Universities, Their Responsibilities, and the Matter Of Language. On Supplementary-Language Summaries in Internationalizing Academia

Abstract

The dominance of English in scientific production raises issues in relation to certain responsibilities of Swedish universities, linked to the dissemination of knowledge and the development of the Swedish language. In light of this, the article deals with Swedish-language summaries (SLSs) in English-language doctoral theses. It treats the SLS as an instrument of language regimentation, deliberately aimed at limiting the near-total dominance of English. Drawing on language policy documents , along with scholarly accounts and interview data, the article discusses the SLS as conceived by advocates in language policy and planning, university policy-makers, and active researchers. It is shown that the SLS is aimed at counteracting negative effects pertaining to knowledge outreach as well as register formation. I argue that there is a contradiction between these two aims: on the one hand, an SLS that is simple enough to bridge the gap between science and society is not likely to contribute to the expansion of advanced registers of Swedish; on the other hand, an SLS that takes seriously the task of expanding Swedish registers will be unintelligible for the wider audience. Yet, it may still serve as a reminder that languages other than English are worthy of consideration and use.

Keywords:

• Swedish-language summaries
• supplementary-language summaries
• language planning and policy
• university language policy
• regimentation
• register
• outreach

1. Introduction

In recent decades, English seems to have fortified its position as the go-to language of globalizing academia. This circumstance poses challenges to higher education institutions (HEIs) in Northern Europe and elsewhere beyond the Anglophone world: despite their internationalizing pursuit, they must live up to various responsibilities on their home ground vis-à-vis the societies that enable their presence. This tension is salient in the states that make up the Nordic region (e.g. Hultgren et al. 2014; Saarinen 2017). With few exceptions, the HEIs in this region are publicly funded, and the knowledge markets of the societies that surround and sustain them operate chiefly through state-backed national languages. Thus, a parallel language strategy is called for (see Holmen 2017).

It follows that this tension is readily visible in Swedish academia. Here, English permeates most disciplinary fields: 9 out of 10 doctoral theses are written in English (Salö 2010), and English is equally prominent across other genres of scientific production (e.g. Kuteeva 2015; Salö and Josephson 2014). While this situation seems to be in line with Swedish research policy and the trust it places in ‘internationalization’ as a prerequisite of research quality and impact, it nevertheless rests uneasily with a number of legally stipulated responsibilities of the higher education (HE) sector, pertaining both to knowledge dissemination and language development. Consequently, in the Swedish field of language planning and policy (LPP), the prevalence of English has spawned a meta-discursive debate on negative foreseeable effects on the Swedish language and its speakers. Since the early 1990s, LPP actors – language planning institutions, individual language planners, and scholars alike – have raised two kinds of critical questions: (1) How will research findings reach out to ‘the man on the street’? And (2) how can Swedish remain an effective means of scientific communication? It has been argued that, first, the lack of Swedish is a democratic issue, since the sole use of English prevents general public access to advanced research findings. Second, the relative non-occurrence of Swedish in scientific writing hinders the development of terminology and other features of advanced registers.

In Swedish LPP, it has recurrently been stressed that the inclusion of a Swedish-language summary (henceforth SLS) in doctoral theses written in other languages can ward off some of the problems allegedly caused by English-language prevalence. This proposition has been received as a reasonable compromise in the scientific field, and the language policies of most HEIs currently demand SLSs in theses written in languages other than Swedish. However, it would seem that the perils linked to the dominance of English in scientific communication differ substantially in nature – one concerns knowledge outreach, the other language development. Subsequently, queries may be posed about the precise objectives underpinning the policy intervention at hand: What sorts of issues are SLSs intended to be a remedy for, and how do such intentions relate to the practical implementation of SLS policies in the everyday practices of Swedish academia? Directed by this research question, the focus of the present article is twofold: On the one hand, it explores how the SLS has been envisioned by differentially positioned stakeholders – LPP actors, scholars, policy-makers, and so forth – united by their common stakes in the issue at hand. On the other hand, it draws attention to implementation issues that arise in practice. A subsidiary aim is to compile the rather sparse literature that exists on these matters in Sweden, which may prove useful in forthcoming policy discussions and empirical investigations. It follows that initiating a constructive discussion on these matters lies at the core of what this article seeks to achieve. Prospectively, dwelling upon the theses summaries relevant to the Swedish case might expand the knowledgebase on supplementary-language summaries more generally, which might prove valuable to debates and considerations across a range of different contexts.

