English in Scandinavian tertiary education:
to take arms against a sea of
troubles
Hartmut Haberland
Reykjavík, July 19, 2013
Nitobe Symposium
English in Scandinavian tertiary education
Why is English so much more a world language in the
Nordic countries than elsewhere?
Inner and outer factors:
• English from above and below (Preisler 1999)
• ”The charisma of the liberators ” (Schou 1993, but on
the other hand Sevaldsen 1992)
• Linguistic imperialism and linguistic hegemony
Phillipson: Language imperialism theory
“English is destined to be in the next and succeeding centuries more
generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French in
the present age.” (John Adams 1780)
“The power to control language offers far better prizes than taking away
people’s provinces or lands or grinding them down in exploitation. The
empires of the future are the empires of the mind” (Winston Churchill in
Harvard 1943)
”The Thatcher Center will focus on how the United States and Great
Britain can lead and change the world.”
(http://www.thatchercenter.org/sub_about.cfm)
(all quoted in Phillipson 2012)
Linguistic hegemonic projects
Hegemony is not mere dominance — it is, one the one hand (following
Antonio Gramsci, cf. Robinson [2005]), the way in which “common sense”
frames the existing social world and its practices as “natural” and “selfevident”, and on the other (following Ranajit Guha), a way in which
persuasion outweighs coercion in the organization of dominance (Guha
1997: 23). Thus, while the use of Latin as the language of academia was
considered “obvious” and “natural” for literally hundreds of years because it
was established as an integral part of the dominating sociolinguistic
worldview, we are currently witnessing the emergence of a new “logic” in
which it is “natural” to assume that universities “obviously” need to
introduce English in order to fulfill their societal role. This reflects on the
one hand an acceptance of the “market” as the governing factor of choices
for universities, including language choices, and on the other hand certain
commonsense ideas of how “the market” works and what its requirements
are. Central among these assumptions is that English, as the language of
globalism (cf. Haberland 2009), is the “obvious” language of “the market”.
Language change in academia
Der Sprachenwechsel ist nie, auch nicht in den Wissenschaften, ein bloßer Austausch eines arbiträren
Zeichensystems gegen ein anderes. . . .
Für die Wissenschaften des 18. Jahrhunderts war der
Sprachenwechsel auch mit einem Funktionswandel der
Universität und einer Neubewertung wissenschaftlicher
Inhalte verbunden. (Schiewe 2000: 91–92)
[Language change is never, not even in academia, a mere
replacement of one arbitrary sign system by another. . . .
For scholarship in the 18th century, language change was
related to a transformation of the function of the
university and a reassessment of academic content.]
Bull; Mortensen and Haberland
Four phases of the Danish university (cf. Bull 2004, Mortensen and Haberland 2012:
192)
University type
Period
Legitimizing principle Language
_________________________________________________________________
medieval and early
15th and 16th
auctoritas (authority) Latin
modern university
centuries
enlightenment
university
17th and 18th
centuries
ratio (reason)
Latin, other
European
languages,
Danish
national university
19th and 20th
centuries
nation
Danish
post-national
University
end of 20th,
21th century
market
Danish,
English
Market metaphor
• market as a metaphor for competition (Park and
Wee 2012)
• market as a metaphor for commodification (of
education and language) (Naidoo and Jamieson
2005; Heller 2010; Mortensen and Haberland
2012b)
Market metaphor: demand or supply?
Hvis vi tager gæsten bestemmer-argumentet først, så kan vi genkende dette
fra den åbning af universitetsstudierne mod studerende fra andre lande
hvor de mærkværdigvis taler andre sprog end de nordiske, som er så typisk
for det internationaliserede universitet. Hvis der i et lokale med fx danske
studerende sidder en udvekslingsstuderende eller en international
studerende som ikke kan forstå dansk (undervisningssprog), hvad gør man
så? Der er to muligheder: Sender vedkommende på danskkursus så han
eller hun kan lære det. Eller: Lærer og studerende skifter til et andet
undervisningssprog som den studerende behersker (godt nok). Det er
næsten altid engelsk, ikke nødvendigvis fordi det er de studerendes bedste
sprog, det er det bestemt ikke altid, men fordi det for nordiske studerende
og undervisere er (eller ses som) det eneste realistiske alternativ til det
nordiske. (Gregersen 2012: 8)
Market metaphor: demand or supply?
