, English has been given an enormous influence on all groups of the
population. Again, the perception of English as a – mainly negative – dominant
force lies at the basis of several of these statements.

A number of statements contain more specific descriptions of English as a

negative or destructive force (Category 6). English is characterised using adjec-
tives such as contagious, deceitful, forcible, frightening and undermining, and
personified as an enemy, a scoundrel and a troll. Verbs denoting various aspects
of damage and destruction are applied in these statements, for example, English
inflicts (fear), beats, threatens, takes over and ruins (languages), will destroy
and is about to kill (Norwegian). Several of these statements are undoubtedly
emphatic expressions of attitudes towards the role of English. However, on
closer inspection the more intense style of expression is often found in articles
with opposing or more nuanced attitudes, where word combinations like the
ones mentioned above are disregarded or disparaged, as in example (2):
(2) Many people will assume that the horrible English is the frightening
thing for Norwegian. But English in itself is not the problem ... (Hauglid
2010)
At the other end of the range are expressions that characterise English as an
essential resource in present-day Norway, and as a language that is practical,
obvious and an everyday language for Norwegian language users (Categories 7
and 8). Several of these expressions appear in articles about a new generation
of young fictional writers, and about Norwegian songwriters who write English
lyrics, and who convey a stronger sense of familiarity with English than Norwe-
gian, for example, English is the language I feel most at home with as a song-
writer.
The relatively large Category 3 contains expressions with an even more
positive attitudinal approach towards English as a superior language, especial-
ly in relation to Norwegian. There are more than twice as many statements here
as in the “opposing” category of English as a negative or destructive force
(Category 6). A range of characterising adjectives describe English not just as
generally very good (cool, great, fantastic, fun, interesting), but as qualitatively
superior in many ways (figurative, melodious, precise, rich, softer, sophisticated),
as more up to date (fashionable, hip, in, modern, trendy) and as a handy tool
for communication (easy, simple). Compared to the negative statements of En-
glish as a negative or destructive force, Category 3 lacks personifications of
English as a superior being, but includes some verbs that express the ways in
which English is superior to Norwegian, for example, English functions (better),
enables us (to communicate with more people), sounds (good/better/cooler than
Norwegian), etc. As is the case with the strong negative statements, some of
the positive expressions occur in articles where different attitudes are dis-

cussed, but most of them appear as direct reflections of the speaker or writer’s
attitude towards English (and Norwegian).
To sum up, the patterns in the material show both negative, positive and
more neutral perceptions of the English language. The largest category of state-
ments (Category 1) refer to English as an expanding force which dominates in
many fields, both related to usage domains and geographical areas. Some of
these statements do not contain particularly negative elements, but the catego-
ry as a whole has a distinct slant towards a negative perception of English,
and, in combination with the more pronounced Category 6, where English is
perceived as a negative and destructive force, count for more than half of the
total. However, a substantial number of statements (around one third) are not
particularly negative, and numerous statements can be placed at the opposite
end of the scale where English is perceived in a very positive way.
6.4 Conceptualization of language through metaphors

Conceptual metaphors are used to describe one conceptual domain in terms of
another conceptual domain (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Kövecses 2002) and pro-
vide another strategy for discovering underlying attitudes in discourse. Political
discourse is often about convincing others by appealing to their emotions,
which may be reflected in the use of conceptual metaphors. Metaphors can also
be used to simplify complex issues, since they tend to emphasise one aspect of
the situation, but may play down or hide others (Duncker 2009).
The material in the present study contains several conceptual metaphors
used to describe languages and relationships between them, as illustrated in
Table 5. Some of the metaphors relate to language in general, whereas others
are used to render concrete the specific nature of only one language (English
or Norwegian).
The anthropomorphic conceptualisation of language (language is a hu-
man being) is one of the fundamental ways of describing languages in the
Western world, and can be traced back to the beginning of recorded history
(Watts 2011: 12–13). In the present data the use of this metaphor contributes
towards clarifying the conflicts between English, which takes the role of an evil
and malignant human being, and Norwegian, which is conceived of as vulnera-
ble and wretched, a victim of various kinds of ill treatment. Another traditional
language metaphor is also from the organic source domain, language is a
plant (cf. Watts 2011: 15). The next metaphor in Table 5, language is a com-
modity, is the prototypical metaphor related to language contact situations,
where language is seen as a product that may be borrowed, imported and ex-
ported.