2. Scope, material, and methodology

The present study is broadly situated in the burgeoning area of university language policy in Sweden (e.g. Björkman 2014; Soler, Björkman, and Kuteeva 2018; Källkvist and Hult 2016; Karlsson 2017). In ursuit of a comprehensive framework (see section 3) for grasping SLSs, I invoke the notion of ‘responsibility’ as a lynchpin for contemplating different kinds of rationales attached to the SLS: one that focuses on social responsibilities of modern universities in the production of knowledge, and one that focuses on their responsibilities with respect to language matters, or more precisely, on processes of register expansion. In addition, I center on attempts of controlling the production of discourse as a means of living up to such responsibilities. To this end, aligning with the theme of this special issue, the SLS is here understood as being part and parcel of the practice of l language regimentation – that is, of governing the production of knowledge and the linguistic resources used for such ends (Kroskrity 2000b). In the context discussed here, such attempts are materialized as a feature of locally imposed language policy interventions, designed to retrench the near-conclusive dominance of English in scientific production. Empirically, the article examines the steering rationales behind the SLS as a regimenting practice by highlighting understandings of the SLS as conceived from the viewpoint of advocates, policy-makers, and practitioners. By advocates, I refer mainly to LPP actors and also to actors of other fields who have expressed their views of the necessity and justification for imposing this particular policy regime. By policy-makers, I refer mostly to HEIs and those involved in crafting and subsequently imposing local language policies; their understandings, subsequently, are found in the language policies they have implemented. By practitioners, I refer to active researchers, whose perspectives are included to foreground issues that arise when SLS policies are implemented. ‘Practitioners’, for all practical purposes, equals PhD candidates but occasionally also their supervisors and others involved in the production of PhD theses. Naturally, there are no watertight compartments enclosing each of these three broad categories of actors. An LPP advocate, for instance, might well be a practicing researcher in one capacity and also be involved in policy-making, in another. Yet, vis-à-vis the objective of identifying existing understandings of the SLS, I maintain that it is justified to distinguish between those who promote regimentation (advocates), those who regiment de facto (policy-makers), and those whose writing practices are being regimented (practitioners).

Congruently, the material analyzed is three-pronged and encompasses (1) central documents of national LPP alongside scholarly accounts that have dwelled on the importance and rationale of including SLSs; (2) 17 language policy documents imposed by Swedish HEIs, which contain statements on SLSs; and (3) interview accounts with two active researchers. As for the first point, the methodological procedure involved the identification and gathering of official documents and scholarly work where SLSs have been dealt with to a varying degree. Central LPP documents include The Swedish Language Act (Ministry of Culture 2009) along with governmental bills and reports preceding this Act (Ministry of Culture 2002, 2008; Ministry of Education and Culture 2005; Swedish Language Council 1998). Included here are also reports and mappings produced on the initiative of the Swedish or Nordic bodies of LPP (Falk 2001; Karlsson 2017; Salö 2010) as well as other work where discussions on SLSs have appeared (Franke 2007; Josephson 2004, 2015; Salö and Hanell 2014; Uppsala University 2016). I rely considerably on meta-analysis of such work, as a way of composing what seems to be the existing knowledgebase on SLSs.

As for the second point, all existing language policies of Swedish HEI were collected, and those that include phrasings on SLSs were singled out, amounting to 15 HEIs and 2 autonomous faculties with policies of their own.¹ These documents – thus 17 in total – were subjected to a qualitative analysis of manifest content (Berg 2001, 241ff.; Soler, Björkman, and Kuteeva 2018), which aimed at determining how the rationale for producing SLSs was stated, and whether directions were given on the sort of text that SLSs should be.

As for the third point, interviews were conducted with two researchers in the English-heavy field of physics. The interviews, which were conducted in Swedish, revolved around a variety of language-related matters, including SLSs. Both interviewees worked at HEIs demanding SLSs. One was chosen on the merit of being a recent doctorate who had included an SLS in her thesis. The other was chosen on the merit of being a senior professor obliged to make sure that SLSs are being included as a part of his supervision duties. Their experiences of SLSs were included in the material to provide illustrative examples of actual SLS writing practices and, accordingly, complementary perspectives on implementation issues of SLS policies.

3. Framework

3.1. Responsibilities: outreach and register

Reasoning about universities and their responsibilities has long lingered, featuring as it did earlier in the writings of Immanuel Kant (see Derrida (1992) for an appraisal). In our time, the theme has taken various directions. Bok (1982) discusses at length the image of universities as being secluded from society, standing aloof from the public. Opposing this situation, he calls for a stance that stresses social responsibilities of the modern university. In short, universities have an obligation to respond to public needs, and of balancing between the priorities of the institution and the demands of the surrounding society, a fact that raises pivotal questions about public dialog versus scholarly kudos, etc. (e.g. Burawoy 2004; Einsiedel 2007; Fleck, Hess, and Lyon 2009; Marginson 2007).

