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Language ideology or language practice? An analysis of language policy documents at Swedish universities

Beyza Björkman beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se Centre for Academic English, Department of English, Stockholm University

This is pre-print draft: the published (and revised) version is available from the journal’s website: Multilingua - Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication. Citation Information: Multilingua. Volume 33, Issue 3-4, Pages 335–363, ISSN (Online) 1613-3684, ISSN (Print) 0167-8507, DOI: 10.1515/multi-2014-0016, June 2014

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Abstract

This paper presents an analysis and interpretation of language policy documents from eight Swedish universities with regard to intertextuality, authorship and content analysis of the notions of language practices and English as a lingua franca (ELF). The analysis is then linked to Spolsky’s framework of language policy, namely language practices, language beliefs, values (and ideology), and language planning or management (Spolsky, 2004). The results show that the language policy documents refer heavily to official documents that have as their primary aim to protect and promote the Swedish language (e.g. the Language Act, 2009), which appears to have been the point of departure for the language policy work in these settings, reflecting their protectionist stance towards the local language Swedish. Little focus is put on actual language practices in these policy documents. The description of language practices is often limited to the description of the existing situation, based on concerns about Swedish losing ground as a result of the widespread use of English. Similarly, the notion of ELF is used primarily for description of the existing situation without sufficient guidance as to how students and staff in these university settings are to use English in their everyday practices. These results bring to the fore the question what the purpose of university language policy documents should be with reference to a speech community’s everyday practices. It is suggested here that, university language policy documents would benefit from taking research on actual language practices as their starting point and base their work on research on language practices, striving to provide guidance on local choices made for communicative effectiveness.

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1. Introduction

English is now used as a lingua franca in many domains throughout the world. These domains include, but are not limited to, commerce, advertising, tourism, international law and education (Graddol 1997: 8). In such domains, the need for a lingua franca arises, quite naturally, because people from different first language backgrounds need to communicate for a variety of purposes. There have been other lingua francas throughout history (e.g. Latin, German), and there are several lingua francas centralized in different regions of the world (e.g. Russian, Spanish, Arabic); however, “it is English and English alone that has achieved a truly global lingua franca status” (van Parijs 2011:11). A general definition of English as a lingua

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franca (ELF) is “any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only option” (Seidlhofer 2011: 7). In other words, English is widespread as a lingua franca in important international domains.

Higher education is one of the important domains where English is used as a lingua franca for everyday practices. Increasingly, universities worldwide are opting for English-medium instruction, using English as their academic lingua franca to compete in the international arena. Universities have been international from their very origins in the mediaeval Europe (Altbach and Knight 2007: 302). With the exception of a period around the mid-twentieth century where “the emergence of the Third World from colonialism” resulted in an upsurge in national universities, academia has remained largely international (Altbach and Knight 2007: 303). However, the dimensions of such widespread use of one language as the lingua franca of international higher education are unprecedented (Björkman 2013). In Europe, universities today are strongly committed to internationalization, and the need to internationalize has led to the establishment of a number of exchange programs, prioritizing academic mobility (Bartell 2003:50). With such practices, many universities have been able to attract a large number of incoming students and staff. This has a number of additional advantages: Internationalization can generate major revenue streams for universities, and it is seen as an indicator of high quality when universities are evaluated externally. In such international universities

The wide use of English in the domain of higher education has led to many studies that focus on the use of English as the medium of instruction in the European context (e.g. Airey 2009; Björkman 2011, 2013; Klaasen 2001; Bolton and Kuteeva 2011; Ljosland 2008; Mortensen 2010; Söderlundh 2010; Tange 2010). The impact of having a truly global lingua franca in higher education has been investigated by researchers working within the ELF paradigm (e.g. Björkman 2013; Jenkins 2013; Mauranen 2012), by researchers who carry out ethnographic studies to investigate the interplay between the local language and English (e.g. Söderlundh 2011, on the use of English and Swedish in Swedish higher education), by means of major corpora (e.g. ELFA1) and within the field of sociolinguistics in general (e.g. Phillipson 1992; Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas 1996).

However, in any discussion of the internationalization of higher education, one needs to note that “European universities are often perceived by their stakeholders (i.e. funding bodies, students, parents, university faculty and employees, employers and society in general) as social institutions one of whose functions is to protect and promote the language and culture of its local environment” (Cots, Lasagabaster and Garrett 2012). Many scholars have also discussed the challenges internationalization practices create when it comes to the linguistic practices at these international universities (e.g. Haberland et al. 2008; Haberland and Mortensen 20122). These conflicting demands make language policy work at universities critical, in creating a balance between promoting the use of a lingua franca as an instrument that enables speakers to carry out their daily tasks and the local language as possibly a language of identity and culture. The responsibility to create such balance rests on individual universities as well as governments in creating applicable language policies.

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""!"A Corpus of English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings. http://www.eng.helsinki.fi/elfa/elfacorpus.htm. 2 See the special issue of IJSL entitled “Language and the international university” on university internationalization and student mobility (Haberland and Mortensen 2012).

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Until relatively recently, research and publications had focused heavily on the widespread use of English as a lingua franca and how this affects multilingualism (e.g. Phillipson 1999; 2006) and the implications of this for the local language (on German: e.g. Muhleisen 2003; Norwegian: e.g. Brock-Utne 2001; Ljosland 2007; Tislevoll 2001; Swedish: Gunnarsson and Öhman, 1997; Hollqvist 1984; Ljung 1986; Mannberg 1986). In the past decade or so however, we have seen studies that have either exclusively focused on or included discussions of language policy issues in higher education settings (e.g. Airey 2009; Bolton and Kuteeva 2012; Cots, Lasagabaster and Garrett, 2012; Doiz et al. 2012; Gazzola 2012; Hult 2007; Kuteeva and Airey 2013; Lindström 2012; Pecorari et al. 2011; Risager 2012; Shaw and Petersen 2002; Söderlundh 2012). These studies have provided us with considerable information on the language practices in the international higher education settings they have investigated.