Table 5: Conceptual metaphors.
Conceptual metaphor Examples
language is a human the fight for Norwegian as a living language

being they embrace the Norwegian language
Norwegian is being offended
English is the great scoundrel / has crawled ashore in Norway /
sneaks in through the back door
English words force their way in and strangle Norwegian words
English is about to kill Norwegian
If Norwegian is put in the grave ...
language is a plant [English is] gout weed in the garden. I want to weed it out
Norwegian dialects blossom in the young people’s SMS language
language is a English import words, English loanwords
commodity the most important import harbour for the English language
English has not been the sole exporter to Norwegian
language is water they open all dams for English loanwords
Norwegian is being watered down by English words
English pours in over the country
the Norwegian wave that rolls over the town
language is a fragile the Norwegian language must be reinforced / developed /
construction maintained / taken care of / tended / defended / treasured
language is an to litter our language with English words and expressions
environment tried to pollute our mother tongue
substantial linguistic pollution
language is an to raise barriers against English loanwords
invading force to protect the Norwegian language against English
the Norwegian language warriors
invasion of English into Norwegian
English gains ground in more and more areas, Norwegian loses
ground
Many languages suffer from linguistic occupation.
Norwegian language is a powerless victim
English is a part of a linguistic liberation
English is the main enemy / has forced its way in everywhere /
rules the world
One of the classical elements serves as another source domain in the data:
language is water. While often exemplified by highly frequent expressions
related to language fluency, the water metaphors in the present material are
much more dramatic, and describe language (usually English) as a large wave
or stream flowing in uncontrolled motion, resulting in flooding or even drown-
ing, and requiring damming to protect another language (usually Norwegian),
often conceptualised as pristine or fertile land.

In the continuation of this, several metaphors describe Norwegian as a

fragile construction that needs to be maintained and protected from possible
damage caused by English. A similar metaphor is described by Duncker (2009:
76), language is a building, where language decay is seen as one of the main
results of language contact.
Another way of conceiving of the destruction of language is the metaphor
language is an environment (cf. Duncker 2009). From this point of view
language is seen as a pure ambience (Norwegian) which is polluted, contami-
nated and eventually broken down as a result of influence from another lan-
guage (English). In the 1990s this conceptual domain was exploited by the
Norwegian Language Council which launched the “Campaign for the Environ-
mental Protection of Language”, a metaphor that triggered reactions from sev-
eral linguists (e.g. Hovdhaugen 1990).
The main conceptual domain for metaphorical expressions of the relation-
ship between English and Norwegian is war: language is an invading force.
This metaphor has also been in use for a long time; after the second world war
influence from English received increasing attention in Norway, and during the
1960s, English influence was depicted as a linguistic “invasion” (Hellevik 1963:
9, 15). This relationship is also reflected in the expressions discussed in Section
6.3 above, where the perception of English as a negative or destructive force is
one of the distinct categories. This conceptual domain overlaps with the under-
lying domain language is a human being, since fighting and warfare is basi-
cally carried out by humans.
An interesting deviant example is English is a part of a linguistic liberation,
where the co-text is related to the introduction of English in Norwegian society
after the Second World War. The conclusion, however, clearly indicated by the
examples in Table 5, is that the conceptual metaphors in the newspaper texts
show a strong tendency to see English as a threat to Norwegian.
7 Conclusions
In this article, I have looked at the expression of attitudes towards English in
Norwegian society through examining discursive patterns in newspaper texts
that can be connected to language perception. One of the main inspirations for
this study was the diverging results of a previous investigation of Norwegian
attitudes towards English (the MIN project, see Kristiansen 2010), where explicit
and implicit attitudes appeared to be in conflict. The results of the present
study showed that while the core query term engelsk* occurs in many different

textual contexts, a substantial part of the sub-corpus compiled for the study
did indeed contain occurrences in discourse where the term reflects attitudes
towards the role of English.
In Section 3 the notion of linguistic climate, including official Norwegian
language policy, was introduced as potentially relevant for language users’ atti-
tudes towards English in present-day Norway. A keyword analysis of the sub-
corpus (Table 3) indicated that official language policy documents and state-
ments often set the lexical standard for the way this topic is dealt with in
newspaper articles. Other findings suggest that there may be a disjuncture be-
tween policy and practice, such as the categories in Table 4 where perceptions
of English as a superior language are expressed twice as often as the conflicting
perceptions of English as a negative force. But the main results from the analy-
sis show that a fairly negative attitude toward the role of English is predomi-
nant, which can be said to concur with both the main trend in official language
policy documents, and with the classification of Norwegian language users as
linguistically aware and therefore engaged in “protecting” their own language.
The most frequent conceptual metaphor in the material is language is an
invading force, where English is at war with Norwegian, and seen as repre-
senting a threat to the Norwegian language.
While the point of departure for the analysis is lexical items with explicit
subject-related content, the data may also be said to reflect some general ideo-
logical trends from a more overarching perspective. There are various manifes-
tations of attitudes that reflect linguistic conservatism and purism. One is the
perception of English as a destructive force that breaks down the Norwegian
language by causing (basically) lexical damage. Another is the metaphorical
discourse where English is seen as contaminating the pure Norwegian language
in various ways, both lexically and structurally, but also with respect to loss of
entire usage domains to English. Linguistic purism is inherently related to a
nationalist ideology, and foreign language sources are often perceived as a
social or political threat, in addition to the linguistic danger. Keeping the lan-
guage free of foreign elements may be seen as a way of maintaining and sup-
porting national identity.
The data do not contain much concrete evidence of English influence being
seen as a pluralistic phenomenon. Although most Norwegians see their country
as an egalitarian society with small social inequalities, even compared to other
Scandinavian countries, this does not seem to affect linguistic attitudes towards
English. However, there are many examples of positive attitudes towards En-
glish where it is perceived as a positive or superior linguistic resource. Here,
the underlying ideology of the discourse can be seen as related to English as a
world language with prestigious value. In this global perspective Norwegian