Responsibility is also a key word in contemporary discourse in and about research policy. It features prominently in the EU’s Horizon 2020 as well as in ongoing policy discussions and directives in Sweden (e.g. Ministry of Education 2017). At the heart of the matter, to speak of ‘responsibilities’ feeds on the idea that universities ought to ‘serve’ societies. It may be argued that such a stance is particularly germane in settings where HEIs are largely publicly funded, as they are in Sweden. In one way or another, tax-funded research needs to be beneficial for its funders, in this case, Swedish taxpayers. Accordingly, HEIs in Sweden are legally obliged to take responsibility with regard to knowledge outreach as well as language development (see below). Swedish law does not provide clear-cut directives as to how HEIs should take such responsibility. In fact, while HEIs are recommended to implement language policies (Swedish National Agency for Higher Education 2008), there are no national regulations stating that HEIs must have such policies or what they should address. Likewise, while Sigbrit Franke, Sweden’s university chancellor 1999–2007, described it as a reasonable step for all universities to make ‘extensive’ SLSs obligatory (Franke 2007, 18), this vision did not lead to any imperative demands. It follows from this fact that dictates to produce SLSs are regulated at the level of HEIs and, occasionally, at the faculty level. On the part of HEIs, then, imposing such policies is one way of taking responsibility for enforcing practices that meet the demands principally outlined in legal frameworks.

The responsibility of knowledge outreach feeds into what is known in Swedish HE as samverkan, which translates roughly into interaction with the surrounding society. Since 1997, the task of ‘third stream activities’ has been inscribed in the Higher Education Ordinance as one of the three tasks of Swedish HEIs, the other two being research and teaching. In more recent research policy developments, samverkan has been ascribed increasing importance as a facet of university accountability, providing impetus for increased social collaboration and research utility (Ministry of Education 2016). While this signifier of utilitarianism has focused chiefly on the commodification of knowledge through science–industry interactions (e.g. Perez Vico et al. 2017), it also embraces knowledge dissemination from academia to society at large: popular science communication, education, and outreach to the general public. Promoters of this latter notion of samverkan are inclined to stress the relationship between science and the knowledge it produces and ‘the public sphere’ in Habermas’ (1989 [1962])original sense, that is, the communicative space of communal debate focal to democracy in society. Outreach, thus, is an old idea with renewed relevance and value.

The responsibility of language development is regulated through the Language Act of 2009, which contains provisions on language responsibilities of the public sector, to which Swedish HEIs, as government agencies, belong. The Act states, first, that ‘The public sector has a particular responsibility for the use and development of Swedish’ (Ministry of Culture 2009, Section 6) and, second, that ‘Government agencies have a special responsibility for ensuring that Swedish terminology in their various areas of expertise is accessible, and that it is used and developed’ (Section 12). These phrasings subscribe to a set of old preoccupations within modernist LPP, originally concerned with the ‘modernization’, ‘intellectualization’, and ‘standardization’ of languages (e.g. Fishman, Ferguson, and Das Gupta 1968). The baseline is that linguistic devices develop on the basis of utilization and that ‘every language is equally well adapted to the uses to which the community puts it’ (Halliday 1964, 43). Hence, the logic is that Swedish needs to be used in order to develop, and that HEIs are obliged to contribute to this cause. Support for such a position can be found in the more recent work of the linguistic anthropologist, Asif Agha (2007), who has worked in pursuit of developing a cultural-semiotic understanding of languages as differentiated into registers. In this framework, a register is envisaged as inventory of discursive signs, culture-internally recognized as being associated with particular social practices and categories of persons who engage in such practices. Since registers are historical value-attributed formations, they are also subjected to change in respect to the demographic mass of speakers acquainted with its forms, the array of semiotic devices that are recognized as its elements, and the continuity of language practices where the register is employed over time (Agha 2007, 205). For Agha, formal institutions such as HEIs play a vital role in the replication, dissemination, and legitimation of advanced registers. They may facilitate register expansion and competence in society, for instance, by reinforcing a register’s socially distributed existence by making it known to larger groups of people.

3.2. Language regimentation

Given the centrality of language in relation to these responsibilities, controlling – or regimenting – the use of language is critical. In Kroskrity’s seminal volume Regimes of Language (2000b), the notion of language regimentation was employed to direct attention to practices used in realizing a given politics of language (Kroskrity 2000a). Regimentation may be achieved through the practical imposition of a language regime, that is, a normative order that aims to govern, and so exercise some control over, the ways in which people use language. Language policies that successfully impinge upon people’s linguistic choices are paramount cases of such regimes. Regimentation may be a matter of imposing the language policies of a state, but also those of organizations or institutions within or beyond the state. This multi-level conceptualization of regimentation suits the purposes of this article, since dictates to write up SLSs in Swedish academia are regulated at the level of HEIs, which in turn answer to national legal frameworks.

