What’s the difference between "Are you going" and "Will you go"?

What’s the difference between these two alternatives:

1. Are you going to England this summer?
2. Will you go to England this summer?

"Are you going?" is the more natural British English usage when you are simply asking about plans or intent. "Will you go" works too, but sounds a bit clunky. "Will you...?" is also the way you might ask someone to do something, rather than just asking about their plans - as in "please go...."

As a native AusEng speaker these two sentences are very similar in meaning, but I think there is a slight pragmatic difference. This answer represents my intuition as to what that difference is, and I welcome feedback on it.

I should first note that I am considering only a neutral intonation. If for example the word you was stressed (to contrast with someone else) then the difference I suggest below would no longer apply.

Are you going to England this summer?

I think this is the unmarked option. This question would be appropriate to ask in many situations:

• you heard them say a while ago that they might and want to know if they had decided yet
• you haven't heard them directly talk about their plans, but did hear them say something that suggests they might go
• they regularly go to England and you're curious if they'll go this summer

Will you go to England this summer?

This is a marked sentence, as is common for sentences with will (at least in conversation or less formal registers, where going to is the dominant future marker.) I think that this sentence would be used if both of these factors were true:

• you know that at one stage they were definitely considering going (so if you only suspected that they were planning to go it would be an inappropriate question to ask)
• you have heard of some reason which suggests they might not be able to go (such as a sick family member or a lack of money)

But if you were asking in this way it may be more natural to add a still to the question.

English, unlike many languages, doesn't have a true future tense. We can use the present tense to indicate the future if the context makes it clear. Alternatively we can use the auxiliary verb, 'will'. Originally 'to will' meant to wish or to intend something to happen. Nowadays it can still have that sense but more often it simply indicates future events.

Are you going to England this summer? ---> Is it a fixed plan that you are going?

Will you go to England this summer? ---> Do you intend to go?

Although it was the huge bounty that drew my attention to this question (as intended by the member who placed the bounty) I am not at all sure that we can assume there is a difference in meaning between 'are you going' and 'will you go' here, simply because OP asks, "what is the difference?"

What if somebody were to ask,

What is the difference between 'twelve' and 'a dozen?'

[You could possibly split hairs and find out some profound difference between 12 and a dozen, but the only difference I can think of is almost nonsensical: a person who does not know what 12 means could still ask for and buy a dozen eggs where 'a dozen' is a standard number for packing/selling certain products.]

Same here. It seems to me that in this specific pair of examples given by OP,

Are you going to England this summer?

Will you go to England this summer?

'are you going' and 'will you go' mean the same thing. 'Will you be going', and 'do you intend to go' would also have the same meaning. Native users might well prefer one expression over another, and I am not a native speaker. But I cannot imagine that the meaning of the question changes appreciably whether you say 'are you going' or 'will you go' -- and the possible answers are all the same: yes / no / not sure / not decided / God willing. Conclusion: semantically there is no difference.

Note: I appreciate the logic of the subtle distinction made by some other answers here that "are you going to" refers to a pre-planned activity and really means "are you going through with the pre-planned action" whereas "will you (go)" is a more open-ended question simply asking "are you likely to do something in the future" -- but this is possibly not a clear-cut distinction because not all speakers might mean the same thing; so such a statement needs to be interpreted in context.

However the Google Ngrams comparison I did, as advised by a senior member, suggests another difference in usage, which is that

'are you going' is used much more often than 'will you go' presumably by native speakers of English, and this is true for both American and British English.

We use "going to" for planned activities, and "will" for promises and predictions.

"Are you going to England this summer?" Is asking if the person plans to do that.

"Will you go to England this summer?" Is asking for a statement of certainty or a promise.

In many cases, "will" and "going to" can be used interchangeably without much change in meaning or understanding by the listener. I feel that this is one such case. There are others where this is not true.