Language policy as ‘frozen’ ideology: exploring the administrative function in Swedish higher education

ABSTRACT

This article examines Language Policy documents within higher education institutions in Sweden. Its main focus is on how national language policies and policies for internationalization of the higher education are reinterpreted as local language policy. The analysis of ideologies surrounding the prescribed language(s) in meetings of decision making bodies in fifteen local Language Policy documents reveals how a monolingual national language policy is negotiated to accommodate an internationalized multilingual workplace. When the multilingual context of the internationalized university intrudes on the nationally oriented context of public administration, which favors Swedish as a default language, there are two solutions to be found in the language policy documents. (1) a temporary or permanent shift towards an internationally oriented monolingual context by allowing the use of another language, favoring English, or (2) a temporary or permanent shift towards parallel language-informed practices. Restrictive measures are found to construct situations where participation is made possible for non-regular non-Swedish-speaking members, while permissive measures provide inclusion for regular non-Swedish-speaking members, too.

KEYWORDS:

• Language planning policy
• higher education institutions
• local policy making
• language ideology
• exclusion
• multilingualism
• internationalization
• academic careers

Introduction

Existing in highly competitive educational markets, higher education institutions (HEI) are adopting and introducing national as well as supranational policies for student and staff mobility within and across national borders. Combined with pressure to communicate and diffuse research output on international platforms, preferred language in different aspects of university life has increasingly become an issue. With a perceived need for internationalization, English as a medium of instruction has emerged as a dominating language also beyond the English speaking world (Duong & Chua, 2016; Siiner, 2016). It has been observed how higher education institutions become bilingual (Hult & Källkvist, 2016) or even multilingual (Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997) in an effort to adapt to a global agenda of internationalization.

Within the context of higher education there is a growing amount of research concerning language policy in the areas of education and research (Hult & Källkvist, 2016; Källkvist & Hult, 2014; Liddicoat, 2004; Salö, 2016, 2018; Salö & Josephson, 2014). A third leg of higher education is, however, often underrepresented in the field: the administrative function. The effects on the administrative work has received comparatively little attention, as pointed out by Liddicoat (2016, p. 234, however see Karlsson, 2016, 2017; Siiner, 2016). In this paper, we contribute to the academic conversations around the effects of internationalization and of language ideologies (Shohamy, 2016) as expressed through language management (Spolsky, 2004, 2012) in higher education by examining how Language Policy (LP) documents in Swedish higher education institutions formulate explicit language policy for administrative meetings.

Teaching and communicating research results in English have become a ‘means to market higher education’ (Altbach, 2015, p. 7) for Swedish higher education, just as in many other nations. In Sweden and other Scandinavian countries, so called ‘parallel language use’, with the national language parallel to English, is often considered the ideal for the education and day to day matters (Gregersen, 2018; Hult & Källkvist, 2016; Salö, 2010, 2016; Salö & Josephson, 2014). Administrative functions in Swedish HEIs are subject to other regulations than teaching and research, a circumstance that adds to the complexity of the situation and makes parallel language use less readily available as an option. As a result, the need for local language policy within higher education has emerged as a strategy for coping with difficulties that may arise within such situations.

Language policy in Swedish higher education is not centralized; unlike in for example Norway (Jahr et al., 2006), there is no national document constituting what a language policy in higher education should look like or even cover.¹ Since there are no centralized guiding principles for how to formulate language policy, this becomes a process of language planning in local contexts (Liddicoat & Baldauf, 2008). Language policy in a local context like higher education can be seen as either meso- or micro-level policy making (Baldauf, 2005, 2006; Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997; Liddicoat, 2016). On the one hand, Swedish universities are government agencies implementing macro-level national policy into local organizations’ micro-level policies. On the other hand, universities also negotiate their own local, micro-level practices for areas like education, research, administration and career planning with national macro-level policy. When perceived in this manner, HEI language planning becomes situated on a meso-level, an intermediate layer between the state and the individual.

In this article, we focus on how language policy makers at Swedish HEIs have formulated language policies for administrative purposes in available LP documents. More specifically, we investigate the construction of policy surrounding meetings in decision making and planning bodies within HEIs. The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of how Swedish and other languages, mainly English, are ascribed value in LP documents, specifically by examining how policy is formulated for administrative and managerial settings. We do this by focusing on how national policy is reinterpreted as local policy (Baldauf, 2006; Liddicoat, 2016; Liddicoat & Baldauf, 2008). We will argue that language choice in HEIs can lead to situations of exclusion as well as inclusion, and that the negotiation of national policy in a local policy can contribute to possible inclusion.

In the next section, we provide an overview over Swedish national language policy. We also delineate how that policy relates to the governing of higher education. A brief overview of our method and the specifics surrounding the study follows. In the analysis and discussion section, we analyze language policy documents and the intersection of the HEI as a government agency and as an internationalized work place. In the conclusion, we discuss how policymakers interpret national policy, and how local policies are formulated to meet the needs of the local context (Baldauf, 2006).

Language policy and language ideology

According to Spolsky (2004), language policy can be conceptually understood as three different parts. The first part is that of language practice, which involves the actual language use within a specific domain. The second part is that of language beliefs, which is a set of norms or ideological standpoints about which languages can be used for what purposes and in what contexts. Language beliefs are highly influenced by language practice, affecting the perceptions of what counts as valid in terms of language preference. The third part is that of language management, which entails intentional attempts to influence language use. These three parts can be understood as unofficial and official regulations or mechanism of what pertains as preferred language within a specific domain (cf. Chopin, 2016, p. 23). They also resonate with Irvine’s (1989, p. 255) definition of language ideology as ‘the cultural system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships, together with their loading of moral and political interests’.

The construction and use of official language policy documents within or between organizations can be understood as attempts of language planning. Spolsky (2012) argues that the use of language policy documents is often practiced by actors who believe themselves to have authority over one or several language domains. The fundamental idea behind such documents is most commonly that of a nationwide plan, with the purpose to influence certain ways of speaking or writing (cf. Baldauf, 2006; Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997) including ‘mechanism that impacts the structure, function, use, or acquisition of language’ (Cassels Johnson, 2013, p. 9). Although we may conceptually differentiate between unofficial and official language policy, ideological aspects become important when analyzing how language policy documents influence certain language use.

