This presentation unveils tensions between academic monolingualism and multilingualism. By analysing policy documents and survey comments, I identify three dominant discourses: “epistemic monolingualism”, “(wishful) academic multilingualism”, and “deficient multilingualism”. Major European academic languages, particularly German and French, hold a high status but their reported use is more “wishful” than real.
Internationalisation and migration have diversified the sociolinguistic landscape of many European universities. Sweden provides an illustrative example of this trend. However, most research to date has focused primarily on the interplay between English and the official majority Swedish (e.g. Airey 2009, Bolton & Kuteeva 2012, Salö 2017). Although the dominance of English in education and research is often debated, languages other than Swedish have received much less attention in the literature. This presentation aims to unpack language hierarchies at university by analyzing how they are manifested in discourses surrounding language uses. It unveils the tensions between academic monolingualism and multilingualism as perceived by policymakers, students and academic staff.
The data consist of open-ended comments to a university-wide survey of students and staff (with more than 90 first languages among them), the language policy adopted by the same university, and the latest language policy document by the Nordic Council of Ministers (2018). My analysis is guided by two research questions: What discourses are manifested in the comments by university teachers and students concerning the use of languages other than English and Swedish? Which languages are construed as valuable in university settings?
Three dominant discourses have been identified among university stakeholders: "epistemic monolingualism", "(wishful) academic multilingualism", and "deficient multilingualism". Swedish is construed as the main university language and occupies first position if any replacement of English is needed. Major European academic languages, particularly German and French, hold a high status in the language hierarchy but their reported use is limited to few specific domains and is more "wishful" than real. These languages are perceived more as complementary to Swedish and English than replacements for them. Other academic languages, e.g. Russian or Chinese, and major world languages, e.g. Arabic or Persian, are practically invisible in the analysed policy documents and survey comments.