The present paper aims to contribute to this growing literature and extend existing knowledge by presenting an analysis of the language policy documents at Swedish universities. Also, although there are now some studies on language policy work at Swedish universities (Bolton and Kuteeva 2012, on attitudes towards language choice and language policy, problematizing e.g. the notion of parallel language use; Kuteeva and Airey 2013, on attitudes expressed by academic staff towards English-medium education, discussing the necessity of including disciplinary differences in policy documents), we have as yet no analyses of the existing Swedish language policy documents in higher education. We need to obtain more information to gain a better understanding of the nature of the language policy documents with respect to the everyday practices of the speech community at hand. The discussion in the present paper will take as its basis Spolsky’s trilogy of language practices, language beliefs and values, and language planning and/or management (Spolsky 2004, 2012). The analysis will focus on three main areas: Intertextuality (by looking at other documents the policy documents refer to and for what purposes), authorship (by considering the production of the language policy documents), and content (by looking at the way language practices and ELF are mentioned in the documents). The general aim is to investigate which components in Spolsky’s framework have a strong presence in the Swedish language policy documents. Intertextuality and authorship analyses will provide us with information on ideologies that may be present in these documents along with information on any language planning while investigating the content for descriptions of language practices and the use of English/ELF will show the presence, if so, of language practices, as described by Spolsky (2004, 2012). Such an analysis with respect to these three points of investigation will provide an overview of the language policy work at Swedish universities and reveal general trends and ideologies that are prevalent in Swedish university language policy work. Specifically, the paper will seek the answers to the following research questions:

1) What type of documents do the Swedish language policy documents refer to? 2) Is there identifiable authorship in the Swedish language policy documents? If so,

who were they produced by? 3) Do the policy documents include information on actual language practices and the

use of English as a lingua franca (ELF)? If so, how are language practices and ELF discussed?

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Before moving onto the analysis, a prerequisite here is the general definition and components of language policy and different approaches to language policy work.

2. Language policy: Definition and different approaches Spolsky defines language policy by introducing a framework. Language policy, he explains, has “three interrelated but independent” components, namely language practices, language beliefs and values, and finally, language planning or management (Spolsky 2004: 5; 2012: 5). The first of these components, language practices, refers to the actual language practices of the language community at hand. This includes a wide variety of language practices including the variety speakers choose for certain communicative functions, how they handle speech and silence in general, and the expression and concealment of identity (Spolsky 2012: 5). The second component comprises the language beliefs and values that are largely influenced by individuals’ language practices3, which in some cases can be shaped into language ideologies. The final component, Spolsky explains, is language planning or language management. He prefers the term ‘language management’ (Spolsky 2012: 5). Such management is traditionally practiced by those who either have, or believe they have, power over the speech community, by getting them to use a different variety or variant (Spolsky 2012: 5). The production and administration of language policy documents at universities is an example of such language management. The question, however, is whether the language values or ideologies that underlie these documents are based on actual language practices or not. “Language policy is where linguistics meets politics (…) As such, its goals may be specific and practical in nature”4, but because the point of departure of a language policy is generally that a language is endangered, it is triggered by certain ideologies that may or may not focus sufficiently on ground reality. The present paper includes a discussion of this issue in the analyses of the language policy documents and in the Discussion (section 6) that follows.

However, it has been argued that globalization and the advances in technology in the world today make it very hard, if at all possible, to do any type of language planning or management, as communication takes place at an unprecedented speed in a variety of modes that cannot be controlled (Josephson 2009). People use a variety of languages for different purposes in different media, e.g. the Internet. In this sense, language is in the interaction between people, and language management becomes much less ‘manageable’. Spolsky seems to have subscribed to this ‘pessimistic’5 view. At the end of his book, he raises the question whether language policy can succeed (2004), which he answers negatively. “The record seems to favour the pessimists, or there are comparatively few cases where language management has produced its intended results. There are striking failures [...]” (Spolsky 2004: 223). Spolsky also maintains that where language policies are not explicit, we are most likely to find them in people’s everyday practices, and that “…the real language policy of a community is to be found in its practices than in its management.” (Spolsky 2004: 222), and “Unless the management is consistent with the language practices and beliefs, and with the other contextual forces that are in play, the explicit policy written in the constitution and laws is likely to have no more effect on how people speak than the activities of generations of school

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""3 Although Spolsky does not unpack this in his work, this influence must also be in the other direction, i.e. individuals’ practices being influenced by language beliefs and values. 4 University of Cambridge, Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH) http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/2163/). 5 ’pessimistic’ according to Josephson 2009.

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teachers vainly urging the choice of correct language” (Spolsky 2004: 222) (see also Jenkins (2013)). Although these scholars have argued that language planning may be ineffective under globalization, in a limited environment like the university, it might work if it was based on a clear understanding of the practices."

Much writing on language policy is based on the idea that languages—and therefore language maintenance – have an inherent value, which will be referred to here as the ‘language maintenance’ approach. Not unnaturally, specialists in any particular language perceive it as valuable for its community and argue for its maintenance (e.g. Skuttnab-Kangas 2000, Universal Declaration on Linguistic Rights6). A problem with this position might be failure to relate policy sufficiently to reality of practices and consider the practical relevance of languages. Sometimes we may be so concerned about the threat of dominant languages that we may fail to see the value in vehicular languages (Mufwene 2006). An alternative approach to adopt when handling language policy and management issues is the ‘instrumentalist approach’ (see Robichaud and De Schutter 2012: 124). This approach adopts the view that language is an instrument that enables one to carry out certain tasks and get the job done. In any decision-making on what language should be used in which settings and for which purposes, one needs to consider the communicative value of the language(s) at hand. The communicative value of the language is determined by the number of speakers it has as well as the social positions of these speakers, and the range of interactions one can have in a given language is determined by the social status of that language (Robichaud and De Schutter 2012: 127). The more a language is used as an instrument to “get the job done”, the more its value increases. In this sense, languages can be referred to as ‘super-public goods’ or ‘hypercollective goods’, two terms used by economists. When individuals learn and use a language for communication, its value increases; it does not decrease like private goods or stay the same like collective goods (Robichaud and De Schutter 2013: 128). Although this view is a highly capitalist view that clearly does not take account of the non-practical values that may be associated with a language, it seems relevant to the position of English as a powerful lingua franca in a wide variety of domains today.

3. Setting

This paper analyzes language policy documents from eight Swedish universities; therefore, a useful preliminary is a brief description of the state of affairs in Swedish higher education. Up until 2010, Sweden was one of the few countries that did not require tuition fees from incoming students. There were a large number of overseas students, which called for English-medium instruction. This situation changed when the Swedish government passed a law in spring 2010 outlining tuition and application fees, though only for students outside EU/EEA countries. The law took effect already in the 2011/2012 academic year, causing a major decrease in the number of incoming students. To mitigate this decrease, scholarships have been introduced, especially to be able to continue attracting students from non-EU/EEA countries (Swedish National Agency for Higher Education). Also, some groups of students are exempt from these fees. Exchange students can still receive free tuition, since their studies are financed by agreements between their home countries and Sweden. Doctoral programs will also continue to be tuition-free. In addition, scholarships have been introduced to be able to

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""6 http://www.unesco.org/cpp/uk/declarations/linguistic.pdf

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continue attracting students from non-EU/EEA countries (Swedish National Agency for Higher Education). As a result, Swedish universities are likely to keep their flow of incoming foreign students, though with some decrease in their number. Despite the introduction of fees for non-EU/EEA, there continue to be high proportions of non-Swedish students at Swedish universities, and studying in English is still seen as a natural step by the majority of students and scholars in Sweden to plan and prepare for an international career. Natural sciences, technology and engineering are the fields that have been most extensively anglicized (Salö 2010). At the time of writing, the most recent sources report that 65 per cent of all Master’s programs in the country are offered in English (Salö 2010: 11). The situation is similar at the post-graduate level; about 87 per cent of all doctoral theses in Sweden are written in English (Salö 2010: 21).

In a country like Sweden where higher education is highly internationalized, language policy documents are of great importance (see Table 1 in the section 4 on when the Swedish language policy documents were produced, earliest in 2006). Students and staff need to operate in English as a lingua franca on a daily basis in addition to the local language Swedish in most cases, and other languages where there is a reason to use a third language.

4. Data and method The material for the present paper comprises the language policy documents from eight higher education institutions. Such documents are public documents by nature, which allows for an open analysis and discussion of them. The universities included are Gothenburg University (GU), Lund University Faculty of Engineering (LTH), Malmö University (MU), Royal Institute of Art (Kungliga Konsthögskolan, KKH7), Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm University (SU), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), and Umeå University (UU), given here in alphabetical order. This is not an exhaustive list; however, at the time of writing, the other universities have not yet developed their language policy documents. One university states on its official website that the language policy work is in progress (Linneaus University) and another (Chalmers) has a language policy group working on a language policy. These language policy documents are of varying lengths, from the shortest being 362 words (KKH) to the longest being 2732 words (KTH) (Table 1).

The method can be described as manifest content analysis (Krippendorff, 2012; Dörnyei, 2007) since the primary focus will be put on the content provided in these documents. Content analysis is a qualitative research method that is used widely in social sciences. It is very useful especially when “examining trends and patterns in documents” (Stemler 2001), such as analyses of school mission statements to explore what these schools have as their main purpose for existence (Stemler and Bebell 19988, in Stemler 2001). In the present paper, a content analysis of the language policy documents will enable us to gain an awareness of the underlying issues and assumptions as well as highlighting areas that may be in need of revision.

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""7 The present paper systematically uses the abbreviations these institutions use in their official documents in English where the documents are available in English. 8 In Stemler 2001.

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Table 1. A skeletal view of the universities included in the study and main points of analysis. The ! mark indicates the presence, and X the absence of an item or topic in the documents.

Year

Length

INTERTEXTUALITY

AUTHORSHIP

CONTENT ANALYSIS

Official documents

Research

Internal

(university) documents

Identifiable authorship? Language practices ELF

Swedish documents Non-

Swedish documents

Draft

Action program

Government proposition

Language Act

HSV9 docs

Bologna Act/EU documents

GU 2006 2043 X ! X X X X ! LP Committee ! !

KKH 2007 362 X X X X X X X X X

X

LTH

2008

1579

X

X

X

! X

! ! International Office ! !

UU

2008

2715 ! X ! ! ! X ! X ! X

SLU

2010

873 X X ! X X X ! X X !

MU

2010

1007 X

! ! X X X X X ! X

KTH 2011

2732 X X ! X ! !10 X LP Committee ! !

SU 2011 2653 X X ! ! ! X11 ! X X !

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""9 HSV: Högskoleverket; Swedish Agency of Higher Education, at the time of writing (name changed to the ‘Swedish Higher Education Authority’ in January 2013). 10 Only as references at the end of the document for further reading. 11 In this policy document, although there are no direct references to research, there are discussions of concepts such as ‘parallel language use’ and ‘domain loss’.

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Table 1 above gives a brief summary/skeletal view of the eight language policy documents analyzed for the present paper. The intertextuality band shows the documents that the policies refer to explicitly, divided into ‘Official documents’ (further divided into Swedish and non-Swedish official documents), ‘Research’ and other internal documents at these universities. The authorship band shows whether there is identifiable authorship in the documents or not. Finally, the content analysis band shows whether or not the documents include description or mentions of language practices, and ELF. Each point will be discussed in the same order in the sections below.

