Language Use in Business and Commerce in Europe: Contributions to the Annual Conference 2008 of Efnil in Lisbon

The linguistic domains of business and commerce are especially affected by the economic and communicative globalization. Since language use in these domains has an impact on the use of a language in other domains, the future development of the European languages will not mainly depend on language-internal processes, but will increasingly be influenced by the use of English as the international vehicular language. The present development in Europe is discussed in several overview articles and a series of reports on the specific situation in various European countries. In addition, the Lisbon Resolution of EFNIL, pointing at the advantages of multilingualism in international business, is presented in 26 languages including the 23 official languages of the European Union. It calls the EU and its members to acknowledge languages as key factors for economic success, also from the perspective of consumers and workers.

The Editor: Gerhard Stickel is honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Mannheim. From 1976 to 2002 he was Director of the Institut für Deutsche Sprache, the central research institution for German. He was co-founder of the European Federation of National Institutions for Language (EFNIL) and has been president of this network of central language institutions of the EU states since 2003.