In the Presence of English: Media and European Youth

In the Presence of English: Media and European Youth is the realization of a project first conceived in 1991 in Hamburg, Germany where Uwe Hasebrink, Ewart Skinner, and Margie Berns, with their respective specializations in media studies, international communication, and world Englishes, met and discovered intersecting interests. In that meeting they sketched out plans for a questionnaire survey to be distributed in Hamburg schools that would investigate secondary school pupils access to and use of media, their access to and use of English, and their attitudes concerning these and related topics. A year later several hundred young people in selected schools completed the questionnaire. The findings from this initial investigation appeared in a book chapter by Hasebrink, Berns, and Skinner (1997) and were reported on at conferences in North America and Europe. Eventually Kees de Bot (The Netherlands) was inspired to join Berns and Hasebrink (Ewart Skinner had moved on to other projects). Eventually we decided to extend and refine the project by building upon its interdisciplinary and international potential. From this point on the study gained increasing momentum and scope and individual team members contributed variously to what became a major undertaking. The size and complexity of the project made it not only time intensive, but time extensive as well. With limited sources of financial support, progress was slow, at times arduous, and the gap between data collection and finished manuscript was greater than anticipated. Distribution of labor among us kept the task manageable.

Margie Berns is Professor of English as a Second Language and Director of the English as a Second Language Program. She also holds a faculty appointment in Language & Literacy in the School of Education. She has had guest professorships at the University of Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain; University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands; and Iowa State University. Her areas of specialization are languages of wider communication, language policy & planning, and second language teaching. Her current research focus is the sociolinguistic dimensions of English in Europe and South America. Her publications include articles and reviews appearing in World Englishes, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, and English Today. Her books include Contexts of Competence: Social and Cultural Considerations in Communicative Language Teaching (Plenum, 1990), Initiatives in Communicative Language Teaching (Addison-Wesley, 1984), and Initiatives in Communicative Language Teaching II (Addison Wesley, 1987. She regularly teaches courses in sociolinguistics and world Englishes. A member of the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE), International TESOL, and the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL), she has served IAWE as Conference & Program Chair and, currently, President; TESOL as Editorial Board Member; and AAAL as Conference & Program Chair, Member-at-Large, and as President.

Kees de Bot (PhD University of Nijmegen 1992) is Chair of Applied Linguistics and Director of the School of Language, Communication and Information science at the University of Nijmegen. His main current research interests are the psycholinguistics of bilingualism, language attrition and language loss, and language planning. He is interested in the role of English as a lingua franca in the European setting and particularly in the thread of English to mid-sized national languages like Dutch and the Nordic languges.

Dr. Uwe Hasebrink is Executive Manager and a Director of the Hans-Bredow-Institute for Radio and Television Institute for Media Research at the University of Hamburg and professor of Communications/Media Studies, University of Hamburg. Since his move to the Hans Bredow Institute Uwe Hasebrink has been responsible for numerous research projects, publications and conferences. Those activities were carried out in cooperation with, amongst others, public and private broadcasters in Germany and Switzerland, the German Ministries for Education and Science and for Inner Affairs, the European Commission, the European Broadcasting Union, the European Institute for the Media, the supervisory bodies for private broadcasting (Landesmedienanstalten). Since 1997 he is a consultant of the Strategic Information Service (SIS) of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). His main research interests and publications have been in the following areas: Individual patterns of media use, development of media use in Europe, the need for and the feasibility of a European Educational Television, programme quality and the public service function of broadcasting. Besides that, as a member of the Hans Bredow Institute, he is involved in the full range of activities of this institute. These include the edition of the research journal Rundfunk und Fernsehen (Radio and Television) and, every two years, the Internationales Handbuch für Hörfunk und Fernsehen, a comprehensive overview of the world’s media systems. Furthermore, these activities include research projects in other media-related areas (especially media law and economy), conferences and workshops as well as service functions towards broadcasters, politicians, and the public.