A demolinguistic and sociolinguistic approach to English in Luxembourg

Luxembourg’s steadily growing economy attracts many migrants from all over the globe. As a result, the country’s trilingualism is being replaced by a more complex multilingualism with a growing importance of English.
The paper gives a quick overview of the historic evolution based on sociolinguistic surveys of 1984, 1997 and 2008, followed by an in-depth description of today’s situation based on two language related questions of the Luxembourgish census 2011: Which language do you know the best? Which languages do you speak on a regular basis at home, at school and at work?
The census data tell how many people use English in different contexts and who these people are. The focus will be on the language situation at work. A correspondence analysis reveals strong correlations between languages and occupations reflecting a split of the labour market: English dominates in high skilled jobs in the private sector, whereas Portuguese is the main language in low skilled jobs in the private sector, and Luxembourgish is the main language in the public sector. French and German are used more evenly across all occupations and sectors. These results highlight the link between the use of languages and competing social positions.