223 Silvia Manessi Silvia Manessi University of Salamanca (USAL) Spain silvia.manessi@usal.es EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT INSIDE THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION: A CORPUS LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF THEIR HUMAN RESOURCES LEGAL FRAMEWORK 1 INTRODUCTION During the last few years, EU institutions have made great strides towards fostering the principles of equality and diversity among their staff members: EU civil servants are being exposed to awareness­raising campaigns and are systematically involved in the implementation of staff policies aimed at increasing their sensitivity to diversity and in- clusion. Since 2000, the European Charter of Fundamental Rights (European Parliament, 2000) has been a legally binding text for the Member States of the European Union and the European institutions themselves. Nevertheless, a first reading of the internal regulations and implementing rules re- lated to staff management inside the EU institutions shows that they are written in a language that is not completely consistent with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and its values of equality and diversity. The rationale of this paper starts from this per- spective, and a first preliminary qualitative assessment of the language used in the Human Resources legal framework of EU institutions. The first consideration, which is very evident, is that most of the current HR imple- menting provisions are simply not gender­neutral. The Staff Regulations still include a caveat wording to this regard, as Article 1c states that: Any reference in these Staff Regulations to a person of the male sex shall be deemed also to constitute a reference of a person to the female sex, and vice­ versa unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. (European Council, 1962). As the plural form might be used in the English language, the argument for using only the masculine pronoun does not seem to be valid. Moreover, other key terms, which are used in the Staff Regulations, could be more gender­neutral: reference to ‘chairman’ instead of ‘chairperson’ can be found in different occurrences in the Staff Regulation. UDK 811.111'322:[005.95:061.1EU] DOI: 10.4312/vestnik.12.223­240 Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 223 Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 223 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 224 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES Moreover, looking into the family sphere of the EU Institutions’ staff members, and in the context of granting contractual rights and entitlements, the Staff Regulations still include non­inclusive language, with the use of terms such as ‘marriage’, even where the legal framework applies to a non­marital partnership. Notwithstanding what is stated in Article 1.d, whereby “non­marital partnerships shall be treated as marriage provided that all the conditions listed in Article 1(2)(c) of Annex VII are fulfilled” (European Coun- cil, 1962), the Staff Regulations have nine occurrences where the term ‘wife’ and seven where the term ‘husband’ are still included in the text. The term ‘marriage’ is also used in different instances. While state that a non­marital partnership is compared to marriage with regard to the application of entitlements in the Staff Regulations, a more cohesive use of the language might reinforce the principle of equality, vis­à­vis persons who do not have access to legal marriage in all Member States, and thus change the mindset of the civil servants who are all affected by these regulations. Some additional preliminary considerations also relate to the use of the term ‘dis- abled’, which is in different instances present in the EU HRM legal framework. The 2006 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN General Assembly, 2007) refers to ‘person with a disability’ instead of disabled person, to underline that a person is not disabled but has a disability. The Convention was signed by all twenty­eight European Member States (including the UK, before leaving) and, at the time of writing this paper, has been ratified by twenty­five. In 2010, the European Union also ratified the Convention, and it now plays a leading role in the monitoring framework for its imple- mentation among the EU institutions. The definition of a person with a disability in the UN Convention reads as follows: Persons with disabilities include those who have long­term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments, which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others. (UN General Assembly, 2007) This wording is deemed fundamental in changing the mindset of people without a disability: although the Staff Regulations take on board this definition and include it in Article 1d, in later articles of the consolidated version of the text the term ‘disabled’ still occurs. 1.1 Research Hypothesis With regard to the preliminary qualitative assessment mentioned above, this paper aims to shed more light on the use of English language in the HRM context of the EU in- stitutions. This has been done by analysing the legal basis of staff management in the context of equality and diversity management among EU civil servants. This research Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 224 Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 224 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 225 Silvia Manessi hypothesises that the language of legal texts and policies of the European institutions related to staff management is not inclusive, and it is not completely in line with the idea of fostering equality and diversity. In order best to address the research questions related to the discourse of equality in the EU institutions, and at the same time considering the preliminary hypothesis as out- lined above, this investigation is being carried out and developed by taking stock of the relevant linguistic features (Baker, 2006), included in staff legal provisions applicable to EU civil servants. In particular, it entails the creation and linguistic analysis of a corpus of regulations and rules related to the management of human resources working for the different EU institutions, hereinafter called the EU HRM Legal Corpus (Hunston, 2002; Baker, 2010; Crawford & Csomay, 2016). 