Discourses of functional bilingualism in the Sami curriculum in Sweden

ABSTRACT

Sami are Indigenous languages spoken by the Sami people in the northern parts of Scandinavia and Russia. All Sami languages are endangered because of historically aggressive assimilation policies. Currently Sami communities are working actively with language revitalisation processes. This article examines pupils’ access to knowledge in and about Sami languages and functional bilingualism in Sami and Swedish within the curriculum for the Sami schools in Sweden. Through a multifaceted lens of functional linguistic analysis, Bloom’s revised taxonomy of knowledge types and processes, and Bernstein’s concepts of vertical and horizontal discourse we examine the learning outcomes in the Sami and Swedish syllabi. The findings show an unequal balance between the two languages with the Sami syllabus containing fewer knowledge types, cognitive processes, verb processes, a stronger focus on oracy, and a stronger horizontal discourse than the Swedish syllabus. We conclude that the discourses about functional bilingualism that underpin these policy documents is contradictory and does not support Sami to be a fully functional language for all domains of society.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous
• Sami
• functional bilingualism
• knowledge types and processes
• horizontal and vertical discourse
• curriculum

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their useful suggestions and helpful comments during the review process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Kristina Belancic is currently a Ph.D. student at the department for Language Studies at Umeå University, Sweden. Her research is centered on Sami pupils’ language use in Sweden.

Eva Lindgren is an associate professor of Language Teaching and Learning at the Department of Language Studies at Umeå University, Sweden. Her research interests include multilingualism, Indigenous language education, literacy, and young learners.

ORCID

Kristina Belancic http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8061-4234

Notes

1 The Sami Parliament in Sweden is the representative body for Sami people in Sweden.