1 Whose Language First?
Two decades into the twenty-first century, it has become a bit of a trope to say that the world is experiencing globalization and mobility at an unprecedented rate. Many European countries, including the ones where the studies reported in this volume have been conducted, have experienced an increase in migration from countries with which they have had no historical ties. However, accommodating to the diversity resulting from humanitarian, economic, and political migration has posed challenges for many European societies. The outcome of the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election in 2016 are just two examples of developments in many Western democracies that have started putting their own national interests first. Most recently, this trend has been observed in the EU parliamentary elections 2019. Discussions about language have intensified, often questioning the use of English as a lingua franca and repositioning national languages in this new sociolinguistic landscape. How have these changes impacted the universities and the various stakeholders involved?
Universities across Europe are under additional kinds of pressure: to excel in their research internationally, to recruit the best staff, to attract the best students, both domestic and international. These pressures are often conflicting and result in pulling language policies and practices in different directions. On the one hand, major university rankings reward internationalization—which in terms of language use equals Englishization—but at the same time, most European universities are funded by taxpayers’ money and need to be accountable for how these funds are spent on education and research. This inevitably makes the promotion and protection of national languages a priority. For example, Danish universities have recently introduced quotas for international students and reduced the number of English-medium programmes (e.g. Bothwell, 2018; Custer, 2019). The association for better education in the Netherlands (BON) has been critical of the overwhelming presence of English and filed a lawsuit against two universities in order to reinforce Dutch as the language of instruction. Although this lawsuit has been lost (Pieters, 2018), the debate about Englishization continues.
In addition to these somewhat conflicting pressures to increase international visibility and simultaneously cater for domestic needs, there is also an urge to widen the participation of students from less privileged backgrounds. For example, the University of Oxford, an epitome of prestige and eliteness, has set a goal to recruit a quarter of its undergraduate students from the lower socioeconomic backgrounds by 2023 (Coughlan, 2019). In Sweden, universities are required to work actively on attracting students from diverse backgrounds since the early 2000s (Swedish Council for Higher Education, 2016). The same trend applies to many universities in European countries, where these students often represent minoritized communities whose language uses may not conform to the widely promoted and perceived language norms.
The use of various academic languages and lingua francas in education and research at European universities is not new. Before English gained prominence as the main lingua franca of academia, that position had been occupied by Latin, French, and German. Over the last decades, academic multilingualism may have diminished following an increased use of English (e.g. Haberland & Preisler, 2015), but it has not been erased. Many students, teachers, and researchers at European universities today operate in languages which are not their first or home languages. In this context, a great deal of research has been conducted on the role and use of English (e.g. Doiz, Lasagabaster, & Sierra, 2013; Hultgren, Gregersen, & Thøgersen, 2014). Other academic languages—including those used on the backstage of educational and research settings—have received less attention in the literature. Our volume attempts to bridge this gap.
The mastery of an academic language and associated literacy is one of the key factors in academic success. In addition to traditional academic multilingualism, which often emphasizes the ability to read and write in one or two major European languages in addition to L1, there is also a reality of grassroots multilingualism among different kinds of university stakeholders. This grassroots multilingualism can often pass unnoticed or be made invisible in debates and research concerning university language policies and practices (e.g. Kuteeva; Holmes; Clark, this volume). In recent years, calls for including social justice on the research agenda of applied linguistics have been made by several researchers in connection to different views of multilingualism and what counts as legitimate language use (e.g. Canagarajah, 2013; Flores & Rosa, 2015). As Ortega (2019) puts it: “[M]any multilinguals are constantly at risk of experiencing their multilingualism as a curse rather than a fact of life, all along while other multilinguals are able to experience it as a gift that adds to their privilege” (p. 34). As several chapters in our volume show, the distinction between academic and grassroots multilingualism plays out differently for various university stakeholders.
In the current sociolinguistic landscape of many European universities, national languages and English as an academic lingua franca are used alongside a plethora of other linguistic resources, including different codes and registers. To what extent has this diversity impacted what counts as valuable linguistic capital at university? Most previous research conducted in Europe has focused primarily on questions of language choice and the dichotomy between English and the national language(s) (e.g. Hultgren et al., 2014; Pérez-Llantada & Plo-Alastrué, 2015). Our volume provides a response to changes in higher education where internationalization and widening participation not only pull towards the use of one shared language but also increasingly diversify language practices. The studies reported here were conducted in countries whose sociolinguistic landscapes are fairly diverse and in educational contexts where Englishization has been particularly pronounced. Drawing on empirical analyses, our chapter contributors unveil the tensions arising between monolingualism and multilingualism at university and chart the multiplicity of language perceptions and practices among various university stakeholders.
The educational contexts explored here include universities located in four Nordic countries: Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland, as well as the Baltic states and the Netherlands. Although geographically close, these countries differ in their degree and status of societal multilingualism. Sweden is officially a monolingual country with Swedish as the main language although five other languages have official minority language status; Swedish sign language is equally supported (SFS, 2009: 600), and about 200 other languages are spoken in the country (Institute for Language and Folklore, 2019). In 2018, as many as 19% of the population were born outside Sweden (Statistics Sweden, 2019). Finland is constitutionally bilingual with Finnish and Swedish being used separately in institutional settings. In addition to the Language Act (423/2003) that specifies the right of Finnish and Swedish speakers to use their language before authorities, separate Language Acts also exist for the Sámi languages and the Finnish and Finland-Swedish sign languages, and numerous other acts include provisions on linguistic rights (Ministry of Justice Finland, 2019). Some 160 different languages have been registered as mother tongues in Finland, but with only circa 7% of the population speaking other than Finnish, Swedish, or Sámi as their first language (Statistics Finland, 2019). Thus, Finland is often considered to be more linguistically homogeneous than the other Nordic countries, particularly Sweden.
In Denmark, Danish is the national language except for Greenland and the Faroe Islands, where Greenlandic or Danish and Faroese are the official languages respectively. German is still protected in the southern regions as a minority language but has no official status in Denmark. Circa 10% of the population in 2018 were born outside of the country (Statistics Denmark, 2019). Iceland is officially monolingual with Icelandic as its official language. Circa 9% of the population in 2017 were born abroad (Statistics Iceland, 2018). Because the structure and vocabulary of Icelandic are quite different from the other Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian), English has become an important means of not only international but also Nordic communication for Icelanders, as well as for Finnish-speaking Finns.
In close geographical proximity and with historical ties to the Nordic countries lie the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. As post-Soviet states, they have large proportions of Russian speakers but emphasize the promotion of the national languages and English. Since these three countries have a very short history as independent nation-states, their support for national languages is particularly strong. The Netherlands has been both historically and currently a multilingual society, with Dutch as the official language alongside regional minority languages and English in some overseas special municipalities.
The populations of these eight countries have high levels of proficiency in English (EF, 2018; at least among the younger generation in the Baltic states). Especially in the higher education sector, English has been embraced more than in other EU countries (Wächter & Maiworm, 2014; Soler; Lasagabaster & Doiz, this volume). This prominence of English may not be accidental as these countries have historically relied on other lingua francas in higher education, such as French, German, or Russian. They all demonstrate some level of language regulation, whether in the form of Finland’s constitutional bilingualism, the Baltic state’s post-Soviet language acts, or more recent language legislation, such as the Language Act (SFS, 2009: 600) in Sweden. On closer inspection, there are also important differen...