1.2 Literature review Corpora analysis have been the subject of different studies in various linguistics fields, recent publications include studies in lexical semantics (Stubbs, 2001), applied linguis- tics, (Hyland, Huat, & Handford, 2012), sociolinguistics (Hunston, 2002; Baker, 2010; Crawford & Csomay, 2016) and discourse analysis (Baker, 2006). Concerning the study of linguistics features related to equality and diversity, a num- ber of studies have been supported by the use of corpora over the last few decades. Of particular importance for this research are the studies of scholars in the lexicological field, in particular those related to gender studies. Kjellmer (1986) was the first scholar to analyse the use of the terms ‘man/men’ and ‘woman/women’, together with the occur- rence of the masculine and feminine pronouns, to unravel the masculine bias in Ameri- can and British English in both the Lancaster­Oslo/Bergen and Brown corpora. Similar studies followed the lexicological stream highlighted by Kjellmer (Eckert & McConnell­ Ginet, 2003; Pearce, 2008; Vefali & Erdentuğ, 2010; Hankivsky, 2013; Taylor, 2013; Moon, 2014; Baker, 2014). They defined and analysed the different use of the masculine and feminine forms with a focus on the biases which stem from the use of these forms in a given corpus, which is also one of the aims of the current paper. At the same time, this paper benefits from the work of scholars in linguistic fields related to equality and diversity studies (Tatli, 2011), in particular studies related to the language and the discourse around the LGBTI community (Baker, 2005 and 2018; Hord, 2016), persons with a disability (Grue, 2014) and ageist language (Mautner, 2007; Hum- mert, Garstka, Ryan, & Bonnesen, 2004). A key element of this paper is the corpus analysis of the corporate and workplace dis - course (Bathia, 1993; Alvesson & Karreman, 2000; Cooren, 2004; Hatch & Cunliffe, 2006; Morgan, 2006; Bréda, Delattre & Ocler, 2008; Maurel, 2008; Manuti & Minnini, 2015), since the focal linguistic patterns happen in a work­related setting, i.e. EU institutions. Since the language analysed relates to corporate legal discourse, studies on such a genre Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 225 Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 225 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 226 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES framework (Bathia, 1983; Marmor, 2008; Gibová, 2011), including those that focused on an EU setting (Breidbach, 2003; Barone, 2005; Trebits, 2008), are the basis of this paper. Another important element of this study is the issue of the EU civil servants’ identity building; to support the corpus analysis in this field different studies have been taken into consideration, in particular, those related to the development of participant’s identities in a multilingual and multicultural setting (Searle, 1995; Edwards, 2009; Cenoz, 2013; Holmes, 2015). 2 METHODOLOGICAL FRAMWORK AND PRELIMINARY RESULTS The issues touched upon by this paper are mainly related to two different aspects. In the first place, an analysis of the main features of the English language used in the corpus. In the second place, a more specific examination of the terminology related to equality and di - versity management – both from an overall point of view and, more specifically, regarding four different features: LGBTI issues, gender mainstreaming, rights of the elderly and rights of those with a disability (Kjellmer, 1986; Eckert & McConnell­Ginet, 2003; Pearce, 2008; Vefali & Erdentuğ, 2010; Hankivsky, 2013; Taylor, 2013; Moon, 2014; Baker, 2014). The studies and research conducted in the last few decades indicate that there are sev- eral reasons why corpora should be used. The most obvious one is that the text contained in a corpus is a primary source. Taking into consideration the importance of authenticity to determine the value of linguistic research (Gee, 2011b), the analysis of linguistic data could benefit from a direct approach to the source material. Corpus linguistics studies are based on two principles: the first to the fact that the analysis should be independent, and the second to the significance of the linguistics features analysed (Stubb, 1996). More- over, a corpus enables seeing key variations in the frequency of words and structures of texts, giving us significant insights on its semantic prosody, i.e. the context in which the text is created (Baker, 2006). The above­mentioned characteristics have been taken into consideration for this research, together with the basic features that a corpus should have to be differentiated from a simple collection of texts in an electronic format: in fact, a corpus should include a broad range of material to guarantee representativeness and, at the same time, be of a sufficient size (Sinclair, 2009). Although there is currently a broad availability of resources on the European acquis in different corpora (Baisa, Michelfeit, Medved & Jakubíček, 2016; Steinberger et al. 2013), this paper is focused on the legal provisions and rules related to the management of human resources currently in force in the EU institutions. For this reason, a specific corpus was created, containing all the currently applicable staff rules for civil servants working for the EU and its institutions: it consists of 58 documents (covering 47 subject matters), and it includes different types of legal provisions. The corpus has been named the EU HRM Legal Corpus. Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 226 Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 226 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 227 Silvia Manessi The most important document, including from a legal point of view, as mentioned in the preliminary analysis, is the Staff Regulation of Officials and Condition of Em - ployment of Other Servants: this legal text is the basis of the legal framework of the management of staff resources in the EU institutions. It consists of two parts: the Staff Regulations (SR), which applies to officials, and the Condition of Employment of Other Servants, which applies to temporary and contract staff. 1 The regulations were first pub- lished in June 1962; the consolidated text, including Staff Regulations and Condition of Employment of Other Servants, has been amended 142 times and corrected 25 times in the last 57 years. There were two major recent amendments, in May 2004 and January 2014, and both entailed a restructuring of the career path in the EU institutions and more modern working conditions (with the inclusion of improved work­life balance policies, such as flexitime, teleworking, etc.). The Staff Regulations are composed of nine titles: general provisions, rights and ob- ligations, career, working conditions, emoluments and social security, disciplinary pro- cedures, appeals, special provisions, and transitional measures. The consolidated version of the text is also complemented by eleven annexes, which regulates in many details the different topics enshrined in the Staff Regulations, concerning selection and recruitment, leave and time management, type of posts, individual rights and monetary entitlements and pension contributions. The Conditions of Employment of Other Servants is divided according to the different contractual categories: temporary staff, contract staff, special advisers, and parliamentary assistants. The text heavily refers and points to the Staff Regulations in most of its parts, linking the different legal provisions by subject matter. Together with the Staff Regulations and Condition of Employment of Other Ser- vants, the corpus includes 57 implementing provisions of the Staff Regulations, and these implementing provisions give voice to the different rules applicable in the Staff Regulations and Condition of Employment of Other Servants. In different instances, the main regulations refer to the implementation of the acts by the adoption of implementing provisions. Their subject matter ranges from technical matters (calculation of pension contributions) to general ones (leave and time management); some of the implementing provisions are in fact staff policies, such as the policy for protecting the dignity of people and combatting psychological and sexual harassment. Because of the decision to analyse the language patterns of the EU HRM Legal Cor- pus from a hybrid approach (corpus­based and corpus­driven), considerations were given to the filters and language features to examine by running queries through the corpus in AntConc (Anthony, 2013a and 2013b). In particular, the following language features are analysed in this research: word list by frequency, concordances (key word in context, KWIC), collocates and lexical bundles. Lower­ and uppercase forms of all lemmas anal- ysed have been taken into consideration in the overall results. 1 It is worth mentioning that there are several contractual categories of civil servants working for the EU institu- tions. While officials account for most of the European Commission’s workforce, in agencies temporary and contract staff compose the vast majority. Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 227 Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 227 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 228 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES What appeared at the beginning of this research was the need to find a standard or example on the use of inclusive language, which is necessary to establish a frame against which the analysis of language patterns can be performed. The decision was made to use the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, as this choice seems to be the most logical one, since the objective of the research is to unravel the understanding and application of equality and diversity principles in the EU staff rules. In other words, this research aims to analyse the EU HRM legal texts through the lens of the main legal text in terms of equality and diversity, i.e. the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, as there is no bet- ter text to set the principles upon which the inclusive language of EU institutions should be based and be assessed. It is to be noted though that the aim of the various texts in the EU HRM Legal Corpus is rather different from that of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and this needs to be taken into consideration in the analysis. Another aspect to take into account is the fact that the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is used as a basis and at the same time as a reference. With regard to the linguistic features analysed, this research started with the investi- gation of the word lists by frequency. According to Baker (2006: 47), “Frequency is one of the most central concepts underpinning the analysis of corpora”. In particular, word lists by frequency are lists of tokens, which are grouped by frequency of occurrence in a given corpus. As described above, this is of particular relevance for this paper, as this research entails the development of word lists by frequency to compare the keywords in both the EU HRM Legal Corpus and EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The aim is twofold, as it allows determining in the first place the expressions that are most repre- sented in terms of frequency in the Charter, and in the second place it serves the purpose of analysing the presence and frequency of these terms in the EU HRM Legal Corpus. With regard to the analysis of the different terms, statistical significance was not included in the research, as the corpus comprises all the rules related to the management of human resources in the context of the EU institutions. It was to be expected that some of the most used words in both texts would be in line with the genre of the documents. However, at the same time, it is particularly interesting to see the differences in the number of instances in certain semantic fields, as described in the following paragraphs. When considering the words linked to the concept of the EU as a whole, as an entity which is aimed to be better than the sum of its parts, it becomes immediately clear that there are significant differences in the two word lists by frequency. The term ‘European’ is the 14 th most frequent word in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, with 36 occurrences, and the 36 th most frequent word in the EU HRM Legal Cor- pus, with 646 occurrences. To compare the frequency in a more significant way, the hits have been normalised using a dispersion plot per one thousand hits. In this case, the term European in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights has a dispersion value of 9.11, while in the EU HRM Legal Corpus its value is 2.98. Similar results in the same semantic area could be found for terms like ‘Union’ and ‘Institution(s)’. For the first one the dispersion plot in the EU Charter of Fundamental Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 228 Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 228 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 229 Silvia Manessi Rights is 20.75, while in the Corpus is 2.24, for ‘Institution(s)’, the dispersion plot in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is 2.02 and, in the EU HRM Legal Corpus, is 1.70. This is due to the different genre of the texts since not all the keywords that appear in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights can be found in the EU HRM Legal Corpus. Although the analysis of the KWIC shows already that the number of references to ‘European’ are not as high as expected, since they are the implementing provisions aimed to foster in- ternal working provisions for EU civil servants. The comparison with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights shows that the terminology that most directly refers to the principle of ‘European’ is not developed in the EU HRM Legal Corpus to an extent that the genre of the corpus itself (i.e. prescriptive legal) would not justify. This has to be considered in the context that the first identification with the European values stems from a language that could most directly link them to the EU civil servants, as much as the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union links it to EU citizens. The linguistic analysis continued with the examination of the corpus’ concordances. According to Baker (2006), a concordance is simply a list of all the occurrences of a partic - ular search term in a corpus that is presented within the contexts where they occur. Each oc - currence (or hit) found in a corpus is displayed in the analysis tool with the words preceding and following it. The most commonly used concordance type is called KWIC (Crawford & Csomay, 2016). In the analysis conducted with AntConc, the results usually show one hit per line one the screen, with the main searched term highlighted in the centre. The overview of KWIC is an important part of this corpus research, as it gives a precise idea of the differ - ent features of the language used in the EU HRM Legal Corpus (Gabrielatos, 2018). In a similar way to the approach used for the word list by frequency, the methodol- ogy used to analyse concordances and KWIC entails filtering the EU HRM Legal Corpus through the lens of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. In this context, lemmatisation or stemming was not considered, but rather the presence of keywords included in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights vis­à­vis those present in the EU HRM Legal Corpus. By looking into how the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as divided into chapters touches upon the different aspects of equality and diversity, this research aims at running the concordances function in AntConc for the main terms included in each of the EU Charter’s chapters. Alongside the preamble, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is divided into seven different titles: TITLE I DIGNITY TITLE II FREEDOMS TITLE III EQUALITY TITLE IV SOLIDARITY TITLE V CITIZENS’ RIGHTS TITLE VI JUSTICE TITLE VII GENERAL PROVISIONS GOVERNING THE INTERPRETATION AND APPLICATION OF THE CHARTER Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 229 Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 229 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 230 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES In the context of this paper, the titles that are most relevant for the aim of this re- search on the language of equality and diversity are those included in Title III – Equality. Alongside this choice of scope, additional considerations were given to some general parts of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights regarding the