Hør dog hvad de siger - Note-to-Self: Trials & Errors

ned, I believe they translate more; that’s my prejudices again. Finland, they hide away
all the way over there… [Inf27, 41.00].
In all excerpts we see how the amount of English in a language is arrived at through estima-
ting how modern, international and conversely conservative the peoples appear to be. (‘Ha-
ving a blind faith in authorities’ can probably be viewed as an amalgam of ‘not-modern’, ‘not-
international’ and ‘conservative’). In other words, the image of the people is taken to determi-
ne the amount of English influence on the language, with more English universally signifying
more international and modern and less conservative and secluded..
We find quite similar lines of thinking when the question is about the use of English loan-
words in discussing different subjects in Denmark, as opposed to the number of loanwords in
other countries. We presented informants with a list of different ‘areas’, viz. ‘computer’, ‘the
internet’, ‘the church’ 58 , ‘toys’, ‘cars’, ‘literature’, ‘sports’, ‘food & drink’, ‘music’, and
‘fashion’. As we would expect, ‘computer’ and ‘the internet’ score very high (4.82 and 4.71
respectively on a 5-point scale), and ‘the church’ scores very low (1.50), the other subjects
falling between 3.10 and 4.08. More surprising (or by now maybe not) is how these scores are
arrived at.
The church, not a single one. [15 sec] It is as conservative as can be, I think [Inf26, 30.37].
The church, none I think […]. It is so old and rooted in the past [Inf1, 27.20].
It must be very, very few, because I think they speak very boringly, almost too boringly,
many of the priests. [Inf46, 18.30].
It would be tempting, then, to conclude that Danes are impressed with English as a symbol of
the modern world while they see Danish as a symbol of something backwards, a thing of the
past. There are several objections to this conclusion. Firstly, the rationale revolves around the
use of English loanwords in Danish, not around a complete switch to English. In other words,
the opposite of what the informants see as a sign of modernity, i.e. the use of English loan-
words, is not the use of Danish, but the insistence on using a ‘pure’ Danish. Again, understan-
ding the rhetorical context is the key to understanding the ‘attitudes’. To support this claim,
let us look at a rather more positive, but not contradictory, view on the language of the church.
58 Denmark has a Lutheran state church. Asking about ’the church’ was universally understood as synonymous
with this church, and no other religious societies, Christian or otherwise.
215