Luistertaal in U-Council meetings at Utrecht University: An analysis of the influence of English and Dutch on the speech actions of council members

Abstract

At the start of the academic year of 2020-2021, two international students have claimed seats in the U-Council of Utrecht University. This study analyses how members of the U-Council interact during their meetings, in which Luistertaal is used. Luistertaal is a multilingual mode in which sufficient receptive skills are required in order to communicate with others. In the U-Council meetings, the international student members used English, while the Dutch members used Dutch. In this study, transcripts of these meetings were used to carry out a speech action analysis through which the influence of English and Dutch on the council members' speech actions could be determined. Such speech actions include questions, proposals,