topics analysed, in par- ticular for features related to the European institutions and their correct functioning, ac- cording to the European principles of transparency and good administrative behaviour. A complete matrix of the keywords that served as a basis for the analysis, together with the different chapters of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, is presented in Table 1. Table 1: List of KWIC related to different areas of equality and diversity analysed in the EU HRM Legal Corpus FOCUS EU CHARTER OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS KEYWORDS GENERAL EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY TERMINOLOGY PREAMBLE dignity, integrity, human, security, privacy, personal data, respect / respected, people, person/persons LGBTI Title III – Equality Article 9 civil marriage, same-sex marriage, non- marital / non marital partner / partnership, spouse, wife / husband EU EQUALITY PRINCIPLES Title III – Equality Articles 20, 21, 22 non-discrimination equality, equal opportunities, diversity, inclusion, work- life, religion / religious, cultural, linguistic GENDER Title III – Equality Article 23 sex / sexual, gender, men / women, he, she, he or she, he/she, she/he, him, her, him/ her, him or her, his, her, hers, his/her, his or her, they, chairman ELDERLY STAFF Title III – Equality Article 25 elderly, retired, old, young PERSON(S) WITH A DISABILITY Title III – Equality Article 26 handicap, disabled, (with a) disability OTHER TERMS RELATED TO EU INSTITUTIONS GENERAL good administration, impartiality, fairness, proportionality, reasonable time, right to be heard, access to, reasoned Using AntConc, a concordance hit list in the EU HRM Legal Corpus, considering a span of ­5 and + 5 words, was run for each of the keywords included in Table 4. With regard to the Preamble of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, containing terms re- lated to general equality and diversity principles, the KWIC analysed are the following: ‘dignity’, ‘integrity’, ‘human’, ‘security’, ‘privacy’, ‘personal data’, ‘respect’, with the variations of ‘respected’ and the terminology related to ‘people’, ‘person’ and ‘persons’ Following the same methodology of filtering the EU HRM Legal Corpus with the keywords included in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, this research started with the analysis of some keywords within their contexts and focused on the collocates of Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 230 Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 230 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 231 Silvia Manessi the word ‘European’. The preliminary findings of the use of such terms in the EU HRM Legal Corpus, in particular the findings of the word list by frequency analysis, have been validated fully, to the extent that ‘European’ seems not to be a keyword in the EU HRM Legal Corpus, as the term collocated only with words linked to the different institutions. Significantly, the term does not collocate in any meaningful way with other parts of the text in the corpus. It is indeed quite surprising that the value of being European is not embedded in the internal policies that are aimed to regulate the life of EU civil servants (see Table 5). It is of particular interest to notice that previous studies on the collocation of the term ‘European’ in a corpus similar in size to the EU HRM Legal Corpus, albeit not closely related to legal provisions of EU civil servants, revealed a much higher occur- rence of the term ‘European’ (Trebits, 2008). The difference in genre of the two corpora may explain the different frequency of the term ‘European’, but surely not to the extent shown by this research. Another linguistic feature analysed in this study relates to the presence of lexical bundles in the corpus. By running a frequency count of lexical bundles with AntConc, it was found out that the recurrent significant bundles are related to legal terms and refer- ences that are in line with the genre of the texts included in the EU Legal Corpus, such as, for example, the bundles ‘staff regulation’ and ‘appointing authority’. Another interesting feature, typical of legalese, is the use of modifiers such as ‘same’, ‘said’, ’above­men- tioned’. In the EU HRM Legal Corpus, it is interesting that these are frequently used as adjectives to further determine and reinforce nouns, not replace them. There are different examples in the corpus, in particular ‘said amount’ and ‘said condition(s)’. These modi- fiers convey a message of redundancy in the texts of the EU HRM Legal Corpus, limiting the fluidity of the language and the ease of reading the different rules and provisions. It is interesting to note that none of the other terms related to inclusive language as analysed in this dissertation is in any bundle of the first 100­frequency list, as shown in Table 11. This may be due to the legal and administrative genre of the EU HRM Legal Corpus, but it may also suggest that the frequency of equality and diversity terminology, for example with bundles like ‘work­life balance’ and ‘person with a disability’, is not present in the corpus. However, a deeper analysis of the data, after applying the same methodology of filtering the Corpus with the KWIC in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, allows us to identify two outcomes of the lexical bundle analysis which are of interest for this research, i.e. the terms from the list of keywords in the Charter (see Table 4) which relate to the semantic field ‘Europe’ and ‘European’. These terms are of particular importance vis­à­vis the identified necessity to highlight the European dimension of the language in the corpus, and in particular for what concerns fostering EU values, such as inclusion and