Every attempt to construct a language policy document will, inherently and unavoidably, involve aspects of language ideology. Shohamy (2016) argues that a given LP document itself can be viewed as a manifestation of certain ideological agendas, that surface through the document. The promotion of one language over another, or the exclusion of some languages, reveals underpinning aspects of power within the domain.

In language policy, unavoidably, language ideology is made explicit (Shohamy, 2016; Spolsky, 2004). Promoting one language over another can lead to the eventual exclusion of individuals or groups from the echelons of power and influence. Likewise, the invitation of languages into areas where they have previously had no status can lead to a more inclusive and democratic environment. Strategies of inclusion come with effects such as broader representation and participation (Shohamy, 2016, p. 153). Individuals who have previously been excluded may become included. The price may be a less homogenous organization, be it a state, a university or a household.

LP documents can be viewed as snap shots of the language ideologies current at the time the textual artefact is produced. In that respect, LP documents are ‘frozen actions’ (Hult, 2015; Norris, 2007). In the formulation of policy, prevalent perspectives on language in the society and in the debates leading up to the moment in time when ideology is committed to paper as policy, can be traced in the textual artefacts. Drawing on Ruiz (1984), Hult and Hornberger (2016) identify three important perspectives: (i) language as a problem, (ii) language as a right, and (iii) language as a resource. In the formulation of language policy, the emergence of multilingualism in a specific domain can be constructed as something to embrace (resource) or as something to contradict (problem). These perspectives are important connections to how language ideology has become embedded, or ‘frozen’, within the LP documents as either restrictive or permissive ideological contexts.

In the context of higher education, LP can be understood as a constitution of complex relations wherein the university itself plays multiple roles. Liddicoat (2016, p. 231) argues that universities can be understood as being a meso- as well as a micro-level actor. On the one hand, universities should implement governmental policies, and on the other hand they can be understood to stand between the Government and such groups of academic staff or students that are affected by potential change. Additionally, universities have their own sets of rules and regulations for recruitment, participation, and advancement, which, too, contribute to the complexity of the emergence of policy.

The debates preceding the emergence of the first LP documents at Swedish HEIs took place in the context of the preparation for the implementation of the Bologna protocol in 2007 (Norén, 2006). The debates concerned to what extent Swedish HEIs would be able to offer courses in other languages than Swedish. In the debate, multilingualism, and especially the rise of English as a medium of instruction, in HE was displayed as a problem. The Swedish language was constructed as a language under threat, primarily by English, and at risk of becoming a language that could not be used in all areas of society, if it were to lose its usefulness as a scientific language and a medium for HE instruction (cf. Melander & Thelander, 2006). This coincided in time with the early preparatory works preceding the Language Act (SFS 2009:600), which raised similar concerns.

When LP documents began to emerge, it was under the influence of such debates arguing for on the one side, English as a medium for instruction, and on the other side the preservation and defense of the Swedish language (cf. Björkman, 2014; Milani & Johnson, 2008; Salö, 2016). Some debaters argued for a friendly co-existence between Swedish and other languages, landing in a general recommendation of parallel language, i.e. the use of Swedish and, in effect, English side by side in as many circumstances as possible (Gregersen, 2018; Hult & Källkvist, 2016). In doing so, the debates shifted towards a language as a resource and a right perspective.

National and local language policy for higher education

A majority of Sweden’s 48 HEIs are organized and controlled by the Swedish Government (Swedish Higher Education Authority, 2017). As an effect of this, they are government agencies, obliged to uphold the laws and regulation of public administration. However, they are also given a wide degree of academic freedom guaranteed by law. In addition to education and research being vital parts of HEIs, public administration becomes a third non-negotiable function and task for teaching and research staff. In this respect, administration is understood as abiding to such laws and regulations as other governmental agencies. The teachers, researchers as well as the support staff employed by the HEI are fundamentally public servants.

Swedish national language policy is regulated in the Language Act (SFS 2009:600), which came into effect in 2009. While there is no ‘official language’ in Sweden, Swedish is given a special position when it is called the ‘principal language’ and is assigned the status of the language of public administration. Five minority languages are granted a special status, and speakers of other languages are granted the rights to speak and learn their language. The Language Act can be said to be a language treaty for a multilingual society, albeit with a built-in hierarchy that puts Swedish first, as the society’s default language (cf. Hult, 2012).

The Act explicitly states that Swedish is the language of public administration. Prior to The Language Act, the Swedish language had been considered the natural language for public administration, so much so that older regulations, such as the Administrative Procedure Act from 1986 (SFS 1986:223), only regulates language use in the negative: ‘When an authority is dealing with someone who does not have a command of the Swedish language or has a severe hearing impairment or speech impediment, the authority should use an interpreter when needed’ (SFS 1986:223, section 8). While Swedish can be understood as primus inter pares in society, in public administration, it is singled out as the default language. We will refer to this as ‘national monolingual ideology for public administration’. However, the Language Act is a subsidiary law, so other laws and regulations take precedence. For HEIs, this means that, among others, the Higher Education Ordinance (SFS 1993:100), National Minorities and Minority Languages Act (SFS 2009:724) and the Discrimination Act (SFS 2008:567) could take precedence.

In the preparatory works for the Language Act and in propositions setting out the governments agendas for research and HE during the same period (Prop. 2004/05:162; Prop. 2005/06:2; Prop. 2008/09:153), higher education was singled out as an area where regulation of language use was expected to be very important as a tool for counteracting so called ‘domain loss’ (cf. Haberland, 2011; Hultgren, 2016; Salö, 2016). Policy makers feared that since more and more research publications from Swedish universities are written in English, Swedish may eventually cease to be useful as a language of science (Committee for the Swedish Language, 2002). From this perspective, diglossia was seen as an imminent threat; English may end up becoming a prestigious ‘high language’ and Swedish a ‘low language’ that could not be ‘usable in all areas of society’, a formulation that is expressly used in the Language Act, inserting ideas of diglossia and domain loss in national policy. This has been a strong theme in Swedish language planning debate for the past decades (e.g. Melander & Thelander, 2006; see Milani & Johnson, 2008; Salö, 2016). The ability for Swedish researchers to communicate their findings in Swedish is, in the debate, considered essential – the availability of Swedish terminology in all areas of research has been seen as a way to gauge whether the researchers can, in fact, use Swedish in their daily work. In other words, from the perspective of HEIs, the Language Act should be understood as an instrument for prestige planning in conjunction with corpus planning (Baldauf, 2005), safeguarding the use and usability of Swedish in higher education and research.

However, the preparatory works also identified HEIs as a context where the Language Act would not be fully applicable. HEIs were expected to compete globally on an international market (Prop. 2004/05:162; Salö, 2016). Such competition is expected to occur not only by making education available to international students, but also by researchers collaborating with colleagues from other countries, and in international recruitment of research and teaching staff. An important prerequisite in accomplishing this were that other languages than Swedish could and might be used in Swedish HEIs (Prop. 2004/05:162).

Three sections of the Act specifically target the language use of the public sector:

Section 10

The language of the courts, administrative authorities and other bodies that perform tasks in the public sector is Swedish.

Other legislation contains provisions on the right to use national minority languages and other Nordic languages.

There are separate provisions concerning the obligation of courts and administrative authorities to use interpreters and to translate documents.

Section 11

The language of the public sector is to be cultivated, simple and comprehensible.

Section 12

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.

In order to make exceptions for the special circumstances of higher education, the authors of the preparatory works suggested that outside of the Language Act’s core area, namely administration and the wielding of public authority, HEIs should be exempt from section 10 of the Language Act (Prop. 2008/09:153, pp. 29–30). The section is in place to ensure that the provisions of the Freedom of the Press Act (SFS 1949:105) and the Openness Principle, ensuring free access to all public documents that are not confidential. The reasoning being, that the Openness Principle will only be effective if all public documents are available in Swedish, when the principal language of the nation is Swedish (Prop. 2008/09:153; SFS 2009:600, section 4) The Freedom of the Press Act is part of the Swedish Constitution, and thus non-negotiable. When the preparatory works for the Language Act made exceptions from the principle that Swedish is the principal language by stating that education and research are areas outside of what is considered the core area of the Act, the aim was to make it possible for institutions of higher education to operate in accordance with the Language Act and fulfill the mission assigned to Swedish higher education to operate and compete on an international market (Swedish Higher Education Authority, 2008).

Operating on a global market, HEIs become internationalized workplaces, not only in that they make themselves available to students from other nations, encourage students to go on international exchanges, and expect their researchers to publish and network internationally, but also in that recruitment of staff is, to a large extent, done in a fashion that facilitates international recruitment, not only national. The actual degree of internationalization differs between faculties, subjects, departments and individuals, but it is clear that students and staff in higher education must navigate language policy choices on a local level in most areas of the daily work. One such area is decision making meetings and the wielding of public authority.

Meetings in decision making bodies are an integral part of the governing of HEIs. The administration of Swedish HEIs can be divided into two parts: support and management. Support staff are typically recruited specifically for the task, while management traditionally is recruited from the teaching and research staff. Serving in management is a commission of trust, a task that the researcher takes on for a limited time. While the lecturer and researcher is hired for their pedagogical and scientific skills, skills that are internationally transferable, they are also expected to be managers and public servants, experiences that are more locally oriented and require a high level of competence in the language of the organization.²

The year before the Language Act was passed, the Swedish Higher Education Authority invited all HEIs to develop their own language policies. However, it did not state what such a policy should entail. Instead, it was suggested that ‘what such a policy should include is not self-evident but must be determined based on an institution’s circumstances, goals and priorities’ (Swedish Higher Education Authority, 2008, p. 37). What is called for is the implementation of national policy into local policy planning on a meso level (Baldauf, 2006; Hult, 2010; Liddicoat, 2016; Liddicoat & Baldauf, 2008), where local needs, regulations and traditions are negotiated to fit with the national policy. Aspects of how that work has been carried out at Swedish HEIs have been studied by Francis Hult and Marie Källkvist, who identify English and Swedish as the languages that are constructed as the most valuable ones for Swedish HEIs (Hult, 2012; Källkvist & Hult, 2014), but with different applications. While they find that English is associated with internationalization, Swedish is associated with national responsibilities (Hult & Källkvist, 2016).

Methodological section

In this article, we address issues of how language policy makers at Swedish HEIs have formulated language policies for administrative purposes in LP documents. We engage in a mapping of language ideology (Ajsic & McGroarty, 2015; Shohamy, 2016), by drawing upon the concept of language planning in local contexts (e.g. Hult, 2010; Hult & Källkvist, 2016; Scollon, 2008).

At the time of this study, twenty-one out of forty-eight HEIs had adopted a language policy. Three of those³ are private HEIs, and are not treated as part of this study as they are not compelled to adhere to the Language Act. Subsequently, eighteen policy documents, all public records according to Swedish constitution, were collected from the HEIs’ websites, or by contacting the registrar’s office at each HEI.

All documents were manually coded and analyzed in order to identify the ‘frozen actions’ (Norris, 2007) and capture the intersecting discourses within such policy actions (Hult, 2015). Following Auerbach and Silverstein (2003), our coding was informed by the purpose of the study. This meant that we identified passages in the texts that explicitly or implicitly discuss language preferences within the contexts of HE in general, which in turn made us revisit previous passages in order to reinterpret or recontextualize the texts (Agar, 1996; Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995). From this perspective, the analytical process of coding the texts was iterative, acknowledging that the LP texts do not exist in a vacuum, but in an intertextual relationship with each other and with laws, regulations and public and academic debate.

An important part of our analysis resides in the intertextual approach (Johnson, 2015), where we recognize the connections between discourses and text (Candlin, 2006) and the interrelations between documents (Hult, 2015). That is, we analyzed how and when competing national policies of internationalization and language policy were reinterpreted into language ideology within and between the analyzed texts. In this process, we were able to identify areas where policy makers express a low level of variation in ideological diversity, as well as areas where there is a high degree of variation in ideological diversity. The latter type indicates ideologically rich points (Agar, 1996). This inter-documental variation offered an insight into what areas give policy makers room for interpretation of laws and regulations that intra-documental analysis could not have (Hult, 2015). One such intertextually emergent point was how the policy makers have captured local ideologies concerning language choice in meetings of decision making and planning bodies. After having identified this point of interest in the collection of LP documents, we excluded those that make no mention of the accessibility to meetings through spoken and/or written language restrictions. That excluded three of the eighteen documents. The remaining fifteen (Table 1) were analyzed for how they orient along the language as problem, language as right, and language as resource perspectives. Specifically, we wanted to know which languages are positioned as resources in meetings and which are positioned as problems, and for whom. Who is granted what language rights and what restrictions are put on these rights, if any, along the restrictive–permissive continuum? In the analysis, we also aim to shed light on what resources are provided for what language (cf. Hult & Hornberger, 2016).

In the following section, we will demonstrate how languages are ascribed value in LP documents and discuss how national languages, such as Swedish in this case, in an internationalized organization can lead to exclusion.

Table 1. Overview of mention of the spoken and written language related to meetings in the LP documents.

	Written documentation and decision guidance documents	Language in governing and decision making bodies
Halmstad University (HU)	•
Karlstad University (KaU)	•	•
Linköping University (LiU)	•	•
Lund University (LU)	•	•
Malmö University (MaU)	•	•
Royal Institute of Art (RIA)	•	•
Royal Institute of Technology (RIT)	•
Stockholm University (SU)	•
Södertörn University (SöU)	•	•
The Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences (SSSHS)	•	•
Umeå University (UmU)	•
University of Arts, Crafts and Design (UACD)	•	•
University of Borås (UB)	•
University of Skövde (US)	•	•
University West (UW)	•

Language policy for meetings in the internationalized government agency

Looking at the formulations about language in meetings and the textual artefacts that are intrinsic to meetings, it quickly becomes clear that policy makers in the affected HEIs have reached a range of conclusions about how meetings in decision making and planning bodies may be conducted. The variation between the LPs suggests that policymakers have drawn different conclusions about how to balance and make sense of the Language Act, the Openness Principle and the instruction to universities to become internationalized organizations. Some policymakers have concluded that the only language available for meetings is Swedish, others that other languages (in effect: English) may be used, more or less restrictively.

What emerges is a spectrum of possibilities, with near monolingual ideologies for public administration on the restrictive end and free choice on the permissive end. None of the LP documents that address the issue of language(s) in meetings fail to acknowledge that such circumstances may arise that make it relevant for non-Swedish-speaking persons to participate in meetings. First, we will analyze the LP statements about the language(s) spoken during the meetings, then what is said about the language(s) of the textual artefacts.

Speaking at and participating in meetings

Three HEIs that display a restrictive ideology are Malmö University, Linköping University, and Karlstad University. They stipulate a monolingual Swedish-by-default language policy in meetings, but with an option for primarily English, should circumstances call for deviations from the rule.

Table

Sammanträden i beslutande och beredande organ ska hållas på svenska om inte omständigheterna kräver engelska eller annat språk. En sådan omständighet är sammanträden dit internationella föredragande är inbjudna, eller sammanträden i anställningsnämnd med internationella sakkunniga närvarande. (MaU)

Meetings in decision-making and planning bodies shall be held in Swedish unless circumstances demand English or another language. Such circumstances can be meetings where international rapporteurs are invited or in academic appointments board meetings with international external experts present.

The first sentence that deals with the language of meetings at Malmö University comes across as comparatively permissive: there may be circumstances that call for other languages than Swedish, and then a language switch is available as a resource. In a situation that is presented as monolingual with the national language as the exclusive option, the occasion of the multilingual context becomes a deviation from the rule, a problem that needs solving. Also, the wording ‘circumstances’ is a vague concept. In the second sentence, there is an exemplification which narrows down the options. The word ‘circumstances’ becomes defined as an occasion when invited guests are recruited externally from the organization to perform a specific function as experts. They may contribute to specific items on the agenda. That clarification excludes ‘circumstances’ such as if a non-speaker of Swedish is appointed to the decision-making body as a regular member. The routines of the meeting display signs of a restrictive monolingual ideology, where Swedish is the language that is a resource. No language is posited as in itself specifically problematic, but the required presence of a person whose linguistic repertoire does not contain the Swedish language becomes a problem in need of solving. A multilingual situation becomes a temporary intrusion in an otherwise monolingual space. Interestingly, the solution is a switch to another monolingual practice, albeit temporary and internationally oriented as opposed to nationally oriented. The rights to interact in ‘English or another language’ is not granted to an individual speaker: the presence of a non-Swedish speaking non-member, grants the meeting the right to be conducted in English or another language for the duration of the handling of that item. The LP document of Linköping University, too is on the restrictive end of the ideological spectrum:

Table

Sammanträden i universitetsstyrelsen, fakultetsstyrelse (motsv), institutionsstyrelse, styrelse för bibliotek och annan arbetsenhet samt organ som arbetar på delegation från eller som beredande organ för nämnda styrelser sker på svenska. Vid sammanträde i anställningsnämnd får ordföranden besluta att behandlingen av visst ärende skall ske på engelska, om icke-svenskspråkig sakkunnig deltar i mötet. (LiU)

Meetings of the University board, faculty board (or similar), institutional board, board for library and other units and organs that have delegation from or are preparatory organs for said boards, are held in Swedish. At meetings of the academic appointments board, the chairperson may decide that specific points on the agenda may be treated in English, if non-Swedish-speaking experts are participating in the meeting.

Just like at Malmö University, what warrants a switch to English is, particularly, meetings of the academic appointments board. The standard procedure for recruitment of teaching and research staff to Swedish universities is to recruit experts in the field, who are not employed by the hiring HEI, to evaluate the curriculum vitae and publications of all applicants. The experts are sometimes invited to the academic appointments board to discuss their recommendations. By employing international experts, the field of possible expert candidates is broadened, making it easier to find an expert suitable for the task. Their inclusion in the meeting is, in this extract, made possible by an exemption to the rule of Swedish as management language. The policy from Linköping University is slightly more restrictive than that from Malmö University. While the LP document from Malmö University acknowledges that circumstances where a monolingual practice may warrant a more permissive ideological context, albeit temporary, the policy from the Linköping University places the power to permit a deviation from the Swedish-by-default practice with the chairperson. The chair may (Sw. ‘får’) decide that an item shall be handled in English if a non-regular participant who is a non-speaker of Swedish is present.

A somewhat more general exemption from an otherwise restrictively monolingual policy can be found in the LP document of Karlstad University:

Table

Karlstads universitet är en svensk myndighet vars verksamhet styrs av lagar och förordningar på svenska. Därför är handläggningsspråket svenska och lokala myndighetsbeslut ska fattas och skrivas på svenska. [—] Eftersom Karlstads universitet är en svensk myndighet ska mötesspråket normalt vara svenska. Detta gäller speciellt sammanträden i alla beredande och beslutande organ, men ska också beaktas när det gäller institutions- och ämnesmöten. Avvikelser kan ske om omständigheterna så kräver. Enskilda yttranden kan alltid framföras på engelska av talare som själva väljer detta för att bättre kunna framföra sin åsikt. (KaU)

Karlstad University is a Swedish government agency whose activities are governed by laws and regulations in Swedish. Hence, the language of the proceedings shall be Swedish and local governing decisions shall be taken and documented in Swedish. [—] Since Karlstad University is a Swedish government agency, the language of meetings shall normally be Swedish. This is especially important for meetings in all decision-making and planning bodies, but should also be considered when it comes to department meetings and subject meetings. There may be deviations if circumstances demand it. Single utterances can always be made in English by speakers who make this choice to be able to express themselves more clearly.

The LP document states that the language in meetings is to be Swedish, setting up a monolingual practice. But, just as at Malmö University, there may be ‘circumstances’ that demand other practices. Unlike Malmö University’s LP document, however, there are no examples of what such circumstances might be, allowing the vague concept ‘circumstances’ to remain vague. In the following sentence though, it is suggested that while decisions have to be made in Swedish, single utterances may be in English, in order for staff to be able to make their voices and arguments heard. While there are no restrictions on who may make use of English as a lingua franca in order to be a participant, the extent of the participation is clearly limited. The speaker would be expected to understand Swedish well enough to understand other people’s contributions. What is proposed is the possibility of a moderately permissive one-way bilingual practice. In theory, the LP document of Karlstad University makes meetings available for non-Swedish-speaking staff to be regular attendants. However, ‘single utterances’ can hardly be understood as opening up for equal participation. A similar stance is displayed by the University of Skövde, where the language policy seamlessly glides from meetings in decision making bodies to a more general dissemination of information.

Table

Eftersom Högskolan är en svensk myndighet ska mötesspråket normalt vara svenska, vilket är särskilt viktigt när det gäller möten i beslutande och beredande organ. Avvikelser kan emellertid ske när omständigheterna så kräver. Exempelvis kan muntlig information vid möten även ske på engelska om icke svenskspråkiga personer är närvarande. (US)

As the University is a Swedish government agency the language of meeting shall normally be Swedish, which is especially important when it comes to meetings in decision making and planning bodies. There may be deviations when circumstances demand it. For example, oral presentation of information may take place in English if non-Swedish-speaking persons are present.

Here, the LP document invoke the HEI’s status as government agency to legitimize the call for a monolingual use of Swedish in meetings. While the LP documents of both Malmö University and Linköping University take decision-making meetings as their starting point, the documents of Karlstad University and the University of Skövde begin in the more general activity ‘meetings’, specifying that some meetings are more strongly governed by a monolingual ideological context than others. However, here the language is to ‘normally be Swedish’, an opening to situations that may deviate from the normal, suggesting a permissive ideological context. However, with the exemplification being that information during meetings may be given in English if non-Swedish-speakers are present, demonstrates how certain meeting activities are exempt to such monolingual ideological contexts. The orientation towards the HEI as a governing agency subjected to the rules and regulations within the public sector, suggests a bias towards national language policy and governing traditions as the main frame of reference. Södertörn University and The Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences,⁴ on the other hand, appear to be treating equal participation and openness as guiding principles.

Table

Sammanträden i beslutande och beredande organ ska i första hand hållas på svenska. Önskvärt är att alla ska förstå talad och skriven svenska så bra att man kan ta del av beslut och information samt delta i internt arbete. Delar av högskolans personal, doktorandgrupp och studenter har dock annat språk än svenska som sitt förstaspråk. Om annat mötesspråk än svenska (företrädesvis engelska) används, ska detta vara noga genomtänkt och välgrundat. Val av språk får inte påverka förståelsen av diskussioner och de beslut som tas. Högskolan bör dock sträva efter att möjliggöra delaktighet i dessa organ för såväl personal som doktorander och studenter som inte kan svenska. (SöU and SSSHS)

Meetings in decision-making and planning bodies shall primarily be held in Swedish. It is desirable that all [staff] understand spoken and written Swedish well enough to take part of decisions and information and take part in the internal work. Parts of the University’s staff, PhD-students and undergraduate students have another language than Swedish as their first language. If another language than Swedish is used (primarily English), this must be well founded and thought through. The choice of language must not affect the understanding of discussions and the decisions that are made. However, the University ought to strive towards facilitating participation in these bodies for staff, PhD-students and undergraduate students who don’t know Swedish.

