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