5. Intertextuality, authorship and content 5.1 Intertextuality

The documents a text refers to provides us with important information regarding that text. “Documents do not stand alone. They do not construct systems or domains of documentary reality as individual, separate activities. Documents refer – however tangentially or at one remove – to other realities and domains. They also refer to other documents. It is important to recognize that [...] documents make sense because they have relationships with other documents” (Atkinson and Coffey 1997: 55, 56). In fact, texts may even be seen as being “constructed as a mosaic of quotations” and “[...] the absorption and transformation of another” (Kristeva 1980: 66, drawing from Bakthin’s work, e.g. Bakhtin 1981). In the present paper, the type of intertextuality employed is overt intertextuality, i.e. where the link between an earlier document and the present text is shown clearly (termed ‘conventional intertextuality’ in Pecorari and Shaw 2012).

When we look at the texts that the language policy documents refer to, we see seven different documents, namely, The Draft Action Programme for the Promotion of the Swedish Language, the Government Proposition on the objectives of internationalization, The Language Act, documents produced by the Swedish Agency of Higher Education (HSV), the Bologna Act and other EU documents on language and internationalization, other research, and finally, internal documents on the internationalization of the university at hand. These documents have here been categorized as official government and EU documents (the Action Program, the Government Proposition on the objectives of internationalization, The Language Act, documents produced by the Swedish Agency of Higher Education, the Bologna Act and other EU documents), research (research on language use) and internal documents (internal university documents on internationalization). The official documents are divided into Swedish and non-Swedish documents (Table 1).

The policy documents that were produced before the Language Act in 2009 refer to the Draft Action Programme, a language policy proposal commissioned by the Swedish government, the government proposition on internationalization (2004/200512), the report produced by the Swedish Agency for Higher Education (HSV) on the internationalization of the university sector (2008) and other internal documents. The Draft Action Programme was produced with the aim to make recommendations on the use of Swedish and English in education and public, commercial and governmental settings. Another document that the policy documents refer to is the government proposition, which is a follow-up document of a bill entitled “Shared Responsibility: Sweden’s Global Development Policy”, highlighting the importance of the

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""12 http://www.regeringen.se/content/1/c6/03/72/42/36752e46.pdf

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internationalization of Swedish higher education. The report by the Swedish Agency of Higher Education (HSV) is a largely descriptive document that sums up the practices of Swedish universities with regard to internationalization. Finally, the internal documents the language policies refer to discuss the goals of the university at hand on how to go about internationalization. Although the references are spread out, which makes it hard to make generalizations (see Table 1), it is immediately noticeable that the language policy documents refer heavily to other official government documents that have as their primary aim to maintain and promote the use of Swedish. The Language Act here is of specific interest to the present study, as it is the document that aims to “specify the position and usage of the Swedish language and other languages in Swedish society”, including English (Language Act, Act 2). All the language policy documents that were written after 2009 refer to the Language Act by either stating explicitly that it is their point of departure (e.g. expressed explicitly in SLU’s and KTH’s language policy; see 1 and 2 below), or as guidelines to follow. The wording of the act is noteworthy; it highlights in several places the ‘responsibility’ that is placed on the shoulders of Swedish society and authorities to protect and promote Swedish, as in 3 and 4 below:

(1) The policy takes as its basis the Language Act… (SLU Language Policy) (original document in Swedish, own translation) (2) It is the opinion of KTH that the Language Policy is an aid both to meeting the requirements of the Language Act and to developing into a multilingual university. (KTH Language Policy) (3) The public sector has a particular responsibility for the use and development of Swedish (Language Act, Section 9).

(4) 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. (Language Act, Section 12)

All the official reference materials here, with the exception of the Bologna Declaration and perhaps some internal university documents that outline internationalization practices, have in common concerns about English gaining an increasingly more powerful status at the expense of Swedish, possibly resulting in domain loss and competence attrition (also see Kuteeva and Airey 2013). As stated earlier, the Draft Action Programme was written for the very purpose of regulating the use of Swedish and English. In the evaluation report, Swedish Agency for Higher Education calls the universities to develop language policy documents to manage linguistic dilemmas. The government proposition from 2004/2005 lists medicine, natural sciences and technology specifically as domains that are in danger (2004/2005: 59). It could then be suggested with some degree of justification that it is precisely these worries that these language policy documents have as their point of departure. With such concerns as the starting point, the language policy documents explicitly state that (e.g. as in 3 and 4 above) they take on the responsibility that Swedish is promoted and that the universities do not contribute to Swedish being reduced to a ‘low language’ and English achieving a ‘high language’ position (e.g. KTH language policy). There is textual evidence for this in the language policy documents investigated here. Such wording is observed in the following

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sections in the language policy documents, with reference to specialist terminology in Swedish, as in (5) to (10) below:

(5) LTH takes on responsibility to protect the Swedish language and maintenance and promote the development of Swedish nomenclature. (LTH) (6) The University should not contribute towards Swedish becoming a low language and English a high language. Both languages are needed. […] Both students and teachers may exhibit deficiencies in the general technical vocabulary and the patterns of construction, sentence structure and style of scientific Swedish. This may lead to an inability to conduct a discussion even on the level of popular science in Swedish. Such domain losses for Swedish may have serious consequences for the universities’ contacts, for the standard of general education and, by extension, for democracy. […] To counteract such a development, KTH should draw attention to the question of scientific Swedish in its education and promote the development of Swedish terminology in its areas of activity. […] KTH should, therefore, endeavour to ensure that there are both Swedish and English components in courses at different levels. In research education, there must be components in both languages to an extent that allows the goal to be fulfilled. (KTH) (7) Swedish specialist language is to be created and maintained within all research and education areas at KTH, alongside the English specialist language. (KTH)

(8) Swedish terminology is to be created and maintained to be able to convey research to non-specialists (MU) (original document in Swedish, own translation) (9) The University’s researchers should consider the responsibility they have to develop the Swedish language in scientific communication between Swedes by sustaining the use of existing terminology and by working for easy adaption of English terms to Swedish usage. (GU) (10) Researchers who use Swedish must contribute to the development and usage of Swedish terminology. (UU)