Thus, I take language regimentation to refer to active attempts of controlling the production of discourse. I treat regimentation as serving the aim of promoting the use of particular capital-L languages but also of registers within such constructions. In other words, regimentation may be intentionally exercised to bolster knowledge outreach as well as register expansion, and it is therefore a matter of governing the production of knowledge as much as the linguistic resources used for such ends (Kroskrity 2000b). State-backed LPP deals with officialized forms of language regimentation, seeking as it does to arrive at particular ‘desired’ language situations. Yet, since it is up to the individual HEIs to craft and impose their own language policies, an important aim of LPP is to extend its agenda to the policies of HEIs. Consequently, I conceptualize debates on language and its use as an important facet of regimentation. As Blommaert (1999) foregrounds, prolonged debates often have an impact on the discursive struggles surrounding policy construction, since they often serve the aim of gathering support for language regimes different from those that currently prevail. Hence, following Bauman and Briggs (2000), I take a particular interest in ‘the capacity of discourse to both represent and regulate other discourses’ (p. 142), that is, in meta-discourse. Meta-discursive practice involves the production of discourse about discourse, more often than not with the willful intention of yielding change. By accentuating detrimental conditions in the area of language, meta-discursive accounts may successfully materialize into language policies, which may thereafter be used as instruments to authoritatively regiment the writing practices of active researchers. Illustrating this approach, the article now turns to the embedding of SLSs in meta-discursive debates on Swedish LPP.

4. Towards SLS policies – the view of advocates

In Sweden, criticism against the prevailing position of English in academia has been voiced since the early 1990s, mostly from the juncture of institutionalized LPP and Scandinavian linguistics (e.g. Teleman 1992). In 1997, a survey showed that English in the hard sciences and, increasingly, in other academic fields was used either extensively or exclusively for a range of academic activities: at seminars and lectures, in textbooks, as well as in written production at all levels – most notably in scientific publishing (Gunnarsson and Öhman 1997). In the meta-discursive debate triggered by this study, attention was drawn to a wide range of ostensible issues, ranging from matters of language development to researchers’ cognition and competence in both Swedish and English, as well as to questions of language status and research quality (see e.g. Gunnarsson 2001b).

While this body of criticism is multidimensional, it is possible to discern two strands of concerns manifested therein. The first centers on the dissemination of and public access to research, which is what I refer to as the outreach view, linked as it is to public dialog (e.g. Burawoy 2004). It has often been stressed that Sweden, the same as other high technology countries, is in essential need of having new knowledge ‘transmitted outside specialist circles’ (Ministry of Culture 2002, 50, my translation). It has been argued that these processes are rendered more difficult as researchers become more and more internationally orientated, thereby distancing themselves from the general public and, in so doing, yielding a language barrier that could result in a lack of participation of researchers in public discussions (e.g. Ministry of Culture 2002, 27; Teleman 2003, 232f.). From this vantage point, commentators have argued that the dominance of English is problematic in that large segments of society are excluded from the knowledge produced at universities. Tellingly, from this vantage point certain ‘democratic objections’ were raised by Gunnarsson in the following way:

Through whom and in what way should research best benefit society, how can research be useful, and how can the man on the street, politicians and others gain insight into ongoing research activities? (Gunnarsson 2001a, 289)

The second strand pertains to the maintenance and construction of terminology, discourse types and patterns, and stylistic-specific linguistic goods. This is what I refer to as the register view. At stake here is the oft-noted fear that Swedish could lose its usability as an effective means for communication within certain areas. Melander (2001, 28), for example, talks of ‘loss of intertextuality’ as a process whereby Swedish ceases to be used in certain genres and text types of science, which results in ‘a small reduction of the stylistic spectrum of Swedish.’ By the same token, Gunnarsson (2001b, 62) speaks of ‘genre death’ and of the change of culturally determined text patterns, caused by the impact of English in the realm of science.

