26.4373, Review: Applied Ling; Socioling: Thøgersen, Hultgren, Gregersen (2014)

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Subject: 26.4373, Review: Applied Ling; Socioling: Thøgersen, Hultgren, Gregersen (2014)

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Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2015 17:23:45
From: Josep Soler-Carbonell [josep.soler-carbonell at english.su.se]
Subject: English in Nordic Universities

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-4441.html

EDITOR: Anna Kristina  Hultgren
EDITOR: Frans  Gregersen
EDITOR: Jacob  Thøgersen
TITLE: English in Nordic Universities
SUBTITLE: Ideologies and practices
SERIES TITLE: Studies in World Language Problems 5
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Josep Soler-Carbonell, Stockholm University

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

What is the role of English in present-day Nordic universities? What language ideologies are associated to it and what actual linguistic practices can be observed, ‘on the ground’? How has such a situation evolved, historically? And what are the consequences for the societies in this part of the world? These are some of the questions that “English in Nordic Universities” seeks to answer, and it does so to a great extent. The main purpose of the book, Hultgren, Gregersen and Thøgersen note in their introductory chapter, is to contrast the linguistic ideologies and practices in higher education. According to the editors, it can be argued that these two different layers have become increasingly detached one from the other in Nordic universities, and so the time is right for a volume like this to investigate issues of language ideologies and practice with regard to English in such a setting.

The main idea, Hultgren, Gregersen, and Thøgersen write in the introduction, is that ideologically, universities in the Nordic countries (and in many other areas as well) have seen their roles change over the last few decades, which has provoked important sociolinguistic modifications. Universities are still largely seen as national flagships that need to cater for their citizens and provide good quality education and research in the national languages. At the same time, they are increasingly seen as private businesses in need of making a profit, attracting highly qualified professors and motivated students from abroad, and securing external funding from competitive international schemes. This brings about an ideological tension between local/national languages, on the one hand, and English, on the other. How much English is needed? How much space for the local/national language can be kept? These are the sorts of questions that policymakers and other relevant stakeholders at univer
 sities seem to be having trouble with. 

The Nordic countries are well known for their notion of ‘parallel language use’, which expresses the idea that it should be possible to use several languages in one or more areas, without any language being used exclusively in any of them. At the level of practice, however, reality is much more fluid, and not surprisingly, speakers use their language resources to serve their needs the best they can. This results in several languages being present in a single area in a complex manner, bringing them closer to a more flexible approach to multilingualism than the one enshrined in policy documents. So, where do these two levels of linguistic reality, the ideological and the practical one, meet or collide? This is what the authors of the papers included in this volume set out to investigate.

The volume is organized coherently in the following way: there are two chapters per country represented in the book, one touching upon ideology, the other dealing with practice.  The countries are: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and Denmark. As noted, the book contains an introductory chapter, by the editors, and an epilogue, by Hartmut Haberland.

Chapter 2, by Andrew Linn, explores language ideological questions in Norway. Linn notes that Norway is a country with a long history and experience in language policy matters, and he usefully presents the current debate between the role of English and Norwegian in higher education in connection to earlier tensions between the two local language varieties, Bokmål and Nynorsk. At present, much of the discussion at the language policy level focuses on how to create a space for both Norwegian and English to peacefully coexist in higher education, but there remain important practical challenges to be overcome, such as the non-compartmentalized and fluid use of both English and Norwegian in the country’s universities, and the difficulty of setting clear-cut boundaries between (non-)standard varieties, written and spoken, of the two languages.

Still in the Norwegian context, Chapter 3 is by Ragnhild Ljosland. In her paper, she considers how status planning, corpus planning, and acquisition planning are managed and implemented on a practical level. Her analysis suggests that the country has made good progress in the drafting of several policy programs, but there is still some way to go when it comes to issues of status, corpus, and acquisition planning: how to ensure a certain security for Norwegian in higher education, which may lead to the need to establish key terminology in the language, and how to make sure that students in Norwegian universities successfully acquire the necessary language skills of their specialist subjects in English and Norwegian.

Chapter 4, by Linus Salö, turns to the Swedish context and examines language ideological tensions around English in Swedish society. In the chapter, the author proposes a historical interpretation of how English has been viewed as a threat to Swedish in different periods in the recent past. Although not particularly centered in the context of higher education, the chapter is informative about the language ideological evolution of English in Sweden. Anchored in Bourdieu’s concepts of ‘market’ and ‘habitus’, Salö proposes that the notion of ‘domain loss’ emerges in Sweden in the 1990s, where a more corpus centered debate on the negative impact of English on Swedish (the notion of ‘Swenglish’) was replaced by a more status driven discussion of this threat (i.e. ‘domain loss’), which came about as a result of other larger scale processes of globalization and nation-state erosion.

