Etienne Bérenger Bourgeois is a former student recently graduated in the field of European policy at the university of Aix-Marseille, France. In 2020 he went to Foligno, Umbria to do an Erasmus traineeship that was in line with its curriculum of studies. He chose as his master’s thesis the field of the language, and more specifically the linguistic policy and multilingualism at the service of European construction (and its means implemented to support it). Considering the fact that during his internship he had the chance to be involved in the implementation of our project activities, as a main example of evidence from the European commission to demonstrate its ambitions, he chose to mention Fit4DigiLine in his dissertation. The thesis was defended the first of October 2021.
The aim of Etienne’ master thesis was to demonstrate the importance of the language knowledge in the aim of promoting the European construction and spirit. The feeling of belonging to the European Union for a population can emerge through the knowledge of one or more languages that make up its linguistic landscape (in this case, the European union official languages). Indeed, from the linguistic knowledge comes relationships, a way to understand every particularity that a country can offer, which are mainly expressed by the language spoken in an area/region/country, a common shared imagination necessary and a set of values dear to Europe, by extension to the European Union. Ultimately, this allows to feel more European. Language as a political tool contributes to developing a culture, a European legacy and therefore a sense of belonging: “United in diversity”.
Through the study of history, some country spread a language through a political union. On the other hand, some developed a political union through the language. In the case of the European Union, we could qualify this way of creating this European construction as a “third way”, where political and linguistic unity promote each other, where multilingualism carries the political project. The stated ambition is to build unity, in particular through a strong language policy, going hand by hand with the development of multilingualism decided by politics. In other words, to develop the European feeling through the discovery and knowledge of the languages of its partners. The main European program to realise it is Erasmus+, which justly saw its budget almost doubled for the 2021-2027 period, especially to cover those objectives.
Therefore, the project Fit4DigiLine was rightly corresponding to this initiative and was perfectly in line with the above-mentioned master thesis. For the us, the partners, it is a great pleasure to be mentioned in an academic paper!
Below you may find some details from Etienne’s thesis:
