Marie Källkvist

Discursive mechanisms and human agency in language policy formation : negotiating bilingualism and parallel language use at a Swedish university

In the wake of the enactment of Swedens Language Act in 2009 and in the face of the growing presence of English, Swedish universities have been called upon by the Swedish Higher Education Authority to craft their own language policy documents. This study focuses on the discursive negotiation of institutional bilingualism by a language policy committee at one Swedish university during the process of developing a draft language policy. Following an ethnographic/discourse analytic orientation to language policy and planning research, data were collected during language policy committee meetings at the university. Using nexus analysis, circulating discourses are mapped and analyzed, with a specific focus on how these discourses were negotiated through mediated actions during committee meeting interaction and then entextualized in a draft policy. Analysis reveals how ‘bilingualism’ became reinterpreted as ‘parallel language use,’ a concept developed and used in Nordic language planning over the past 15 years. Analysis further shows how committee members negotiated the meaning of parallel language use and the processes of resemiotization that took place as discourses from other sociolinguistic scales entered into the committees discussion and writing. In all, the study highlights discursive mechanisms of language planning and the interplay of social actors and texts.

Global flows in local language planning : Articulating parallel language use in Swedish univerity policies

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.