Unlike in the previous extracts, the LP documents of Södertörn University and The Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences state that the language of meetings is ‘primarily’ Swedish, invoking a preference for Swedish as the main resource for meetings, but with a permissive opening towards other languages. This is a concession, compared to other LP documents. The language skills of possible participants are problematized in direct vicinity to the discussion of the language of the meeting. The possible participants mentioned in the policies are regular members of the staff and student body. Unlike the policies from Malmö University and from Linköping University, where the actors subjecting the Swedish-by-default monolingual ideology to pressure are non-regular members external to the organization, here the actors mentioned are potential regular members, internal to the organization. Not only is it made explicit that not all staff and students are speakers of Swedish, which suggests that the participation of all members of staff is desirable. It is also problematized that even though many may know Swedish, it is a reality in the multicultural community that is present day Sweden and Swedish HEIs, that many possible participants may not have Swedish as their strongest language. While meetings may be held in other languages than Swedish, it is stressed that focus must be on understanding and availability. Focus on participation enables inclusion and availability, suggesting a permissive and flexible ideological context. The language of choice for providing that availability is ‘primarily English’, but also the furthering of the language skills of staff and students.

Choosing another language than Swedish as the meeting language is not to be a frivolous decision, though. It is clearly stated that such a decision must be accompanied by solid arguments for why a deviation from the rule is warranted. The LP document does not open up for a complete switch to other languages at Södertörn University and The Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences. The least restrictive ideological context addressing language choice at Swedish HEIs available to date is found in the LP document from Lund University:

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Sammanträden vid Lunds universitet ska som grundregel hållas på svenska. Undantag kan göras då en eller flera mötesdeltagare inte behärskar svenska varvid sammanträdet i så fall helt eller delvis kan hållas på engelska. (LU)

Meetings at Lund University shall as a rule be held in Swedish. Exceptions can be made when one or several participants do not master Swedish. At such a time, the meeting can be held in English in part or in its entirety.

Here, there are no restrictions as to the circumstances or persons subjected to the exception to the rule, nor are there any cautionary words to consider before deciding to hold the meeting in English. Also note that it is assumed that there will be meetings where not all participants master Swedish: the choice of words is då, i.e. ‘when’, not om, ‘if’. The policy orients towards the national policy of Swedish language for the public administration, but makes relevant a permissive ideological context towards accommodating the multilingual reality of Swedish HEIs. The language that is suggested to be the solution to the problems that arise by invoking a monolingual practice in a multilingual workspace is English. Here too, the solution to the problems created by the nationally oriented monolingual ideology in the multilingual workplace is the internationally oriented monolingual ideology.

All LP documents discussed so far that mention the language in meetings treat Swedish as the primary language and in effect the public administrative language. Swedish is posited as the primary linguistic resource of meetings and the primary problem in the internationalized multilingual domain of Swedish HEIs. If Swedish is not an available language to all participants, English is the default backup, invoked when the international and multilingual clashes with the national and monolingual. Malmö University suggests that ‘other languages’ may also be used, and Södertörn University and The Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences add ‘primarily’ in parenthesis. Undoubtedly, most members of academia in the Western world are expected to master English (Hult & Källkvist, 2016). However, not all members have English as their strongest or even second strongest language (Phillipson, 2015). While holding meetings in English can make the meeting available to a higher percentage of the staff, it could also reduce the share that can express themselves in their strongest language. A radically different solution is that of the Royal Institute of Art.

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På Utbildningsnämnden och i styrelsen hålls möten på svenska, icke svenskspråkiga ledamöter ges stöd genom t.ex. tolk. (RIA)

In the Board of Education and in the School Board meetings are to be held in Swedish, non-Swedish-speaking members will be given support by eg. an interpreter.

While the LP document of the Royal Institute of Art clearly states that meetings in decision making bodies are to be held in Swedish, with no explicit option for switching the working language to English or other languages, the option to participate with the aid of an interpreter may in fact be the most inclusive option. Advocating for availability and transparency, the LP document manifests a permissive ideological context wherein a multilingual practice is promoted. Ideally, interpreters enable members to participate on their own terms – everyone may choose to speak their strongest language, which could give the best possibility to express nuanced thought. Allowing all participants to participate in their strongest language may in other words be a maximally multilingually oriented practice, manifesting a resources perspective.

Textual artefacts of meetings

Meetings generate textual artifacts both before and after the meeting takes place. Before the meeting there is a summons and there may be numerous documents to support the decision-making process; afterwards there are minutes that become the official record of the meeting, to mention a few of the texts most closely associated with meetings. For written documentation of meetings in decision making bodies, the language policy documents are in near perfect agreement on the interpretation of section 10 of the Language Act: when the law states that the language of public administration is Swedish, it is taken to apply fully to the language of written records: The decisions and acts that are artefacts of the process of governing an HEI as a public sector organization, are to be in Swedish. The manifested restrictive ideological context within these situations enable monolingual practices although situated within HE as an internationalized milieu. Within the LP documents, this is either explicitly stated, sometimes even with a reference to the Language Act, as from Lund University and the University of Arts, Crafts and Design, or implicitly, as in the case of Malmö University.

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Språklagen innebär att information om universitetets verksamhet som vänder sig till allmänheten ska finnas på svenska. Den innebär också att protokoll, beslut, föreskrifter, fastställda verksamhetsberättelser och liknande dokument som universitetet förvaltningsrättsligt är skyldigt att upprätta, ska upprättas på svenska. Huvudregeln är också att andra viktigare handlingar som expedieras, och som därmed blir allmänna handlingar, ska upprättas på svenska. [—] En allmän handling som översätts till ett annat språk ska kunna kopplas till ett svenskspråkigt original och en översatt handling har ingen egen rättsverkan. (LU)	The Language Act means that information about the university’s activities that are directed towards the public is to be available in Swedish. It also means that protocols, decisions, prescriptions, annual reports and similar documents that the university must produce under administrative law, is to be in Swedish. The main rule is that other more important deeds that are expediated, and which become public record, are to be in Swedish. [—] It must be possible to connect a public record that is translated to another language to a Swedish original and a translated record has no legal effect.
Dokument som är resultat av myndighetsutövning ska skrivas på svenska och bör vid behov översättas till engelska (SFS 900:600 §10). (UACD)	Documents that are the result of the exercise of public authority shall be written in Swedish and ought to be translated to English when required (Language Act § 10)
Malmö högskola är en myndighet som styrs av lagar och förordningar på svenska. Beslut ska översättas till engelska i relevanta ärenden för att säkra rättssäkerheten för studenter och anställda. (MU)	Malmö University is a public authority that is governed by laws and regulations in Swedish. Decisions shall be translated to English I relevant cases to secure the rule of law for students and staff.