”If we take the principle ’the guest is to decide’ first, so can we recognize
this from the opening of university studies towards students from other
countries where they strangely enough speak other languages than the
Nordic ones, which is so typical for the international university. If there is an
exchange or transnational student in the room together with (e.g.) Danish
students who does not understand Danish (which happens to be the
language of instruction), what do you do? There are two possibilities: send
them to A Danish course so they can learn it. Alternatively, teacher and
students shift to another language of instruction, which almost always will
be English, not because it is the transnational student’s best language – it
certainly won’t always be – but because for the Nordic student and teachers
is is the only realistic alternative.” (Gregersen 2012: 11)
In other words: it is not the guest who decides, but the host. The common
demand-side argument (”all the best students and professors speak
English”) is really a hidden supply-side argument (”we can’t do it in any
other language except English anyway”).
References
Bull, Tove 2004. Dagens og gårdagens akademiske lingua franca. Eit historisk
tilbakeblikk og eit globalt utsyn. In: Dag Finn Simonsen, ed. Språk i kunnskapssamfunnet. Engelsk – elitenes nye latin? Oslo: Gyldendal Akademisk. 35-45.
Haberland, Hartmut 2009. English – the language of globalism? Rask 30:17-45
Gregersen, Frans 2012. Indledning: Globaliseringens udfordringer med særligt
hensyn til universitetsinstitutionerne. Nordand 2(7): 5-19
Guha, Ranajit 1997. Dominance without hegemony. History and power in colonial
India. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Heller, Monica. 2010. The Commodification of Language. Annual Review of
Anthropology 39:101-114
Mortensen, Janus and Hartmut Haberland 2012a. English – the new Latin of
academia? Danish universities as a case. International Journal of the Sociology of
Language 216: 175-197.
Mortensen, Janus and Hartmut Haberland 2012b. The pragmatics of knowledge of
English as a commodity. 5th International Conference on Intercultural Pragmatics and
1st International Pragmatics of the Americas Conference, Charlotte, NC, October 21,
2012.
References
Naidoo, Rajani and Ian Jamieson 2005. Knowledge in the marketplace: The global
commodification of teaching and learning in higher education. In: Peter Ninnes and
Meri Hellstén, eds. Internationalizing Higher Education: Critical Explorations of
Pedagogy and Policy. Dordrecht: Springer.
Park, Joseph Sung-Yul and Lionel Wee 2012. Markets of English. London: Routledge.
Phillipson, Robert 2012. Linguistic vitality under pressure: German in a neoimperial
age. In: Heinrich Oberreuter, Wilhelm Krull, Hans Joachim Meyer und Konrad Ehlich
(Hrsg.), Deutsch in der Wissenschaft. Ein politischer und wissenschaftlicher Diskurs.
München: Olzog, 217-231.
Preisler, Bent 1999. Danskerne og det engelske sprog. Frederiksberg: Roskilde
Universitetsforlag/Samfundslitteratur.
Robinson, William I. 2005. Gramsci and Globalisation. From nation-state to
transnational hegemony. Critical Review of International Social and Political
Philosophy 8(4):559-574.
References
Schiewe, Jürgen. 2000. Von Latein zu Deutsch, von Deutsch zu Englisch. Gründe und
Folgen des Wechsels von Wissenschaftssprachen. In: Friedhelm Debus, Franz Gustav
Kollmann and Uwe Pörksen (eds.), Deutsch als Wissenschaftssprache im 20. Jahrhundert. Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur. Stuttgart: Franz
Steiner, 81-104.
Schou, Søren 1993. The Charisma of the Liberators. The Americanization of Postwar
Denmark. in: Roger de la Garde, William Gilsdorf and Ilja Wechselmann (eds.), Small
Nations, Big Neighbour: Denmark and Quebec/Canada Compare Notes on American
Popular Culture. London: John Libbey. 77-78
Sevaldsen, Jørgen 1992. Culture and diplomacy: Anglo-Danish relations 1945-49. In:
Jørgen Erik Nielsen, ed. The twain shall meet. Danish approaches to English studies.
Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, Department of English Studies. 9-46
English in Scandinavia:
Nitobe Inazō 新渡戸 稲造, 1862–1933