Such wording reveals the view adopted by the previously mentioned government documents and the subsequent language policy documents: English is gaining too powerful a position at the expense of Swedish; the local language is to be protected and it is up to the individuals and government authorities to make it happen. With reference to Spolsky’s triad, the documents seem to focus on language ideology with the aim of intervention. With regard to research, we see that the policy documents do not refer to research on actual language practices in international university settings, with the exception of two universities (LTH and KTH). These universities do so by citing research that reports on child language acquisition (LTH), which is not so readily generalizable to the teaching of content in higher education, by referring to research that shows that the negative effects of having a foreign language as the medium of instruction are reduced considerably within six months (LTH), which constitutes an argument for using English as the medium of instruction, and finally, by providing a reference list at the end of a document for further reading purposes (KTH) with no integral referencing. To sum up then, when intertextuality is considered with reference to text types, the core of the language policy documents seems to be the ideology that Swedish should be maintained,

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promoted and prescribed. At this juncture in the present investigation, a decision was made to examine the aims of the documents by reviewing the purpose statements. The purpose statements show two main aims, namely to create awareness of language issues at the university and clarify issues relating to language use:

Creating awareness …increase language awareness among all those who study or work at the university.(GU)/ …increase awareness of the significance of language and the consequences of the language choices…(UU)/…increase awareness of language among students and employees alike…. (KTH)/ …increase language awareness (MU) (SU)/ Clarifying language related issues …clarify the principles that should apply to the use of languages…(LTH)/ ... clarify the principles around language use within the entire organization (SLU)(own translation)/ provide guidelines for language use (MU)

What is noteworthy is the fact that the documents state that they primarily want to create awareness and possibly provide the university staff and students with guidelines concerning language use. This, however, does not seem to be in agreement with the intertextuality in the documents. The reference points of the document point to a wish to protect and promote the local language Swedish, which is not included in any of the purpose statements. This mismatch is interesting and will be discussed later on (see Discussions).

5.2 Authorship The second point of investigation here is authorship, which is likely to provide us with valuable information with regard to the beliefs and ideology that may be prevalent in the language policy work. The similarity of the purpose statements and the sections on the ‘responsibility’ of the universities to promote and protect the Swedish language (section 5.1) show how similar the documents are to each other in terms of their written discourse (called ‘lexical similarity’ as a type of intertextuality in Pecorari and Shaw 2012). Official documents do not always have identifiable authorship. “Indeed, it is part of the facticity of many official and organizational documents that they are not identifiably the work of an individual author. Their very anonymity is part of the official production of documentary reality. There may be an implied ownership of a document but official materials do not normally have visible human agencies expressing opinions, beliefs and so on” (Atkinson and Coffey 1997: 58). However, language policy documents may be regarded as different from other official documents in that their aim is beyond simply informing the target group, including intervening and managing language practices.

When the language policy documents here are considered in terms of their source, we see that there is identifiable authorship in three of the eight cases. Two universities had a special task group to work on the policy documents (GU and KTH) whereas one university gives the International Office as the source in the document (LTH). In the remaining five cases, the documents do not make authorship explicit. There is, however, an interesting notion which will be referred to here as ‘verbal intertextuality’. The language policy documents analyzed here appear to have been inspired by each other, the traces of which can be seen in the discourse of the policy documents, in the repetition of some words (e.g. responsibility, awareness) and phrases that are present in these documents, as exemplified in the sets (11) and (12) below:

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(11) increase/raise language/linguistic awareness (GU, UU, KTH, MU, SU; and see above for the other purpose statements)

(12) …takes on responsibility (LTH), …responsibility to…(KTH), …researchers should consider the responsibility they have to develop the Swedish language…(GU), responsibility for implementation… (LU), …takes on a responsibility to protect the Swedish language and to promote the maintenance and development of Swedish nomenclature (LU), …researchers at the university who use Swedish have an important responsibility as regards the development and usage of Swedish terminology (UU)

5.3 Content In this section, we will look closely at if and how the language policy documents mention language practices and English as a lingua franca. 5.3.1 Mention of language practices

Two types of mention of language practices were identified in the language policy documents. The first type refers to a description of existing language practices used as a basis for language intervention:

(13) Recent trends show that the Swedish language is losing ground in competition with English; other languages are marginalised. (GU)

This first type of language practice description (in bold in the examples below) is generally followed by the second type, which appears to be made up of prescriptive statements referring to how things ‘should’ or ‘must’ be (underlined):

(14) In many academic fields, practically all academic communication is in English. However, the English proficiency of Swedish researchers is not always sufficiently good. In order for researchers at Umeå University to be able to hold their own competently, they must either reach a sufficiently high level of language proficiency themselves or they must be given the necessary support, i.e. advanced language checking or help with translation, if required. (UU)

The second type, exemplified in the underlined sections in (15), seems to dominate in the language policy documents. The prescriptive nature of this type of description is manifested in the use of deontic modals, e.g. must reach, must be given (as in 14 above and 15, 16 and 18 below) and the is/are+verb to be construction (17 below)13.

(15) All students should be allowed to have influence over their education. (LU)

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""$'"For more examples, see section 5.1 on intertextuality, examples 1 and 2, and 5–10. As section 5.1 shows, most of the intertextuality is to official documents that express concerns on the widespread use of English, which therefore include descriptions of language practices, both Type 1 and 2 as explained above in section 5.3.1. The examples 1 and 2, and 5–10 have been taken from the policy documents in an attempt to show the similarities between the official government documents and the policy documents.