may be regarded as a small minority language located on the geographical

margin, on a par with vernacular languages with no communicative value out-
side the tribe.
While several different but interrelated ideological trends are detectable in
the data, the main trend is language endangerment, which is manifested as
concerns that Norwegian is being undermined or is on its way to becoming
extinct (see also Linn 2010). This ideological trend also to some extent perme-
ates the main aim of contemporary language policy, which is to secure the
position of Norwegian as a fully adequate means of communication in Norwe-
gian society (Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs 2008b). This policy state-
ment is connected both to the role of Norwegian in an increasingly globalised
world, and to the role that the English language plays in Norway as a result of
globalisation. As confirmed in the quote in Section 2, lexical borrowing in itself
was previously seen as a potential threat to the language from a language
political perspective. The concern that loanwords may affect the future of Nor-
wegian is still evident in some fairly recent official documents, where the in-
crease in the volume of loanwords is regarded as a warning sign of a potentially
negative development (e.g., Ministry of Labour and Government Administration
2003: 46; Language Council of Norway 2005: 14; Ministry of Culture and Church
Affairs 2008b: 94).
This study is by no means complete or conclusive, and opens up several
other approaches and research avenues within the same problem area and
based on the same data. Some further research is planned in order to uncover
potential variations in the source material, such as a comparison of attitudes
as expressed in different newspaper genres, specifically editorial versus inde-
pendent texts, including letters to the editor, which represent writers with dif-
ferent roles and objectives. Another approach would be a comparison of discur-
sive constructions among different newspaper types. The interest here could
potentially lie in the political affiliations of the newspapers, but may also be
related to the variation between national, regional and local newspapers.
An interesting question that has not been considered in this paper is wheth-
er there are differences between the attitudes expressed by users of the two
written standards, Bokmål and Nynorsk. The historical and sociolinguistic back-
ground of the two standards is somewhat different, and, as mentioned in Sec-
tion 3.1, Nynorsk tends to be associated with a more purist view of language.
The ideological focus may also be linked to the role of Nynorsk as a minority
standard with strong links to regional dialects and formal characteristics associ-
ated with specifically rural traditional forms.
Lastly, since this study is restricted to newspapers published in the written
format, a new large-scale search for the media expression of attitudes and lan-

guage ideology should include other forms such as audio-visual and net-based
media.
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Attitudes towards English in Norway: A corpus-based study of attitudinal

Article in Multilingua · June 2014

English in Europe View project

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Keywords: language attitudes, English, Norwegian, newspaper discourse, cor-

Anne-Line Graedler, Hedmark University College, Norway, E-mail: anneline.graedler@hihm.no

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of attitudes through various means of expression, such as the occurrence of

2 Background: English in Norway

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3 The linguistic climate

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3.1 Official language policy

3.2 Linguistic awareness

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awareness) as a result of historical, socio-cultural and sociolinguistic factors.

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5.1 Data collection

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Table 1: Newspapers included in the study.

Newspaper Circulation 2011 Newspaper type

Aftenposten 235,795 national

Bergens Tidende 79,467 regional

Romerikes Blad 31,897 local

5.2 Compilation of a sub-corpus

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Table 2: Size of the sub-corpus.

No. of articles No. of words

National newspapers 2,062 2,732,675

Total 3,743 4,789,951

5.3 Data analysis

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6.1 Newspaper focus on English during 2008–2012

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Figure 1: Frequency of the query term engelsk*.

The application of the corpus concordancer (Scott 2013) returned a list of

6.2 Lexical characteristics of the chosen texts

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Table 3: Keyword categories.

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6.3 Perceptions of the English language

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Table 4: Categories based on the core word engelsk* + a verbal construction.

The role of English Examples

1 as an expanding language English makes itself increasingly assertive

role of the varieties of Norwegian is perceived as slightly different, as in exam-

As shown in Category 4, many of the articles in the material describe English

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A number of statements contain more specific descriptions of English as a

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6.4 Conceptualization of language through metaphors

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Table 5: Conceptual metaphors.

Conceptual metaphor Examples

language is a human the fight for Norwegian as a living language

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In the continuation of this, several metaphors describe Norwegian as a

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may be regarded as a small minority language located on the geographical

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