Global flows in local language planning: articulating parallel language use in Swedish university policies

Abstract

In this paper, the language policies of three Swedish universities are examined as instances of language planning in local contexts. Although Sweden has the national Language Act of 2009 (SFS 2009:600) as well as a general Higher Education Ordinance (SFS 1993:100; SFS 2014:1096), language planning for higher education is left to the purview of individual institutions. Since language planning in local contexts often involves the intersection of locally situated communication needs and wider circulating ideologies, the present study considers how national language planning goals are taken up and reinterpreted by higher education institutions. In particular, the focus is on universities whose policies are framed using the Nordic language planning concept of “parallel language use”, which has emerged over the last 20 years as a way to theorize a sociopolitical balance between English and Scandinavian languages. The concept indexes a range of issues related to the relative position of Swedish and English, including linguistic tensions surrounding international aspirations and national responsibilities for universities and the mitigation of purported domain loss by Swedish to English. Drawing upon a discourse analysis of policy approach, we analyze the policies of these three universities as examples of local language planning, focusing on how they engage with ideas related to parallel language use while also expanding upon the concept to include the linguistic needs of local students and staff.

Keywords:

• bilingual education
• educational policy
• discourse
• higher education
• language acquisition
• language of instruction
• language planning
• language policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Francis M. Hult is Associate Professor at the Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University. Hult works in the areas of educational linguistics, language policy, and linguistic landscape analysis. His most recent book is Research Methods in Language Policy and Planning: A Practical Guide (with David Cassels Johnson, Wiley-Blackwell, 2015).

Marie Källkvist is Associate Professor of English Linguistics at the Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University. Her research is in the fields of English language education, multilingual education and language policy and planning.

Notes

1. It should be noted that the Nordic Council of Ministers has been active in advancing an inter-Nordic language policy agenda. For example, the Nordic Language Convention of 1987 focuses on the right of Nordic citizens to use their own national language when communicating with governments in other Nordic countries, and the 2006 Declaration of Nordic Language Policy highlights the language policy priorities of Nordic countries, which include the teaching of neighboring Nordic languages, parallel language use of English and Nordic languages, and clear language in government documents, among other issues. Further information about the Nordic Council's language policy and planning work is available at http://www.norden.org/en/theme/education-and-research-in-the-nordic-region/language.

2. The Higher Education Ordinance does include some language provisions. For instance, a student whose mother tongue is not Swedish, Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, or Norwegian, except Finnish students who have studied Swedish for three years in upper-secondary school, must demonstrate knowledge of Swedish (section 6), and additional weight is placed on courses in modern languages, Swedish Sign Language (for hearing students), and English when making university admissions decisions (section 18). It does not, however, prescribe the working languages for universities.

3. Among such provisions is a stipulation that Swedish be used for official public sector communication, which includes universities, unless other laws apply (e.g. statutes requiring the use of national minority languages). We return to how universities address the Language Act (vide infra National and International Interests).

4. Baldauf uses the terms “micro-, meso-, and macro-” language planning, noting that these are best understood as existing along a continuum (2008, pp. 18–19). We will avoid this tripartite distinction in favor of a focus on the continuum of fluidity across scales in language policy and planning, as Hult (2010) has described elsewhere. Thus, we use “local language planning” in lieu of “micro language planning”, with the understanding that “local” is not necessarily coterminous with “micro” (cf. Pennycook, 2010, p. 54).

5. The policy for the Royal Institute of Technology was available in English. We follow its English text in referring to it as “KTH” using the Swedish acronym for its name, Kungliga tekniska högskolan. We use the shorthand “Stockholm” for Stockholm University and “Umeå” for Umeå University. We cite excerpts from the English text of the KTH policy. All other translations of Swedish texts and sources are our own. While Swedish and English conventions for punctuation vary slightly, we preserve the punctuation used (or not used) in the original texts.

6. Although it is not an ideal translation from Swedish to English to use “parallel lingual” in adjective form, we offer this direct translation to preserve the copular BE.

7. This heading was rendered in the original Swedish as “Umeå universitet är ett svenskspråkigt universitet”. The adjective svenskspråkigt does not necessarily suggest language use among individual members of the university (e.g. Swedish-speaking), but the political designation of Swedish as a language for the university as an institution. We return to individual versus territorial bi-/multilingualism. Vide infra English and Swedish in Parallel Language Use and Medium of Instruction and Language-in-Education Planning.

8. This is an explicit intertextual reference to Swedish government policy in which the phrasing “komplett och samhällsbärande språk” is often rendered in English as “a complete language serving and uniting society”. We use this same phrasing in our English translation of the Stockholm document.

9. The majority of Swedish universities are government agencies.