non­discrimination. The principles of equality and diversity are already part of the trea- ties founding the EU, and in particular are spelt out as values in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union: Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 231 Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 231 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 232 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, de - mocracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Mem- ber States in a society in which pluralism, non­discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail. (European Council, 2016, p. 17) The analysis of the lexical bundles including the term ‘European’ is thus relevant to seek links to the EU values and their implementation in the EU HRM Legal Corpus. Con- cerning the term ‘European’, it is number 19 on the frequency list, albeit it is only linked to the pronoun ‘the’, while the bundle ‘European Union’ is number 46 on the list. A more detailed analysis of the term ‘European’ shows that it appears in a cluster with ‘Union’ more than with ‘Commission’. This finding has a rather simple explanation, consider- ing that the preambles of many implementing provisions quote a general introductory sentence, which reads: “Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union”, while the link of ‘European’ to ‘Commission’ is mainly due to the reference to the workplace the EU HRM Legal Corpus applies to. Furthermore, of particular importance for this research is the presence of the lexical bundle ‘of his’ in the first 100 N­Grams of the corpus. This, once again, suggests a higher frequency of the generic masculine, which is not considered a gender­neutral expression. In particular, this linguistic use creates a prototypical image of an EU staff member as male, and to the creation of a null gender, which means assuming that the default and standard gender is male and not female. This is because masculine forms, even when they are used in a generic sense, usually activate male representations (Fuertes­Olivera, 2007; Wagner, Garcia, Jadidi & Strohmaier, 2015). The result of this analysis of the corpus shows that no meaningful lexical bundles are present in the EU HRM Legal Corpus suggesting the use of inclusive language. No lexi- cal bundles were found that are significant for the analysis of the use of a language that fosters equality and diversity in the EU institutions, while the biased use of the English language in the corpus appears obvious. 3 RESEARCH FINDINGS Looking into the findings of the EU HRM Legal Corpus Linguistics analysis, it seems that, although some positive language shifts are happening, much improvement remains to be made. The first highlight of the paper concerning its findings is that the terms ‘Eu- rope’ and ‘European’, as an embedded value to the different staff provisions and rules, are difficult to find in the EU HRM Legal Corpus. While the preambles of the different legal basis strive to give a context to the different rules, this seems to be more linked to the aim Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 232 Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 232 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 233 Silvia Manessi of passing a message of contemporary human resources management than to embed the values that stand behind the EU. This static feature of the EU internal legal language can also be seen when looking into the general principles of equality, as introduced in the preamble of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The main highlight at this point of the research shows that the concepts of persons, their security and personal data, are not reflected in the corpus to the same extent that they are in EU policies, and while this could only be done to a lesser extent, such concepts could have been included nonetheless. With regard to the awareness and inclusion of LGBTI persons, it appears even more clearly that the diversity that is the enriching part of the EU philosophy fails to appear in the EU HRM Legal Corpus. For example, while defining that a non­marital partnership is compared to marriage when it comes to the application of entitlements in the Staff Regu- lations, a more cohesive use of the language might reinforce the principle of equality in dealing with these different statuses and change the mindset of the civil servants who are all affected by these regulations. At the same time though, in this instance it should be noted that a diachronic dimension of evolution in the language is present in the corpus. More attention being paid to the terminology related to partnership and the evolution of this concept will foster a better LGBTI inclusion, although it should be noted that, when it comes to gender mainstreaming, the EU internal provisions are for now only developing in a dichotomic direction (male­female), and do not include any element of intersection- ality (Hankivsky, 2013; Hord, 2016). The area in which a greater effort has been made to create awareness and equality in the workplace is that related to gender. A broad campaign on gender mainstreaming, which is currently taking place in all Commission services, is probably bearing its fruits in term of the use of a more inclusive language. Gender equality is the part of the EU HRM Legal Corpus where explicit sentences are included in the different rules. Unfortunately, though, a deeper analysis of the use of gender­related possessives and pronouns shows that there is still a long way to go to embed the concept of equal treat- ment for men and women. Although in different instances the language does make use of feminine possessives or pronouns, the caveat in the Staff Regulations that states that, “Any reference in these Staff Regulations to a person of the male sex shall be deemed also to constitute a reference to a person of the female sex” should be overcome. It is par- ticularly important to strive for a better wording in such contexts. Although the caveat is specified at the beginning of the Staff Regulations, in many instances provisions such as “he is promoted” can be encountered. This does not foster the idea behind gender equal- ity, and contributes to the distorted identity building of Staff Members working for the institutions (Holmes, 2015; Searle, 2015). This issue is of particular importance to overcome the concept of male as a “null gender”, as assuming that the default and standard gender is male and not female contrib- utes to reinforcing the typical gender stereotype (Fuertes­Olivera, 2007; Wagner, Garcia, Jadidi & Strohmaier, 2015). Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 233 Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 233 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 234 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES Other sensitive wording that is used in the Staff Regulations should be more gender­ neutral. For example, the use of chairman instead of chairperson can be found 47 times in the EU HRM Legal Corpus, mainly in the Staff Regulations. Again, the shift in the language of more recent provisions is present, although gender mainstreaming perhaps has benefits with regard to increased consistency and possibly bolder changes in the revi- sion of the language used in older texts. It should be noted though that the language of the two corpora is still far from complying with the definition of gender­sensitive language, as defined by the European Institute for Gender Equality on its website 2 : The realisation of gender equality in written and spoken language attained when women and men and those who do not conform to the binary gender system are made visible and addressed in language as persons of equal value, dignity, integrity and respect. Avoiding sex­ and gender­based discrimination starts with language, as the sys- tematic use of gender­biased terminology influences attitudes and expectations and could, in the mind of the reader or listener, relegate women to the back - ground or help perpetuate a stereotyped view of women’s and men’s roles. There are numbers of different strategies that can be used to express gender relation - ships with accuracy, such as avoiding, to the greatest possible extent, the use of language that refers explicitly or implicitly to only one gender, and ensuring, through inclusionary alternatives and according to each language’s characteris- tics, the use of gender­sensitive and inclusive language. (EIGE, 2019) With regard to the awareness and inclusion of persons with a disability, the research shows that much still needs to be done concerning the use of inclusive language in the EU HRM Legal Corpus. The terms ‘disabled’ and ‘handicapped’ still appear in the texts of the EU HRM Legal Corpus. The 2006 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabili - ties refers to a person with a disability instead of a disabled person to stress that a person is not disabled but has a disability. The convention has been signed by all 28 EU Member States, and so far has been ratified by 25. In 2010, the WU also ratified the Convention, and it plays a leading role in the monitoring framework for implementing it among EU institu - tions. The definition of a person with a disability in the UN Convention is as follows: Persons with disabilities include those who have long­term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments, which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others. (UN General Assembly. 2007). 2 https://eige.europa.eu/thesaurus/terms/1215 Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 234 Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 234 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 235 Silvia Manessi This wording is deemed fundamental to changing the attitudes of people without a disability, and although the Staff Regulations takes this definition on board and includes it in Article 1d, in the following articles the term ‘disabled people’ still occurs five times in the consolidated version of the text. The same conclusions could be drawn for the area of fundamental rights that relate to elderly persons. Although it seems clear that the Staff Regulations and its implement- ing provisions are aimed to regulate a rather specific target age group, and that the genre of the corpus embeds a different aim with regard to this issue, some improvements could be made to avoid terms such as ‘young’ and encourage a narrative of inclusion of all staff members in all ages groups. Looking now into the terminology which relates to the principle of good administra- tion, it seems from the results that more efforts could be made to include in the preambles of the various provisions – such as the one on recruitment or reclassification – terminol- ogy such as ‘fairness’ or ‘proportionality’. Moreover, the concept of ‘reasonable time’ is reversed in relation to the meaning of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Instead of the administrative bodies being asked to be reasonable in dealing with various personal files in a timely manner, staff members are those left with this responsibility. 