Hedda Söderlundh, in Chapter 5, examines the topic of language practices in Swedish higher education. Her paper provides a summary of a set of previous studies that have investigated this issue, which she classifies as either ‘normative’ or ‘dynamic’ studies on language practices. According to Södderlundh, the former tend to present a compartmentalized picture of languages in higher education, whereas the latter are more reflective of the dynamicity and flexibility of language use ‘on the ground’ in this context. ‘Normative’ studies usually rely on self-reported and elicited data from a sample of speakers, while ‘dynamic’ studies make use of ethnographic approaches to sociolinguistic research and thus provide a more nuanced picture of the agents’ roles in actual linguistic practice.

In Chapter 6, Taina Saarinen takes the reader to the Finnish context. The chapter offers an analysis of language ideological tensions in the national and international context of Finnish higher education. Saarien provides first a historical overview of the linguistic developments in the country and then goes on to illustrate how the ‘national’ and ‘international’ dimensions are characterized in Finnish internationalization policies of higher education. Further, and most interestingly, the author shows the hierarchization that exists in connection to English, with certain varieties of Kachru’s ‘inner circle’ countries being more highly regarded. This, next to the fact that ‘language’ is not usually explicitly mentioned in policy documents, suggests that English has become self-evident, on the one hand, but it also strengthens the protectionist stance towards the national languages (Finnish and Swedish), on the other hand.

Chapter 7 is by Jan Lindström and Jenny Sylvin. In their paper, the authors explore the language practical consequences of the interaction between two local/national languages (Finnish and Swedish) and an international one (English) at the University of Helsinki. Their chapter takes a comparative approach, looking at other Nordic universities in similar linguistic contexts and seeing what their response to the language question is. The most relevant finding in their study is that policy documents are a necessary requirement for the creation of opportunities to use and promote local languages at the academic level, but that without action plans to actually implement them, these opportunities cannot be realized.

Chapter 8, by Ari Páll Kristinsson, shifts the discussion back to the ideological sphere, in this case in the context of Iceland. In the chapter, the author notes that while Iceland features a context of deeply purist and protectionist language ideological discourses in connection to the national language, a pragmatist approach to the use of English in academia is normally favored. Thus, English is increasingly used in Icelandic universities, which according to the author is accepted as normal by Icelanders, and thus as not contradicting the prevailing purist ideologies.

Still in the Icelandic context, Birna Arnbjörnsdóttir and Hafdís Ingvarsdóttir report in Chapter 9 on some studies that show the existing discrepancy between officially formulated language policies and ideologies on one hand, and speakers’ realities on the other. They present the results of a set of investigations that show that high schools in the country may not be preparing students adequately enough to meet the linguistic needs in English at higher education, and this, according to the authors, should have important implications for the development of the National Curriculum in English and for teacher education.

In Chapter 10, Janus Mortensen and Anne Fabricius present some language ideological tensions in Danish higher education from the perspective of students. Their chapter reports on a study of a group of students’ language ideologies towards different forms of English. The paper makes some interesting claims in connection to the nature of transnational mobile students (which the authors call ‘transient communities’) and the fact that they seem to prioritize competence and effectiveness over nativeness. However, a pecking order of native varieties versus non-native ones is still observed and valid to an extent, in this group, but the question is not a simple one and is complicated by structures of indexicality and legitimacy (who can sound like a native speaker and who cannot).

Chapter 11, by Merike Jürna, features an analysis of the linguistic realities at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Jürna sets out to describe how the institutionalized policy of parallel language use becomes translated into the everyday practices of a group of international scholars. Using a mixed-methods approach (i.e. survey data, in-depth interviews, and participant observation), she successfully illustrates that, unsurprisingly, speakers’ realities tend to defy simplistic and monolithic views of multilingualism. In her study, she detects the presence of a highly diverse and linguistically heterogeneous group of scholars, for whom English is quite frequently a second or foreign language, although this is their main language of communication at work. In other words, Danish does not have a relevant presence for professional purposes, and it is usually introduced in their repertoire for other than job-related reasons.

The concluding chapter, Chapter 12, is by Hartmut Haberland, and it provides a short but thought-provoking round-up to the volume. Haberland notes that in the Nordic countries, English is commonsensically linked to internationalization, but it is also important to note that there is usually more to internationalization than an increased use of English, and that in other parts of the world, such internationalization may be achieved by different means. English, thus, plays a different role in different regions, being more of a central language in some of them than in others. Haberland’s critical stance towards English is not so much against the language per se, but against what he calls the acceptance of the logic of the ‘market’ and its rules, including the commonsense view that assumes that English is the language of globalism, the obvious language of the market.


