A cluster analysis of attitudes to English in Germany and the Netherlands

Abstract Although English is becoming increasingly entrenched in Western Europe, large‐scale comparative studies of attitudes among the general public to this development are scarce. We investigate over 4,000 Dutch and Germans’ attitudes towards English based on responses to an attitudinal questionnaire. Respondents saw English as a useful additional language, but not generally as a threat to their national language. Using k‐means, an unsupervised clustering algorithm, we identified two attitudinal groups per country. Respondents with positive attitudes towards English, regardless of nationali... Mehr ...