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(16) Students in internationally oriented Master’s programs should be given the opportunity to prepare linguistically for employment in Sweden. (LU)

(17) Umeå University is to be a language-friendly university that encourages linguistic diversity among its students and employees and strives to promote a mutual understanding of the Scandinavian languages (UU)

(18) Students, teachers and researchers should be able to express themselves using clear and concise Swedish when it comes to teaching and research where Swedish speakers are in the majority. (LU)

As is clear from these examples, the description of the desired scenario is very general without specifying how this positive linguistic scenario is to be achieved. Some of the policy documents, however, include more specific guidelines on which language should be used for what purpose (see 19–23 below):

(19) Every Master’s dissertation, licentiate thesis and doctoral thesis that is written in English is to include a Swedish abstract. (KTH)

(20) The university’s departments, centres and units are to have Swedish and English names. (UU)

(21) Doctor’s theses will be written in the language that is appropriate to the purpose of the work and the dominant language in the field, and will include both Swedish and English abstracts. (SU)

(22) In order to facilitate the use of English on higher levels of study, course literature and teaching should,[…] be in English at first-cycle level…. (GU)

(23) Meetings in decision-making and deliberating bodies […] should be held in Swedish. (LU)

In addition, one of the language policy documents includes a separate section on the responsible parties for the application of the language policy with reference to different groups and settings (KKH); another provides a list of the linguistic resources available to students and staff at the site (SU). Interestingly, the shortest language policy document (KKH) is the one that lists clearly the information and documents that should be produced in Swedish or English, rather than leaving it to the faculties and departments. It is most likely that this has to do with the size of the university: KKH is a much smaller organization with considerably fewer students in comparison to the other universities included here that have a large number of departments and students. This may point to a need for more focused, internal language policy documents, which will be discussed in section 6.

5.3.2 ELF/ English

As regards the discussion of English in the policy documents, four different types of mention were identified:

i) English being a threat to the status of Swedish (24) Recent trends show that the Swedish language is losing ground in competition

with English; other languages are marginalised. (GU)

ii) Neutral mention of English as a lingua franca

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(25) English is a lingua franca for communication between people with different mother tongues. (KTH)

(26) In research, English is now a lingua franca, that is a language systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue. (LTH)

iii) English is a lingua franca a. , but it is not everyone’s lingua franca (27) The use of English as a language of communication is on the increase; however,

most of the world’s population has only a limited knowledge of English. (GU)

b. ; (therefore,) Swedish must be protected. (28) In research, English is now a “lingua franca”, that is a language systematically

used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue. Most doctoral students and researchers use English daily. LTH takes on responsibility to protect the Swedish language and to promote the maintenance and development of Swedish nomenclature. (LTH)

iv) In relation to high proficiency (29) students and researchers should also be very proficient in English in order to be

able to participate in and contribute to the international research community. (UU)

As the quotes 24–29 show, English is mentioned as a threat, as a neutral lingua franca, as a lingua franca that creates complications for the speech community and the local language, and finally, as a language in which students and researchers need to achieve high proficiency to be able to operate in the international research community. None of the documents explain or mention what English as a lingua franca means (other than saying it means ‘a common language’) and what the norms may be for those who speak it as a lingua franca. One university actually states that the language should conform to native varieties (“LTH: Internationally oriented information should be presented in good, comprehensible and coherent English (British or American)”; however, it is not clear whether this is in reference to written or spoken usage. Otherwise, with the exception of three universities (UU, KKH, MU), the explicitly stated aim in the documents is to use plain and clear language when it comes to Swedish. While doing so, two universities refer to the Language Act, which states that Swedish should be used in a way that is clear, carefully worded and understandable (KTH, SLU), and two others state the same desire without a direct reference to the Language Act (GU, SU). Only two universities refer to clarity and plainness in both Swedish and English (“GU: should disseminate research findings to society in general in clear and intelligible Swedish and English” “KTH: If the University and its representatives are to participate satisfactorily in public discussions, simple, clear language is a prerequisite. Graduates from KTH, therefore, need to master their subjects both in Swedish and English, in other words, have parallel language competence14”). On the basis of this, it appears that there is information on the target usage of Swedish; however, when it comes to English, six of the eight universities do not include specifications as to the target English aimed at the university.

Finally, although it is not one of the points of investigation, a few words are in order on multilingualism, as it is of relevance to our discussion here. In addition to Swedish and

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""14 Parallel language competence is beyond the scope of this paper and will not be discussed here. See Kuteeva and Airey 2013 and Bolton and Kuteeva 2012 for discussions of it.

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English, multilingualism is encouraged in seven of the policy documents explicitly (e.g. SU: “The university shall encourage linguistic diversity”, KTH: “…students are to be encouraged to learn other languages”, “GU should strive towards linguistic diversity”, UU: “A knowledge of other languages should be encouraged”). One university describes itself as bilingual, with no mention of other languages. Although multilingualism is openly encouraged, there is very little on how this is to be achieved or implemented.

In the next section, we will focus on the implications of the above points.

6 Discussions

Let us now return to the three research questions. With reference to the first research question on intertextuality, we can see that the policy documents rely heavily on official Swedish documents that were produced with the specific aim to protect and preserve the Swedish language. Such references reveal the ideology in the language policy documents, namely that Swedish should be prescribed. The wording of the language policy documents is further evidence for this (see Section 5.1). Based on the intertextuality analysis and the wording, we could safely suggest that these language policy documents have as their point of departure the worry that Swedish is losing ground with the widespread use of English. The documents state explicitly that it is the responsibility of the Swedish society, the university and the departments to ensure the protection and preservation of the Swedish language. In this sense, the intertextuality analysis takes us primarily to ‘language beliefs, values and ideology’ in Spolsky’s framework (Box A in Figure 1). However, because the intertextuality here is mostly to official documents requiring action (to protect Swedish), the language policy documents have a similar structure, including sections on what needs to be done, which seems to correspond to ‘language management’ in Spolsky’s framework (Box B in Figure 1).

As regards the second research question on authorship, the analysis shows that there is identifiable authorship only in three cases where there were language policy groups who had been brought together to develop a language policy at their institutions, and only in two of these cases can the members of the Language Policy Committee be identified. The remaining five policy documents were all produced by the Vice-Chancellor’s office with no indication of authorship or information on the production process, and without researchers on board. The fact that there is no identifiable authorship in six of the eight documents is also an indication of the top-down nature of the language policy documents. The officials who produced the documents must have consulted other individuals at least within the university for feedback purposes while producing the policy documents; however, the documents cannot be traced back to these individuals, as there is no explicit authorship. The absence of identifiable authorship is surely the nature of most official documents (Atkinson and Coffey 1997: 54); however, as mentioned earlier, language policy documents differ from other official documents that only have ‘informing’ as their main aim. The results of the investigation of authorship here seem to correspond to ‘Language planning and/or management, intervention’ in Spolsky’s framework (Box B in Figure 1).

