Dissertation: Multilingual Language Policy and English Language Teaching in Sweden

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Multilingual Language Policy and English Language Teaching in Sweden

Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Program: Educational Linguistics program, Graduate School of Education
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2007

Author: Francis M. Hult

Dissertation Title: Multilingual Language Policy and English Language
Teaching in Sweden

Dissertation URL: http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI3260918/


Dissertation Director:
Nancy H Hornberger
Robert Phillipson
Harold F Schiffman
Tove Skutnabb-Kangas

Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation is an ethnographic discourse analytic study of the
management of language contact in Sweden and the special role of English
language teaching (ELT) in that process. It draws on four years of policy
research and a year of fieldwork in the southern Swedish city of Malm to
investigate the discourses about English and multilingualism that
circulate in and around the national language policy documents Ml i mun:
Frslag till handlingsprogram fr svenska sprket (Speech: Draft action
programme for the Swedish language) of 2002 and Bsta sprket: En samlad
svensk sprkpolitik (Best language: A concerted language policy for Sweden)
of 2005 as they relate to the practice of language education.

Using nexus analysis to integrate theoretical and methodological
approaches from language planning and policy, linguistic anthropology, and
sociolinguistics, this educational linguistic study moves from societal to
community to classroom scales of social organization in order to analyze
discourse processes related to language policy across multiple contexts.
Policy texts are first analyzed to determine how broad sociopolitical
discourses about English and multilingualism are indexed and
(re)positioned to frame multilingualism and language education at the
national level.  These discourses are then situated in relation to a
localized context for policy and educational practice by investigating how
two multilingual neighborhoods in the city of Malm are symbolically
constructed as linguistic landscapes through public language use. Turning
to how these discourses relate to educational practice in this localized
context, classroom interaction in an English teacher training program
together with ethnographic observations of other educational settings are
examined to explore how policy texts and wider circulating discourses are
appropriated by language educators. In all, by tracing discursive
trajectories across scales of social organization in these Swedish
contexts, the study contributes to an understanding of the dialectic
relationship between language policy and language education.

http://linguistlist.org/issues/18/18-3218.html

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