Session Information
31 SES 08 A, Language and nation-building: Hierarchies and outcomes in education
Paper Session
Contribution
Across Europe, the question of heritage language instruction for linguistically minoritised students is heatedly debated. Different linguistically minoritised groups are awarded different rights to language instruction depending on their status as an indigenous, national or immigrant minority group. In line with international trends, indigenous and national minorities have gained ground in Scandinavia, as can be seen from the expansion of instruction in indigenous and national minority languages (e.g. May, 2017). While speakers of languages associated with recent migration are largely excluded from this progress, the extent of this exclusion varies significantly among the Scandinavian countries (Salö et al., 2018). Researchers across Scandinavia have published extensively on the language hierarchies found in education (Alisaari et al., forthcoming; Josephson, 2013; Karrebæk et al., 2015; Kristjánsdóttir, 2020; Nørreby, 2020; Salö et al., 2018; Sandøy, 2004). The hierarchization of different languages within education in Scandinavian countries is therefore well-documented and the positions of different categories of languages are well-known. Notwithstanding, there is a lack of close analysis of how language hierarchies in education are discursively established and legitimised by educational authorities. The current article investigates the following research question: How are linguistic hierarchies discursively established and legitimised in linguistic and educational policy documents in Norway and Sweden, respectively?
Bourdieu (1977, 1991) saw languages as different forms of symbolic capital and power competing in a marketplace. When different language verities compete, hierarchies always emerge (Blommaert, 2010). Certain varieties gain more prestige and other varieties lose their value in the encounter with other varieties. This well-known process has been described by sociolinguists as “linguistic differentiation” (Irvine & Gal, 2000), and the result of this process has been described as the “hierarchy of prestige” (Liddicoat, 2013) and “hierarchy of languages” (Bourdieu, 1991). Blommaert (2010) describes how globalization has created “new and complex markets for linguistic and communicative resources” and he asserts that “such markets naturally include winners and losers” (p. 3). Drawing on Bourdieu, Del Percio et al. (2017) argue that
The price that a specific linguistic practice acquires in a given market depends on the capacity of the speaker to be recognized as an agent able to produce a form of speech that, within the said market, is considered the most prestigious. (p. 56)
To be able to manipulate the hierarchization of languages is one way to be recognized as an agent within the linguistic market. In the global marketplace of linguistic and communicative resources, languages can become winners through political intervention, while other languages can become losers following the same intervention. Thus, languages are hierarchized in different ways according to the local context and the particular political initiatives of that context. In this paper, we investigate how this hierarchisation is achieved through the process of developing Norway and Sweden’s respective education acts and language acts.
Method
In the study at hand, we selected documents belonging to prescribed chains of documents traditional in political administration in Norway and Sweden. These chains are initiated with an Official Report authored by a government-appointed expert group, followed by a White Paper or Memorandum outlining what measures the governments intend to take, followed by a proposition for a new law from the government to parliament. In the current study, we have investigated four chains of documents: • Norwegian Education Act: Official Report (2019:23), White Paper 6 (2019-2020), Proposal for New Education Act (2021). • Norwegian Language Act: Official Report (2013:4), Norwegian Official Report (2016:18), White Paper 8 (2018-2019), Prop. 108L (2020), Norwegian Language Act (2022). • Swedish Education Act: Official Report (2008:26), Memorandum (2009:25), Proposition (2009/10:165), Swedish Education Act (2010). • Swedish Language Act: Official Report (2008:26), Proposition (2008/09:153), Swedish Language Act (2009). McNamara (2019) explains that power “does not happen automatically nut is repeatedly (‘iteratively’) re-inscribed in interaction, which paradoxically creates a space where the operations of power may misfire and provide an opening for a kind of agency” (p. 19). Thus, policy documents are simultaneously a re-inscription of hierarchies of power and an opportunity to contradict and subvert the current hierarchies of power. Therefore, drawing on Wortham and Reyes’ (2021) method of discourse analysis across speech events, we trace how language hierarchies in education in Norway and Sweden are discursively established and legitimised across policy documents. Wortham and Reyes’ (2021) method of discourse analysis consists of three phases: First, the researcher identifies linked events and maps these events separately. Second, the researcher selects, configurate, and construct potential indexicals through an iterative process, which contribute to creating discursive pathways across events. Once a discursive pathway of indexical signs has solidified, the researcher moves on to the third phase. In this phase, the discourse analyst can identify positions and/or social actions accomplished across events. Through an initial reading of the different documents in their respective sequence, we identified indexical signs that were repeated across documents. In line with Wortham and Reyes’ (2021) method of discourse analysis, we delineated cross-document configurations of indexical signs and explored how these configurations could explain how language hierarchies in education were discursively established and legitimised. Through this iterative process, some indexical configurations solidified, and pathways of indexical signs become more rigid across documents.