When it came to the question on whether and how language practices and English (ELF) were mentioned in the policy documents, a similar situation emerged. There is little description of language practices in the language policy documents investigated here, showing yet again the ideology that is present in these documents. The actual language description in the documents

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is limited to worries about English gaining a powerful position at the expense of Swedish, causing domain loss and competence attrition (see also Kuteeva and Airey 2013), without considering what type of English is used to operate in international higher education institutions (Mauranen 2005), assuming native speaker authority (Seidlhofer 2011: 33). There is very little mention of English as a vehicular language (see section 5.3.2). When it is mentioned at all, it is followed by statements expressing concerns about the neutrality of English as a lingua franca, or it is given as a reason for maintaining and promoting the local language Swedish. The discussion of language practices in the policy documents seems to take us to language beliefs, values and ideology in Spolsky’s framework (Box A in Figure 1) whereas the discussion of English as a lingua franca seems to include intervention and language management (to promote and protect Swedish), represented in Spolsky’s framework (Box B in Figure 1).

If we consider the results of the three points of investigation here, we see that language beliefs, values and ideology (Box A) and language planning (Box B) in Spolsky’s framework have a strong presence in the policy documents. The discussion or descriptions of language practices, to a large extent, are limited to concerns about the widespread use of English and the negative consequences of this on the local language Swedish. The top-down nature of the language policy documents is shown in Figure 1: The ideology that Swedish should be prescribed as the point of departure, the production of the policy documents as the next step (see arrow in Figure 1), aiming to intervene and manage the language practices of the members of the speech community at hand.

ELF

Fig. 1. A representation of the interplay of the three components of language policy (Spolsky 2004) at Swedish university policy documents.

The language policy documents investigated may be considered problematic for a number of reasons. First of all, the limited presence in the policy documents of actual language practices is questionable. If the aim of language policies is to provide their speech communities with

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Point of investigation 1 Intertextuality

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Point of investigation 3 Content: Description of language practices and ELF

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guidance (in addition to protecting and promoting local and/or additional languages), they need to carefully consider the everyday practices of these speech communities. As mentioned here earlier, real language policies are in people’s everyday language practices (Spolsky 2012). Language policy work needs to consider actual language practices to be able to make informed decisions, thereby having a more bottom-up nature rather than the top-down decisions made at higher levels without considering the academic speech community’s daily practices and what language they use for what type of academic activity. On that note, the policy documents investigated also seem to lack discussions on the type of English that is used in international academic settings, or what type of English is the target for such international usage. The study of English as a lingua franca is seen as “an important prerequisite for making informed decisions” in language policy work (Seidlhofer 2005), but this does not seem to be realized in the policy documents investigated in the present paper. One way to obtain specific information on individuals’ language practices is by carrying out ethnographic research. See below some differences between the general nature of language planning and policy (LPP) and ethnography, as discussed by Canagarajah (2006: 153): Table 2. The main differences between language planning and policy (LPP) and ethnography, as described in Canagarajah (2006: 153). LPP Ethnography top-down work to shape the linguistic behavior

focuses on language as it is practiced in “localized contexts”

“focuses on the activities of specialists and policy-makers in defining relationships from outside the community”

focuses on the “community’s own point of view”

“operates from the macro-social level of state and international institutions”

“focuses on the micro-level of interpersonal relationships”

“deliberate and programmatic” focuses on the dynamic nature of the speech community, “not programmatic”

Canagarajah concludes his discussion of the main differences between LPP and ethnography by saying that LPP is about how things “ought to be” whereas ethnography is about how things “are”. Naturally, LPP work needs to have a “programmatic” nature and a structure to provide the members of the community with assistance concerning language matters. However, what is perhaps lacking in the policy documents investigated in the present paper is a strong base of ethnographic research. Only with sufficient information on how the members of the community operate on a daily basis to cater for their needs, and only by using this information as a basis, can policy documents be useful and go beyond ideology-based prescriptions. There is now some ethnographic research on the language practices and language policy work in Swedish universities (e.g. Söderlundh 2012, Hult and Källkvist15), but there is a need for much more to understand the language-related needs of university staff and students. With more information on the ground reality, ideology and beliefs would be modified, which in turn would affect language management, planning and intervention.

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""15 Ongoing project. http://www.ht.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=21231&p=366

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Another problematic point in the policy documents investigated is the lack of focus on implementation. It is true that the presence of a language policy does not ensure implementation (Spolsky16 2012: 8). Nevertheless, they need to take into account how the policy outlined is to be implemented in some detail. In fact, Spolsky says that “language management remains a dream until it is implemented,” and adds that “its potential for implementation depends in large measure on its congruity with the practices and ideology of the community”, pointing yet again to the importance of actual language practices (Spolsky 2012: 218). As we saw in section 2, although it has been argued that language planning may not always be effective, in a limited environment like the university, it might work if it was based on a clear understanding of the practices." University language policy documents do not tend to be long and detailed documents; they often provide general guidelines for the speech community at hand, leaving implementation to lower level actors. So far, the implementations of the policies in the EU are left to the governments at nation-state level (Mar-Molinero and Stevenson 2012: 240), then to the institutions, in this case, universities, and finally to separate departments. On this note, individual departments at universities would benefit greatly from having their own internal language policy documents that provide clear guidelines on language use and practices (see Kuteeva and Airey 2013 on criticisms of the language policy document at a Swedish university on providing general pragmatic guidelines only). In fact, one of the departments at a major university in Sweden has its own internal language policy while the university itself does not have a general language policy17. General language policies are also more likely to be more effective if supported by internal, faculty-level language policies that can go more into detail and can better take into consideration the specific needs of those who operate in lower levels, which would lead to informed decisions.