4 CONCLUSIONS EU institutions are nowadays well aware and informed on the language of human rights and non­discrimination principles, and affirmative actions in term of equality, although mostly related to gender than to ethnic minorities or persons with a disability, are being implemented in different organisations. Alongside considerations related to the legal ba- sis of such action, some institutions are proactive in dealing with the issues of equality and diversity in the workplace, guaranteeing equal participation and shared responsibili- ties in contexts such as internal directives and policymaking. The question this research examined was whether this awareness of the principle of equality and diversity is embed- ded in the most fundamental basis of the regulatory framework for staff members of the different institutions, the Staff Regulations and their implementation provisions. The discourse around the principles of equality and diversity cannot transcend an appropriate use of language, and this is especially the case inside any international or- ganisation with a key leading role in Europe, such as EU institutions. Language is not only a reflection of society, it is an instrument to actively build the social reality thorough discourse (Fairclough, 2001), this is because language not only reflects interpersonal be- havioural patterns, but creates and defines them. As such,: any bias in the use of language has direct implications for equal opportunities for both the civil servants working in such institutions, and the wider community of EU citizens. 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Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 238 Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 238 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 239 Silvia Manessi W AGNER, Claudia/David GARCIA/Mohsen JADIDI/Markus STROHMAIER (2015) It’s a Man’s Wikipedia? Assessing gender inequality in an online encyclopaedia. In Proceedings of the Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. Available at: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/05e1/0638aab94ca0d46ddde8083ff69 859a0401e.pdf [Accessed on 15 May 2020]. POVZETEK UPRA VLJANJE Z ENAKOSTJO IN RAZNOLIKOSTJO V INSTITUCIJAH EVROPSKE UNIJE: KORPUSNA ANALIZA JEZIKA V PRA VNIH BESEDILIH S PODROČJA UPRA- VLJANJA S ČLOVEŠKIMI VIRI Cilj prispevka je analizirati pravni okvir, ki ureja položaj javnih uslužbencev v institucijah Evrop- ske unije, ter prikazati, kako sta enakost in raznolikost predstavljeni in vključeni v vsakdanjik tamkajšnjih javnih uslužbencev. V raziskavi smo preučili rabo angleškega jezika v pravnih bese- dilih s področja upravljanja s človeškimi viri v evropskih institucijah. Podrobneje smo analizirali jezikovne vidike, povezane z upravljanjem enakosti in raznolikosti, in vključujočo rabo jezika. Raziskavo smo umestili v okvir evropske zibelke enakosti in raznolikosti – Evropske unije, ki se izrazito opira na demokratične vrednote, vladavino prava in enako obravnavo vseh prebivalcev, katerih raznolikost predstavlja kot posebno vrednoto. Pomembno je torej, da ugotovimo, kako Evrop- ska unija deluje v praksi ter kako dosledna je pri razumevanju in uveljavljanju omenjenih vrednot. Metodološki pristop naše raziskave je zahteval oblikovanje in analizo edinstvenega korpusa, v katerem so bile zbrane vse trenutno veljavne zakonske določbe, ki urejajo položaj človeških virov v evropskih institucijah. Da bi preučili razvoj rabe angleškega jezika na področju enako- sti in raznolikosti, smo s pomočjo korpusa analizirali jezikovne prvine (pogostost rabe izrazov, konkordance, kolokacije in leksikalne skupe) terminoloških leksikalnih enot, povezanih s štirimi različnimi področji: LGBTI, spol, starejši in osebe z oviranostmi. Rezultati raziskave kažejo, da jezik v pravnih besedilih Evropske unije s področja upravljanja s človeškimi viri ni skladen z evropskima vrednotama enakosti in raznolikosti. V prispevku zato na koncu predlagamo možne izboljšave v rabi jezika, ki smo ga preučili v korpusu. Ključne besede: korpusno jezikoslovje, upravljanje s človeškimi viri, evropske institucije, ena- kost in raznolikost Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 239 Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 239 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 240 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to analyse the legal framework regulating the careers of civil servants working for the EU institutions and reveal how the values of equality and diversity are communi- cated and embedded in their daily lives. The research examines the English language used in the HR legal framework of the EU institutions and explores the linguistic aspects related to equality and diversity management and inclusive language. The starting point of this research is the idea that the European Union is based on the values of democracy, the rules of law and the equal treatment of its citizen, who are celebrated for their diversity. It is thus highly relevant to look at the EU in action and see if it is consistent in the un- derstanding and application of these values. The methodological approach of this research entailed the creation and analysis of a unique corpus composed of all the applicable HR legal provisions in force within the EU institutions, and the examination of the linguistic features (word lists by frequency, concordances, collocations and lexical bundles) of the terminology related to four different areas of equality and diversity – the LGBTI community, gender, the elderly and persons with a disability – with the final aim to take stock of the related developments in the use of the English language. The results indicate that the language used in the EU HRM legal framework is not in line with the EU values of equality and diversity, and the research concludes with highlighting possible improvements of the language used in the corpus. Keywords: Corpus Linguistics, Human Resources Management, European Institutions, Equality and Diversity Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 240 Vestnik_za_tuje_jezike_2020_FINAL.indd 240 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19 21. 12. 2020 15:39:19