In 1997, the Swedish Language Council was tasked by the Swedish government to produce an action plan for the safeguarding of the Swedish language. In its report (Swedish Language Council 1998), the Council framed higher education and research as one area among many where protective measures ought to be taken. On this point, the introduction of mandatory SLSs in doctoral theses written in other languages was recommended. At the time, the Council seems to have conceived this form of regimentation as, first and foremost, a way of documenting, and thus ensuring, that doctoral candidates were able to discuss their research topics in Swedish, too. However, as the debate progressed, it mushroomed into a wide range of potential issues, as outlined above. Accordingly, in the subsequent governmental report Mål i mun (Ministry of Culture 2002), the objective for implementing mandatory SLSs was significantly elaborated, now based on the dual grounds of circumventing issues related to register development as well as those of knowledge bridging:

A summary in Swedish makes it possible to keep Swedish vivid also within the most advanced fields of modern research. (…) A Swedish summary also increases the preconditions of disseminating the new knowledge out into the Swedish society. (Ministry of Culture 2002, 95, my translation)

In this framing of its benefits, the SLS was allotted to counteract several of the problems that by now were meta-discursively associated with English in academia, including concerns of outreach and register. In subsequent texts, SLSs were similarly advocated as serving plural aims: to ‘safeguard Swedish terminology, keeping the Swedish language vivid and disseminating new knowledge to the surrounding society’ (Ministry of Education and Culture 2005, 47, my translation). Noteworthy, there were LPP actors who positioned themselves either as advocates of the outreach view or of the register view by leaning to one side or the other. For instance, Norén (2006, 28, my translation) argued that the SLS policy was ‘first and foremost meaningful when the results are to be used for education and science information.’ Thus, she opted for the adoption of Swedish in extra-scientific communication, aimed for public audiences, and carried out in genres other than the strictly scientific. From this vantage point, the SLS could be seen as an attempt to widen the potential readership of the thesis, since the register performing the SLS is deliberately scaled down as a way of reaching out to non-experts. Other LPP actors have envisioned SLSs as a way of putting scientific Swedish to work, principally in order to safeguard or expand its registers. For instance, the well-known linguist and Swedish Academy member Sture Allén described the implementation of SLS policy as a way to ‘force researchers to use Swedish technical terms’ (Lotsson 2003, my translation). Likewise, in a report published by the Swedish Language Council, Salö (2010, 54) depicted SLSs as:

one of the prerequisites for Swedish to remain a complete and society-bearing language with words for scientific notions. Summaries in Swedish reduce the risk that Swedish is depleted within certain scientific areas. (Salö 2010, 54, my translation)

Thus, in terms of rationale, emphasis is chiefly placed on the register side. In this view, shared by Allén and others, the SLS is first and foremost intended to create a discursive arena within which the devices of technical and field-specific Swedish can be entextualized and replicated, which is seen as beneficial for the formation of scientific registers in Swedish. Through such entextualization, linguistic devices that are otherwise used orally only become reproduced in new forms, which broaden the semiotic range of the written register (Agha 2007).

While LPP stances on the SLS occasionally differ, these differences have not culminated in a major divide. Most commonly, the rationale for imposing SLSs has either been left uncommented on (e.g. Falk 2001; Isaksson 2008) or has been framed as being beneficial for knowledge bridging and, at the same time, register expansion (e.g. Ministry of Education and Culture 2005, 47; Ministry of Culture 2002, 95).

5. Implementation and implementation issues – the view of policy-makers and practitioners

A survey conducted by Falk (2001) revealed that, at the time, relatively few departments at different Swedish HEIs demanded SLSs. The survey also showed that varying normative directions were given as to how the SLS should be written, ranging from ‘short’ to ‘extended’ SLSs, or that they should be written in a ‘relatively popular’ style. However, over the last decade, Swedish HEIs have increasingly drawn up and implemented language policies (e.g. Salö 2010; Salö and Josephson 2014). According to the most recent mapping (Karlsson 2017), 21 out of 49 Swedish HEIs have a language policy of some sort, a figure that includes most of Sweden’s large HEIs.

The language policies of HEIs are the result of negotiation and struggle. Throughout such processes, as Källkvist and Hult (2016) have shown, various forms of interests are weighed against each other; legal frameworks may be taken into consideration, and relevant scholarly works may be read. After a given set of normative conditions have been identified, various instruments can be implemented in order to achieve particular desirable effects. A close reading of the existing 21 HEI policies shows that 15 – or two-thirds – include language about SLSs (see footnote 1). In addition, SLSs are mentioned in the policies of the two autonomous faculties, namely TEKNAT and LTH. However, it appears as though the indecisiveness found among advocates concerning the steering rationales of the SLS as a regimenting practice is also manifested in the varying positions taken in HEI language policies. Throughout, SLSs are typically mentioned only in passing, with the policy simply stating that SLSs are to be produced. Most policies do not address why they are to be produced, nor do they, consistently at least, specify whether they are to be written in scientific or more accessible registers. Yet, there are cases where the policies more or less subtly stipulate what forms of benefits SLSs are intended to yield. Three institutions – Chalmers, TEKNAT, and LTH – state that SLSs are to be ‘popular scientific’ and thus geared toward education and outreach. Subsequently, for these institutions, notably all with a polytechnic profile, emphasis is consequently not placed upon the task of developing relevant registers of technical Swedish, but rather on the task of presenting findings in an accessible manner. However, KTH, the largest technical HEI in the country, places weight on the development of Swedish terminology. University of Gothenburg and Linnaeus University, for their part, state that SLSs are to be ‘extensive’ (Sw: ‘fyllig’).