Another problematic point has to do with the point of departure in language policy work. When the purpose statements of the policy documents are examined in isolation, we see that the aim is expressed mainly as raising awareness of language and clarifying language issues (see section 5.1). However, when the rest of the documents is examined, we see that the aim appears to the protection and maintenance of Swedish, as is evident in the intertextuality dimension. There seems to be little in these documents on other awareness than the ‘threat’ of English and little clarification of actual or target language use. This is in accordance with what Mufwene observes as the dominant view in linguistics that “speakers should serve their languages and preserve their integrity” (Mufwene 2006). The Language Act and the language policy documents that take the Language Act as their starting point either explicitly or implicitly, base their work on ‘intervention’ and ‘ideology’ as defined by Spolsky (2004), based on the ideology that the national language Swedish should be prescribed. Surely any policy must have intervention to guide the members of a speech community, but this intervention needs to take as its basis research results on its language practices. This is true, for example, when it comes to the creation of Swedish terminology. The documents say that relevant authorities have the responsibility to create terminology but do not give guidance as to where this terminology can be used. In this respect, the focus seems to be on prescription rather than on application, or language practices.

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""16 Spolsky says implementation does not ensure success either (Spolsky 2012: 8). 17 Chalmers does not yet have a language policy document but is in the process of producing a language policy document.

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If we consider this, then instead of focusing on how we can dictate people to use one language over another, we should focus on what language choices they make for what purposes and base the language policy work on the alternative view that languages are “tools which enable their speakers to adapt to ever-changing ecologies” (Mufwene 2006). English is a useful tool as a lingua franca, enabling those who speak it to perform a variety of tasks, depending on their needs. Language policy documents, through the help of relevant research, should observe how speakers get their needs catered for, and what choices they make, rather than making top-down decisions without a careful consideration of language practices (Mufwene 2006). It is also questionable how effective top-down language policies can be and whether people’s language choices can be controlled and managed in today’s globalization. “It is people that manage languages” 18 (Josephson 2009) and their practices. Language policy documents need to be written after much consideration of existing research on language practices.

Finally, there is the issue of multilingualism. Although multilingualism is not the primary point of investigation in the present paper, it is of relevance. The language policy documents investigated here encourage multilingualism, but they do so without guidelines as to where languages other than English and Swedish can be used. The mention of multilingualism in the policy documents investigated point to what Harder refers to as ‘soft multilingualism’ (Harder19 2012). In this view, multilingualism is a “label for all those who are against both hegemonic English and nationalism -- but who have no firm idea about exactly how to make multilingualism functionally operational”. It is not within the scope of the present paper to gauge attitudes as to whether the general university policies are against nationalism or not, but the lack of a description of where other languages can be used hints at soft multilingualism, as described by Harder.

7 Final remarks

The present paper offers an analysis and interpretation of intertextuality, authorship and content analysis of language policy documents in Swedish universities, portraying the complexity of language policy work in higher education in general. It is certainly a very positive development that most Swedish universities have realized the need for clear language policies and have produced language policy documents, with more universities in the process of producing their language policy documents. Although it has been argued that language planning may be ineffective under globalization (see section 2 and Josephson 2009, Jenkins 2013, Spolsky 2004), in communities like higher education settings, it may be useful provided that it is based on a clear understanding of the practices (see also Bolton and Kuteeva 2012).

The analysis and interpretations in the present paper show however that the existing policy documents include few recommendations about language practice. People who work in these universities, however, need to deal with the complexities of language use and usage on a daily basis and may benefit from guidance with regard to language practices.

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""18 Own translation from “Det är den språkligt handlande människan som styr språken” (Josephson 2009). 19 Harder refers to the three dominant ideologies with reference to policy work: Hegemonic English, i.e. “The future speaks English; all resistance to English is useless and retro”; nationalism, i.e. “The national language should be prescribed”; and soft multilingualism, as explained in the text above. (Harder 2012).

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"For language policy documents to be helpful, first of all, the primary focus needs to be placed on language practices, and this needs to be supported by relevant research on what choices people make when they operate in a lingua franca or the local language in their everyday practices and how they complete the tasks they need to complete. University language policies are best informed by research on how academics and students actually use languages for what purposes and in what situations. With enough attention on actual language practices, the documents will have a bottom-up nature rather than being merely top-down official documents, thereby not creating a mismatch between ground reality and policy rhetoric (see Cogo and Jenkins 2010 on a criticism of the EU language policy). Secondly, there is authorship. The policy documents are more likely to be useful if they are produced by Language Policy Committees who investigate language practices and consider the needs of staff and students at the university, and as a result of this, provide guidelines for language use. Top-down documents where there is little or no reference to relevant research or language practices will most likely fall short on providing guidance and help to those who need to operate in international university settings. The general questions of what can be achieved by means of a university language policy and whether language use can be managed remain; however, it is clear that students and staff who operate through a lingua franca, the local language and possibly other languages need guidance in facing the challenges that come with the complex linguistic scenarios in international university settings. Language policy documents should aim for providing them with guidance when they make their local choices for everyday practices, reflecting ground reality.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to express her sincere thanks to the Special Issue editor Andrew Linn and the two anonymous reviewers for providing valuable feedback. She is also grateful to Philip Shaw for providing very helpful feedback on an earlier version of this text.

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Keywords: language policy; higher education; intertextuality; authorship; English as a Lingua Franca (ELF); language management; language practices.

Beyza Björkman is Senior Associate Lecturer at Stockholm University, Department of English. In 2010, she completed her PhD on the use of English as an academic lingua franca. She has recently published her first monograph, English as an Academic Lingua Franca (de Gruyter Mouton 2013), and has published several papers on ELF in academia. In addition to the use of English as an academic lingua franca, her main research interests include language change, linguistic equality, and language policy work.

Address for correspondence: Department of English, Stockholm University, S-106 91, Stockholm Sweden. beyza.bjorkman@english.su.se.