EVALUATION

The book is largely successful in attaining its main goal: the investigation of the role of English in Nordic universities. Its neat division between the ideological dimension and the practical one make it a very logically organized volume. Formally, thus, the organization is very clear. A significant achievement of the book is the fact that the editors have managed to gather a collection of papers where five Nordic countries are included and represented. This is relevant, since it is in this part of the world that English has made more important inroads not just in higher education, but in many other societal spheres too. 

The volume, thus, is a welcome addition to the increasingly growing literature in the field of sociolinguistic studies in higher education. Indeed, although one can go as far back as Ammon’s (2001) collection of essays on the dominance of English as a language of science, it has been in the last three to five years that a burgeoning amount of literature on the topic of English and language policy/practices in higher education has emerged, including journal special issues, monographs, and edited volumes (e.g. Björkman 2013; Cots, Llurda & Garrett 2014; Dimova, Hultgren & Jensen 2015; Doiz, Lasagabaster & Sierra 2013; Haberland & Mortensen 2012; Smit 2010; Vila & Bretxa 2015). The reasons for this significant growth in the attention to language matters in higher education is varied, but as the editors note in their introduction, it has to do with the increased awareness of how economic, demographic, and sociological issues impact linguistically on the university setting.

Authors investigating such questions, however, tend to come from two broadly defined areas: from Applied English Linguistics, on one hand, or from the relevant local language specialist discipline (e.g. from Nordic Studies), on the other. Although not necessarily antagonistic, they tend to approach the language question in higher education from different angles: from the point of view of English or from the point of view of the national language. This normally gets reflected in their analyses, which may differ in several respects. And this is probably where the present volume lacks a bit more focus, considering that this is a book on “English in Nordic universities”. Given that the contributors do come from these two broadly defined areas, the way in which English is analyzed differs too. This is not necessarily a negative aspect; on the contrary, there should probably be more of such scholarly dialogue than there currently is, but it is something that the editors could have note
 d in their introductory chapter.

Another aspect that appears not thoroughly considered is the fact that some chapters are shorter than others, with some of them shorter than 15 pages, while others are nearly 30 pages long. This is indicative of the different ways and depth in which the authors in this volume engage with the questions analyzed, which results in some of them producing more insightful analyses than others. The difference, moreover, is not just of length or thoroughness; rather the ways in which ‘ideology’ and ‘practice’ are analyzed are also different. Some authors situate ‘ideology’ historically, in policy documents or in public debates, whereas others make use of interview data; ‘practice’ is also examined in different ways: sometimes by making use of references to secondary sources, sometimes by presenting ethnographically collected data. Considering that the number of chapters is relatively high, it is not surprising that such heterogeneity of approaches emerges, but since one of th
 e aims of the book is to bridge the gap between ‘ideology’ and ‘practices’ around English in Nordic universities, this plurality of analyses makes it more difficult for the reader to bridge this gap.

These aspects aside, however, the volume is a very welcome addition to the field of language studies in higher education, and it will be an indispensable source of reference to authors working in this area. Because of the relevance of the topics discussed in all papers, it should also be appealing to university policymakers and officials who, in all likelihood, will find the discussions in these chapters highly pertinent to their professional endeavors. 


REFERENCES

Ammon, Ulrich (ed.). 2001. The dominance of English as a language of Science. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Björkman, Beyza. 2013. English as an academic lingua franca: An investigation of form and communicative effectiveness. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Cots, Josep Maria, Enric Llurda & Peter Garrett (eds.). 2014. Language policies and practices in the internationalization of higher education on the European margins. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 35(4) [Special Issue].

Dimova, Slobodanka, Anna Kristina Hultgren & Christian Jensen (eds.). 2015. English-medium instruction in European higher education. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Doiz, Aintzane, David Lasagabaster Juan Manuel Sierra (eds.). 2013. English-medium instruction at universities: Global challenges. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Haberland, Hartmut & Janus Mortensen (eds.). 2012. Language and the international university. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 216 [Special Issue].

Smit, Ute. 2010. English as a lingua franca in higher education: A longitudinal study of classroom discourse. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Vila, Xavier & Vanessa Bretxa (eds.). 2015. Language policy in higher education: The case of medium-sized languages. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Josep Soler-Carbonell is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English, Stockholm University. He obtained his Ph.D. in Linguistics and Communication at the University of Barcelona (2010) with a contrastive analysis of the sociolinguistic situation in Estonia and Catalonia from the point of view of speakers’ language ideologies. His main research interests gravitate around the broad areas of sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, language policy, and language ethnography. In the past, he has taught courses on language, culture, and intercultural communication in Barcelona, Oxford, Tallinn and Tartu universities.




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