The practice of producing SLSs is generally supported within the scientific community at large – that is, it is generally seen as a reasonable way of regimenting the writing practices of researchers-to-be (Ministry of Culture 2008, 83). The fact that more and more HEI language policies demand SLSs is also an indication of this fact. Nonetheless, an evident implementation issue is that not all English-language doctoral theses are complemented with an SLS, even in cases where the language policy requires practitioners to do so. Pointing to this fact, Salö (2010, 51ff.) conducted a mini-survey in which three recent doctorates were asked to reflect upon SLSs. All three wrote their theses in English, and none of them included an SLS – in spite of the fact that the language policies of their respective HEIs required them to do so. One doctorate reported that he had been oblivious to the demand, and said that the matter was never raised in his discussions with his supervisors and others. Another doctorate recalled pondering upon this question. However, not knowing that including an SLS was a requirement, this doctorate chose not to include one after having been informed that doing so was not really necessary. Similarly, unaware that an SLS was required, a third doctorate avoided writing due to lack of time, and did not find it overly important either. All three doctorates reported that they would have included an SLS had they known that doing so was required. Thus, while the doctorates’ accounts, as reported by Salö (2010), demonstrate a general willingness to satisfy SLS policies, their responses nevertheless index that the production of SLSs has low priority among some HEIs and is, therefore, not taken very seriously by candidates and their committees. In such cases, efficacious regimentation involves convincing – or forcing – practitioners to prioritize the writing up of SLSs. There are examples of HEIs that take quite radical measures to ensure that SLSs are produced. At TEKNAT, a sum of SEK 27.000 (3000 Euro) is provided to departments to cover costs associated with thesis defenses and printing; this sum, however, is to be paid back to the faculty in cases where the thesis that is produced does not contain a popular-scientific SLS (Uppsala University 2016, 103).

Probing further into implementation issues, the article now presents the accounts of two researchers in physics. The first account comes from a recent doctorate who included an SLS in her thesis, and whose writing practices were thus regimented through the SLS policy of her HEI.

Extract 1: Interview account from physicist, Dr Jenny (my alias).

LS: You wrote a summary in Swedish for your thesis, didn’t you?

Dr. Jenny: Yes

LS: Do you have any memories if there was anything that was difficult about it?

Dr. Jenny: Do you want me to tell you how I did it?

LS: Yes

Dr. Jenny: I wrote the abstract in English and then I ran it through Google Translate

LS: haha

Dr. Jenny: Then I adjusted it a bit

LS: Right

Dr. Jenny: So that is how good it was

In a discipline where Swedish is practically never used in scientific writing, it might seem difficult to motivate one to put the time and effort into writing an SLS. As illustrated by this extract, the doctorate describes her SLS as being a rushed job in which little importance was placed upon the final result. Moreover, her account suggests that she fulfilled the task oblivious to the intent of policy-makers to regiment her writing practices, whether these pertain to outreach or register. Rather, she sought to deal with it with the least effort possible. The gap between the HEI’s intentions to regiment and the researcher’s practices is wide.

The doctorate’s account thus speaks further to the fact that the practice of producing SLSs is, at times, low-valued and is unnecessarily time-consuming. Concerning time, Josephson has argued, somewhat crossly, that ‘it takes perhaps four days to write up a good Swedish summary of the doctoral thesis in English’ (Josephson 2004, 134, my translation). This estimate seems to be made on the basis that PhD candidates who write their theses in English have also mastered Swedish. As extract 2 highlights, in cases where this is not so, a range of other concerns are actualized. Here, a senior professor in physics is interviewed. In his role as thesis supervisor, he has been obliged to ascertain that SLSs are included in the theses. While he is generally sympathetic to the demand for an SLS, he also sees it as problematic, given the fact that senior staff, rather than the candidate, often end up writing the SLS.

Extract 2: Interview account from physicist, Prof. Folke (my alias).

Prof. Folke: Because Reza is from Iran, he could not write a summary in Swedish

LS: Ok, so it was you?