Expected Outcomes
From the analysis process described above, three discursive pathways became particularly salient in the production and legitimization of the current language hierarchies in education: In the first discursive pathway, Norway and Sweden are only legally obliged to protect certain languages according to international conventions. Through the Norwegian chain of documents use international agreements to avoid responsibility for languages beyond those they are obliged to protect in accordance with international agreements. The Swedish chain of documents also rely on international agreements. However, the Swedish documents do not avoid responsibility for minority languages that are beyond their international obligations. In the second discursive pathway, vulnerable languages that the states have assumed responsibility for need protection from the forces of the global marked of linguistic resources. While the Norwegian policy documents limit the languages they are willing to protect based on their international obligations, the Swedish documents go beyond what the state is strictly obligated to provide. For instance, the Government’s Memorandum (2009) regarding a new education act emphasizes all linguistically minoritised students’ right to mother tongue education (p. 410-412). In the third discursive pathway, Norwegian and Swedish language are key components in a democratic nation-building effort. The policy documents were concerned with nation-building efforts. However, the discursive pathway indexing nation-building are not indexing traditional ideas of “one nation, one people, one language”. Rather, in the 21st century, nation-building in Scandinavia apparently aims at establishing democratic communities, where citizens can communicate effectively and freely through a common language. In addition, the Swedish policy documents assert all citizens’ “right to language: to develop and acquire the Swedish language, to develop and use their own mother tongue, and national minority language, and to get the opportunity to learn foreign languages” (Government’s proposition 2008/9: 153, p. 52).
References
Alisaari, J., Daugaard, L. M., Dewilde, J., Harju-Autti, R., Heikkola, L.-M., Iversen, J. Y., Kekki, N., Pesonen, S., Reath Warren, A., Straszer, B., & Yli-Jokipii, M. (forthcoming). Mother tongue education in four Nordic countries - problem, right or resource? Blommaert, J. (2010). The sociolinguistcs of globalization. Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Polity Press. Del Percio, A., Flubacher, M.-C., & Duchêne, A. (2017). Language and political economy. In O. García, N. Flores, & M. Spotti (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of language and society (pp. 55-76). Oxford University Press. Irvine, J. T., & Gal, S. (2000). Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In P. V. Kroskrity (Ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, policies, and identities (pp. 35-83). School of American Research Press. Josephson, O. (2013). Ju: Ifrågasatta självklarheter om svenskan, engelskan och alla andra språk i Sverige [Questioning what we take for granted about Swedish, English, and all other languages in Sweden]. Studentlitteratur. Karrebæk, M. S., Ag, A., Dreier, B., Ghandchi, N., Hyttel-Sørensen, L., Lundqvist, U., & Stæhr, A. (2015). Hverdagssprogning og sprogideologier: Om betydningen af minoritetssprog hos skolebørn i København. In F. Gregersen & T. Kristiansen (Eds.), Hvad ved vi nu – om danske talesprog? Sprogforandringscentret. Kristjánsdóttir, B. (2020). Fagene dansk, dansk som andetsprog og minoritetsmodersmål: status og hierarkier [The language programmes Danish, Danish as a second language and Mother tongue: status and hierarchies]. Nordand - nordisk tidsskrift for andrespråksforskning, 15(2), 78-92. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.18261/issn.2535-3381-2020-02-03 Liddicoat, A. J. (2013). Language-in-education policies: The discursive construction of intercultural relations. Multilingual Matters. May, S. (2017). Language, imperialism, and the modern nation-state system: Implications for language rights. In O. García, N. Flores, & M. Spotti (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of language and society (pp. 35-54). Oxford University Press. McNamara, T. (2019). Language and subjectivity Cambridge University Press. Nørreby, T. R. (2020). Elitær flersprogethed [Elite multilingualism]. Nordand - nordisk tidsskrift for andrespråksforskning, 15(1), 22-36. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.18261/issn.2535-3381-2020-01-02 Salö, L., Ganuza, N., Hedman, C., & Karrebæk, M. S. (2018). Mother tongue instruction in Sweden and Denmark: Language policy, cross-field effects, and linguistic exchange rates. Language Policy, 17, 591-610. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-018-9472-8 Sandøy, H. (2004). Den fleirspråklege utfordringa [The multilingual challenge]. In H. Sandøy, E. Brunstad, J. E. Hagen, & K. Tenefjord (Eds.), Den fleirspråklege utfordringa [The multilingual challenge] (pp. 7-15). Novus forlag. Wortham, S., & Reyes, A. (2021). Discourse analysis beyond the speech event (2nd ed.). Routledge.
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