Translation as an option for making documents available is a common theme in the LP documents. Decisions and minutes are to be made available in other languages than Swedish when called for, such as when a decision directly concerns a person who does not understand Swedish. At first glance, this may be understood as a permissive ideological context, but we argue that the multilingual practice is constructed as a problem in this instance. Although the textual artefacts may be translated into other languages, usually English, it is evidently an exception from a normally strictly monolingual practice. Also, while the minutes and decisions can be translated, that option and service is only available when the decision directly affects the individual. It only facilitates understanding and participation for the individual on a personal level. Equal participation is not made possible. The level of permissiveness is decidedly circumscribed.

Documents that are procured to support the decision-making process, however, are rarely mentioned in the LP documents. In the two instances where supporting documents are mentioned, there is a clear bias towards Swedish as the language of government agencies.

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I fall då beslutsunderlag är på annat språk än svenska bör beslutet vara så pass utförligt formulerat att även en person som inte kan ta del av underlaget i sin helhet, ska kunna förstå innebörden av beslutet. (SöU)	In cases when documents that are bases for decision making are in a language other than Swedish, the decision ought to be detailed enough that even a person who cannot take part of the basis for the decision in its entirety, can understand the effects of the decision.
Alla protokoll och beslut skall avfattas på svenska. Vid behov skall en översättning göras till engelska och/eller annat språk. Underlag till beslut skall också vara skrivna på svenska. Utlåtanden från utländsk sakkunnig får dock vara avfattade på danska, engelska eller norska utan att behöva översättas till svenska. (LiU)	All protocolls and decisions are to be written in Swedish. When required, a translation is to be made into English and/or another language. Bases for decision making process shall also be written in Swedish. Statements from foreign experts may be written in Danish, English or Norwegian without being translated into Swedish.

According to the LP document from Linköping University, all textual artefacts that make up the bases for formal decision making have to be in Swedish, with the exception that texts from foreign, presumably non-Swedish-speaking, experts. Such textual artefacts may be permitted to be in other languages than Swedish, namely English or closely related Scandinavian sister languages, Danish and Norwegian. Even though concessions are present at both Södertörn University and, to a lesser degree, Linköping University to facilitate participation in meetings, the Swedish language bias for textual artefacts invokes a restrictive ideological context and nationally oriented monolingual ideology for public administration. In effect, this hampers regular participation in the decision-making process for non-Swedish speakers.

Discussion and conclusion

With the advent of globalized educational contexts, including staff and teacher mobility as well as dissemination of research output, has led to a need to formalize when certain language practices are to be preferred. More specifically, HE has come to be characterized by multilingual practices as an effect of demands to increase international presence. Teachers and researchers are increasingly coming to terms with the required need to communicate in other languages than their native one.

This study focuses on the wake of such internationalization, where local policy makers at HEIs in Sweden have structured language choice in the organizations around strategies of parallel language use (Hult & Källkvist, 2016; Källkvist & Hult, 2014; Salö & Josephson, 2014). In the context of higher education, this has most commonly meant education and research (Liddicoat, 2004; Salö, 2016, 2018). However, there is an under-examined part of HEI daily life that deserves more scholarly attention: the effects of internationalization on the administrative functions of HEIs (Karlsson, 2016, 2017; Liddicoat, 2016; Liddicoat & Baldauf, 2008; Siiner, 2016).

Drawing on Hult and Hornberger (2016) we have analyzed the LP documents in regards to underpinning perspectives in relation to languages as a (i) problem, (ii) right and (iii) resource. These perspectives are understood as hidden ideological agendas, manifested as ‘frozen actions’ (Hult, 2015; Norris, 2007). By analyzing the LP documents in this respect, we have demonstrated how restrictive and permissive ideological contexts within the policies can advocate monolingual as well as multilingual practices. Although we can say nothing from the data about the actual practice within the organizations, or how everyday work and life are affected, we argue that some challenges deserve attention. We see these as possible effects stemming from the internationalization of HE in terms of how organizations set out to handle the challenges that arise in the meeting when the restrictively monolingual tradition of public administration is required to coexist with the multilingual workplace and collegiate of the internationalized university. When the cadre of possible participants in groups and meetings come from an international, multilingual body, and are required to function in a local, national-language-oriented context, colleagues whose multilingual repertoire does not entail the nationally preferred language will in effect become excluded. In the case of the study, the national-language oriented setting is the preparatory and decision making bodies of HE. Such bodies are loci of power and influence in the organizations where the possible participants are members. With a restrictively monolingual ideology for public administration, some staff members may be excluded from the possibility of becoming full participants in the organization.

The preparatory works for the Language Act link section 10, the section that stipulates Swedish as the language of public administration, to the Openness Principle. The logic is that in Sweden, a public office and governmental system that is run in Swedish guarantees that the people affected by the governing bodies can have insight into and critically assess the forces that govern them. When the law sets up Swedish as the language of the public offices, it is certainly a policy move to secure a certain status for the Swedish language (Baldauf, 2005), but there is also an assumption that a Swedish speaking governing body assures transparency and access to the power. It is a restrictively monolingual policy that aims for inclusion into the affairs of the State for its members, the citizens. For highly internationalized HEIs, conversely, a restrictively monolingual practice that favors Swedish as the language of administration risks becoming the basis for opaqueness and exclusion for its members, the staff and the students. We have demonstrated in the analysis section how local policies have been constructed in a way that gives precedence to Swedish above any other language, especially in contexts which are characterized by execution of authority.

We argue that the Swedish language as used in a higher education context may, in fact, have lost its importance as a means for inclusion. We have found that as Swedish has been given a strong, dominant and exclusive power within the multilingual context of higher education, it may restrict participation from members who have been recruited to the HEI in its strive towards internationalization. Siiner (2016) found similar effects within the Danish higher education context, where participation and integration were hampered due to strict language policies.