Prof. Folke: Yes, and in this case I just did a direct translation of his English [abstract], so this one is not like the Swedish ones that typically appear, it is just straight off of what he had written

An immediate question that arises here pertains to whose practices SLS policies are intended to regiment. Among SLS advocates (e.g. Ministry of Culture 2002), the intention of controlling the production of discourse through SLS policies seems to have been first and foremost for SLSs to be produced, but, additionally, for the individual PhD candidate to gain practice in using scientific Swedish. ‘For the individual Ph.D. student’, Mål i mun states, the production of an SLS ‘gives the opportunity to practice describing one’s topic in Swedish’, which is seen as an important part of a researcher’s communicative skills (Ministry of Culture 2002, 95, my translation). Deliberately or not, this view overlooks the fact that theses in Swedish academia are commonly produced by candidates who have not mastered Swedish at a sufficient degree. Consequently, as the account in extract 2 suggests, only the first goal seems to have been reached in the particular case described – the SLS was produced, but the candidate gained no practice in using scientific Swedish.

Another issue in the implementation issue is that those who actually produce SLSs understand the task differently. As an illustration, the material analyzed by Josephson (2015), consisting of 86 SLSs, reveals major variability. First, the genre itself is labeled in 13 different ways – ‘Sammanfattning på svenska’ [summary in Swedish], ‘Swedish summary’, ‘Populärvetenskaplig redogörelse’ [Popular science account], and so on – which serves as an index of the ways in which the authors define their own practices and perceive the genre they write in. One-third of the SLSs have titles containing the word ‘popular’, thus marking an affinity to outreach communicative practices. Two-thirds have titles that are unmarked in this sense, that is, they can be, but do not have to be, written within scientific registers more specifically. In addition, Josephson makes a rough estimate of five ‘kinds of texts’ that are represented in the sample:

1. Short, more or less simplified translations of the English-language abstract

2. Short adaptations of the translated abstract, where the prose is geared towards the registers of written standard Swedish

3. Longer scientific texts, written in scientific registers

4. Popular science texts

5. Short hybrids, mixing traits from several registers

Again, then, the implementation of SLS policies seems to be beset with varying conceptions of what kind of text the SLS is meant to be. However, notwithstanding such variation, SLSs are being produced. Salö and Hanell (2014) report on a Swedish computer scientist who, by the end of his thesis project, faced the task of producing an SLS. His understanding of this task led him to produce a translation of the English-language thesis abstract, which accordingly resulted in a fairly short text written in advanced registers of computer science Swedish. Two facts are particularly important to highlight here. First, his rationale for producing the SLS in the first place was because the language policy adopted by his university required him to do so. This shows that language policies imposed at the university level do have the capacity of regimenting writing practices. Second, the SLS that was eventually produced was emailed to colleagues at the department in order to receive feedback of various kinds, which resulted in some 31 emails that were sent back and forth between the parties. This exchange triggered a meta-discursive discussion in which several linguistic features were debated. What this suggests is that, from the viewpoint of LPP interests, the SLS might not in itself be the most vital outcome of his writing practice. More important, arguably, is the discourse in and about computerese Swedish, triggered by the production of the SLS. However, in the correspondence surrounding it, it is at the same time evident that the colleagues who were involved understood the purpose of the SLS differently, rendered significant by the fact that some participants opted for the use of standard Swedish, intelligible across broad segments of society (the outreach view), while others opted for technical computerese (the register view) (Salö and Hanell 2014, 22–24).

6. Conclusions and final remarks

The position of English in scientific production comprises an intricate problem that seems to be at odds with the responsibilities of HEIs in Swedish society. To mitigate this situation, it is becoming increasingly common for Swedish HEIs to demand SLSs of doctoral theses. Accordingly, this article has conceptualized SLSs as an instrument for regimenting researchers’ writing practices, deliberately aimed at limiting the near-total dominance of English in scientific production. It has directed attention to existing understandings of SLS policies and implementation issues that arise in their wake. There is, on the one hand, variability in advocates’ and policy-makers’ intentions to impose the SLS regime and, on the other, a gap between any such intentions and the practices of researchers. Actors within or otherwise concerned with Swedish academia often have different conceptions of why SLSs should be written at all. As a result, there is a general ambiguity – and sometimes dissonance – surrounding the very purpose of SLSs and, accordingly, the specific language policies that enforce them. Ambiguous understandings are also reflected in practice as SLS policies are implemented. Here, a range of implementation issues are also salient: PhD candidates might not include an SLS in their theses. In cases where SLSs are included, they may be written by supervisors rather than the candidate, or, are produced in a rush using automatic translation services. As an instrument of regimentation, SLS policies here have limited effect on the actual practices of the practitioners.

