"The Official Language of Telefonica Is English": Problematising the Construction of English as a Lingua Franca in the Spanish Telecommunications Sector

This article investigates the contradictions around the construction of English as a democratising lingua franca for intercultural communication and business in the Spanish telecommunications sector. From a critical sociolinguistic ethnographic perspective, I claim that this crucial segment of the market has embraced and mobilized a rhetoric through which, by presenting this language as an unproblematised added-value resource for everyone, multinationals make claims of modernity and 'civic' entrepreneurial relationships to target lucrative economic niches, particularly multilingual transnational customers. However, these neoliberal celebratory discursive tropes on the efficiency and inclusiveness of global English contrast with the actual public language practices of the sector. English has become a pragmatic cover-up term for making claims of 'multilingual competence', but it is actually unsystematically offered only by key multinationals in specific spaces-usually call centres-and far less so by start-up operators. Overall, the sociolinguistic regime of the Spanish telecommunications sector fosters a Spanish regimented market where English ends up serving the needs of an already connected dominant technoliterate elite, while those who do not have access to English or Spanish, basically nonliterate migrant ICT users, remain underserved and are forced to navigate society through these institutionalised language barriers. Adapted from the source document