In the data, nationally oriented restrictive Swedish-as-default monolingual ideologies are renegotiated when the multilingual context of the internationalized university contributes to language becoming a problem. On the restrictive end of the proposed solutions, the rules are accommodated only for non-Swedish speakers who are non-regular participants, solving the multilingual ‘problem’ by invoking a temporary internationally oriented monolingual ideology in the form of English (or another language). On the permissive end of the spectrum, rules can be accommodated to ensure participation for non-Swedish speakers as regular participants either by making affordances for an international monolingual ideology or, by accepting a multilingual practice, in the form of bilingual meetings, an orientation towards participation and understanding as the guiding values, and even interpreters. In practice, this is the closest the LP documents come to acknowledging parallel language use in meetings. While parallel language use is recommended in other contexts of the HEIs (Gregersen, 2018; Källkvist & Hult, 2014), it has only reached the administrative and managerial functions under certain very limited circumstances.

We propose that it is likely that a strict Swedish language policy for decision making meetings could result in glass ceilings as well as lock-in effects. In highly internationalized environments, it is conceivable that the ratio of individuals with a high enough proficiency in Swedish could end up being so low that only a small part of the academic staff becomes eligible for administrative and managerial positions. In effect, this could result in a situation where a few individuals end up rotating necessary administrative and managerial tasks between them. By extension, such a situation might have negative consequences for these individuals, as they may fall behind in terms of research and scholarly progression. Likewise, the opposite is possible. A situation where otherwise competent researchers are held back in their careers and in their choices because they cannot accept leadership positions is also possible. The Royal Institute of Technology cautions that ‘[l]ärare som inte kan svenska har svårt att uppfylla befordringskraven och är normalt inte aktuella för ledningsuppdrag.’ [Eng.: Teachers who do not know Swedish have trouble meeting the demands for promotion and can normally not be considered for leadership positions.]. The extent of this possible problem would be an important area for further inquiry.

This study has focused on in what manner, to what extent and for whom restrictive monolingual nationally determined rules for public administration may be renegotiated to accommodate local and international multilingual contexts and demands. At least one of the more permissive of the solutions raise the issue of staff competence management in direct relation to the language of meetings. One way of making participation possible, that could remove the obstacle of the monolingual managerial tradition would be to require and facilitate study of the Swedish language for individuals who are prospective regular members of boards and meetings. That would require that HEIs incentivize language studies by making them possible, attractive and accessible. As Siiner (2016) points out, participation must be easy. Today, we have little knowledge of to what extent international staff participate in the available language programs at Swedish HEIs and what level of proficiency is reached. This, too, requires further study.

The ideologies captured as frozen action in the LP documents are formulated to help members make language choices in the day to day practice of HEIs. There are studies of how staff navigate ideology and linguistic choice in matters of education (Söderlundh, 2010) and in matters of research (Salö, 2016). Little or nothing is documented about how participants make meetings and participation work in situ. This would be a fruitful avenue of research.

Language policy and administrative tradition are clear when it comes to how the decision-making process is to be documented and made available. They are, however, less clear when it comes to what languages are available to the actual meetings where members of a decision-making and planning body come together. Our analysis of LP documents have revealed areas where formulating policy is less than straightforward, due to contradicting policies and practices informing the policy making process. On the one hand, the internationalization of HEIs is expected to attract non-Swedish-speaking research and teaching staff into a multilingual collegiate. On the other hand, the language of the administrative process, which not only affects all staff, but which also recruits participants from the teaching and research staff, is restrictively monolingual with Swedish at its preferred language.

The aim of this article has been to gain an understanding for how English, as a mediating language implemented through the internationalization agenda, clashes with Swedish in administrative and managerial settings. Our comparison of LP documents has enabled an analysis of how policy making at local levels incur a process of reinterpreting and reimagining national policy (Baldauf, 2006). Within this local process, we have identified a number of challenges that the LP documents manifest within a higher education context.

Although coming with an intent of increasing the diffusion of research and placing Swedish higher education on the global education market, internationalization has come to stand in stark contrast to undertakings of administrative or managerial character. We identify a risk of exclusion and non-transparency when HEIs in Sweden continuously strive for increasing internationalization. These arguments resonate against previous studies (Siiner, 2016) and answers an important call for a deeper understanding of the effects of LPs on administrative and managerial levels within higher education (Liddicoat, 2016) and on how these challenges may be overcome.

Acknowledgements

A version of this paper has been presented at the Text and Context-seminar series at the Department of Swedish, University of Gothenburg. The authors are indebted to Tommaso Milani, Per Holmberg and Anja Allwood for valuable input. The text has also been very much improved by comments from two anonymous reviewers; we are in their debt.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Susanna Karlsson is an associate professor in sociolinguistics at the Department of Swedish, University of Gothenburg. In her research, she studies language planning and policy issues, such as the attitudes and ideologies in corpus planning, language shaming and policy making. Recently, she has published in Journal of Pragmatics and Discourse Studies.

Tom S. Karlsson is an assistant professor at the School of Public Administration, University of Gothenburg. His research interests concern managerial and market reforms over time, with specific interest in how central government agencies – and the actors within – adopt and adapt to new practices. He has recently published in Public Management Review and at Routledge.

ORCID

Susanna Karlsson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1201-1199

Tom S. Karlsson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1572-7993

Notes

1 Gregersen (2018) sets out a number of recommendations for best parallel language practice in HE. The recommendations do not, however have the status of national guidelines and HEIs are free to formulate policies after their own preferences.

2 The issue has been addressed in the interim report from the Internationalization Inquiry (SOU 2018:3, p. 157), where the Inquiry suggests a bilingual practice for all administrative texts in order to facilitate inclusion for international staff and students. When the final report was released, the issue was discussed only as a matter for international students; the regular staff was not included in the discussion (SOU 2018:78, p. 351).

3 Stockholm School of Economics, Chalmers University of Technology and Jönköping University.

4 That SöU and SSSHS have identical texts suggests that SSSHS have glanced at the SöU document when producing their own, as SöU adopted their language policy several years before SSSHS.