Intro to Volume

English in Nordic Universities: Ideologies and Practices Benjamins

Edited by Anna Kristina Hultgren, Frans Gregersen and Jacob Thøgersen Series Editor: Humphrey Tonkin

CONTENTS AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE FIELD Nordic universities have undergone significant sociolinguistic transformation over the past few decades as a result of internationalization and globalization. Yet in spite of constituting a potentially revealing window into how global socio-economic restructuring rearranges language constellations in countries in the ‘expanding circle’ (Kachru 1982) and in academia in particular, the sociolinguistics of Nordic universities has rarely been the explicit focus of edited volumes (Haberland et al. in press, Preisler et al. 2011, van Leeuwen et al. 2003). Notably too, the vast majority of output on the topic has been published in the Nordic languages, making it inaccessible to an international audience (Nordic Council 2007, Höglin 2002, Kristinsson 2001). The proposed volume will be the first English-medium book devoted exclusively to understanding languagerelated matters in Nordic universities, thereby initiating an important dialogue between Nordic and international scholars, all working within the more general field of language problems, language planning, language and educational policies and English-medium instruction in the context of globalization. Contributions to the volume will address a range of themes which have over time emerged as central in public and scholarly debates about language-related matters in Nordic academia. Where some of these, such as ‘domain loss’ and ‘parallellingualism’, are, at least in their surface form, specifically ‘Nordic’ concerns, others, such as ‘diglossia’, ‘language planning’, ‘language policies’, ‘English medium instruction’ and its pedagogical consequences as well as ‘norms for second language (English) proficiency’, are of more general concern. The volume is organized into ten chapters, each of just under 20 pages (as well as an introduction and a conclusion): Two for each of the five Nordic countries (Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland). The first chapter for each country will focus on the level of ideology and the other on the level of practice. The rationale for this is an apparent disjuncture, both in layman and scholarly circles, between the way in which language-related matters are understood and talked about (the level of ideology) and the way in which they manifest themselves in the realities on the ground (the level of practice). By explicitly drawing attention to the tension between ideologies and practices, the aim of the volume is 1) to work towards a theoretical integration of both

levels, and 2) to explore ways to practically manage language-related problems in a way which takes into account both ideologies and practices.

Note, not all 10 abstracts are currently available