This paper presents an investigation of Danes' attitudes towards English through qualitative interviews. Denmark, like most other countries in the so-called Western world, is under significant linguistic and cultural influence from (American) English. In this paper, I analyse how Danes come to terms with that. Most striking is the great uniformity in the discourses through which English is constructed on the one hand as the default language of the world, on the other as a sign of modernity. An important by-product of the investigation is that it reveals how attitudes are constructed in situ during the conversation between interviewer and interviewee. The paper thus takes a stance in the ongoing debate concerning the validity of ‘standardized’ vs. ‘conversational’ interviewing.