In my view, the objectives underpinning the policy intervention are particularly interesting to remark upon. Whereas some see the SLS as a knowledge-bridging instrument used for the purposes of popular science, some see it as a key opportunity for entextualizing registers that are otherwise performed for the most part orally. These varying ideas do not correspond straightforwardly to groups of stakeholders such as advocates, policy-makers, or practitioners, but are found throughout each group. Variation thus resides among those who promote regimentation, those who regiment de facto and those whose writing practices are being regimented. Among its advocates, the SLS has also been exalted as a possible solution to knowledge outreach and, in chorus, register expansion. In this context, it seems apt to speak of an outreach–register ‘conundrum.’ It signals that English represents a conjectural problem, the Janus-faced components of which may prove difficult to solve with any single solution. What has been meta-discursively described as the perils of English in scientific communication comprises two strands of concerns, each of which calls for remedies that are potentially incompatible between themselves. Whereas the ‘outreach strand’ is concerned chiefly with the dissemination of research findings as a vital bridge between academia and society at large, the ‘register strand’ pertains rather to linguistic processes of sustaining Swedish as an effective vehicle for the communication of complex thought. While both of these strands of arguments are reasonable, they are not likely to be realized within the confines of a single text, namely the SLS. Quite simply, an SLS that is elementary enough to bridge the gap between science and society is not likely to contribute to expanding advanced registers of Swedish. Vice versa, an SLS that takes seriously the task of expanding Swedish registers will be unintelligible for the wider audience. Therefore, I would hold, the SLS as a policy regime cannot at once be expected to resolve the democratic issue and contribute to the expansion of academic registers.

I certainly do not present this argument with the intent of lapsing into polemics but to produce understanding. Little knowledge has previously been produced on the matters at hand, and therefore, there is little to argue in opposition to. Rather, the argument that is embarked upon should be seen as a call to make SLSs into an object of constructive discussion, on the basis of which forthcoming attempts to regiment may be purposefully launched. Large-scale genre analyses and other in-depth studies are needed. Ultimately, it is an empirical question whether SLSs aimed for ‘the man on the street’ may concomitantly expand advanced registers and, vice versa, whether SLSs that do expand such registers are inevitably incomprehensible for non-specialists at large. In LPP, a number of questions might be raised: Should doctoral theses optimally contain two SLSs – one for outreach and one for register expansion? Does it matter who writes them – supervisors or candidates – and, if so, how should they be written? Do varying understandings among advocates and policy-makers necessarily pose an issue? These matters are up for debate. The SLS might in one way or another contribute to dissemination research findings to new groups or to the legitimation of registers other than scientific English. If there is little scholarly knowledge concerning the production of SLSs, even less is known about their reception and utilization. Dependable scholarly investigations are needed. Who reads SLSs, and for what purposes? Potentially, they are read by other researchers in search of a quick introduction to the research results – for them, the value might lie in the brief format rather than in the supplementary-language feature. They might also be used by members of the educated public who prefer Swedish over English, or by science journalists, industry collaboration partners and stakeholders, etc. Thus, in spite of the vagueness, variation, and practical issues surrounding it, the SLS might nevertheless be useful in different ways, all of which aim to avoid a split of the public sphere along the axis of language boundaries, whether these are perceived in terms of capital-L languages or registers within such constructions. Not least, it may serve as a symbolic reminder of the fact that science comprises multilingual practices and has multiple publics, in spite of the current dominance of English in publishing.

Acknowledgments

This article was produced within the knowledge platform ‘Making Universities Matter: A Knowledge Platform on the Role of Universities in Society’ with the support of Vinnova, Sweden (2015-04473). I thank the reviewers and the following colleagues for providing valuable comments: Niina Hynninen, Ola Karlsson, Susanna Karlsson, Linnea Hanell, David Karlander, Olle Josephson, Mats Benner, Sverker Sörlin, Ben Rampton, and Lamont Antieau. All shortcomings are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Additional information

Funding

VINNOVA [grant number 2015-04473].

VINNOVA [grant number 2015-04473].

Notes

1. he following HEIs were identified as having language policies demanding SLSs: Chalmers, Konstfack, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm School of Economics, Swedishhttp://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/style/reference/tf_ChicagoAD.pdf University of Agricultural Sciences, University of Gothenburg, University West, and Halmstad, Karlstad, Linnaeus, Lund, Malmö, Stockholm, Södertörn, and Umeå universities. The two faculties with SLS policies are Uppsala University’s Faculty of Science and Technology (TEKNAT) and Lund University’s Faculty of Engineering (LTH). T