My research project focuses on how the use of Finnish, Swedish and English, as well as other languages, is argued in the Finnish academia. I explore this discussion in application to the everyday practices, teaching, research, and knowledge production. Looking at the documents, public discussions, and interviews, I describe a multilayered picture of the field and symbolic power of languages (Bourdieu, 2003). Ideas about power, equality and linguistic rights along with the internationalized university practices and lingua franca complicate the discussion about languages. The question of how to manage the linguistic situation on the institutional level also involves an ethical dimension and multiple ways of looking at it.

My goal is to explicate the positions of different actors within the university environment and justifications they utilize to argue about the actual and desired use of Finnish, English, Swedish and other languages. This analysis advances the understanding of how internationalization includes or could include national language protection. Moreover, how national language protection is linked to national interests in education and internationalization. At the same time, there is a rise of neonationalism in higher education (Saarinen, 2020; Brøgger, 2020), and part of the discussion about language protection also takes place in this sphere.

There is a growing debate about languages in higher education, and their impact on national academic culture, internationalization and multilingualism. During the panel discussions at the Language Awareness Campaign (KITI) at the University of Helsinki, various participants claimed that either Finnish, Swedish or English are not used sufficiently within the university, and that this deficiency has a negative impact on the academic life. What the audience has agreed on, however, is that multilingual academia would be a fruitful academic environment, and should be promoted (KITI, 2017). This demonstrates that debates about the place of different languages in academia are going to continue.

Lindstedt (2013) argues that increased use of English in Finnish universities discriminates Finnish candidates in the recruitment process and administrative duties within the university. He adds that current coexistence of languages within the academia is prone to multiple problems in the future. Heimonen and Ylönen (2017) write about university staff’s ideological preference of the use of multiple languages instead of “English only”. However, along with these concerns, there are also numerous problematic situations that international students and scholars encounter due to the lack of information in English, lack of social circle and challenges of learning Finnish (Medvedeva, 2018). Yet, another perspective states that it is crucial for the international students to be able to speak Finnish in order to find employment and stay in Finland after graduation (Shumilova et al, 2012). The article that I am going to present focuses on the international students’ and scholars’ voices in this debate. The discussion ranges from language speaking and learning in the neoliberal sense, as a form of human capital, which makes it solely an individual responsibility (see, e.g. Kubota, 2016) to the understanding of the institutional politics as advancement of English.

 Research questions:

(1). What kind of power is ascribed to different languages by a variety of actors in the field?

(2). What kind of value, ethical claims are communicated by different respondents?

(3). What kind of practices are considered as the most valuable or problematic by different participants?

As a part of my research, I conducted interviews among the university community to reflect on perspectives on and experiences of language use in the academia. My goal was to have an input from a variety of disciplines, since the public discussions that I have followed, show a variety of language situations. I moved from the initial focus on the normative language positions into analyzing everyday situations and the cultural, pragmatic or power related aspect of the language choices. The methodological approach to this research stems from Bourdieu’s analysis of language (2003). For my research data, meanings attached to the interplay of different languages reveal conceptions of symbolic ‘market’, ‘capital’ and ‘profit’ within a given field. I explore the dialogue on them, along with the latent conventions acknowledged by the participants. The conception on language, stemming from this approach, is referenced in the position of Wright (2015), who explores it not as a fixed notion, but as a ‘dialogic creativity’, also allowing for the interpretation of multiple languages’ position within the field. Yet, this perspective on the language itself does not denounce the consideration of the power issues, which stems from the ‘postcolonial performativity approach’ explored by Pennycook (2000).

While acknowledging the claims brought up by the critical theorists of the spread of English, the changing perspectives on the social aspects of language could be extended to the other languages as well. For instance, the fluidity of language (Jenkins, 2011) and functionality aspects, rather than norms (Cogo, Dewey, 2012) could advance the discussion on the learning of the national languages by the students and scholars from abroad. When applied to the national languages and minority languages in higher education, these perspectives allow tracing the positions of different speakers, and the relative power that is ascribed to the language competencies. Finally, the discussion on the language dimensions of higher education should not be limited to the use of English or national languages in education, a more productive focus would feature the interaction of the national language and English, and also the overall arguments of linguistic diversity and its use in education. This focus on language opens a window on other aspects of the academic and institutional developments – power balance in the conditions of internationalization and national interests in marketization of education, as well as norm claiming impulses. It also allows me to trace the emerging ethical dimension, the normative argumentation of international scholars about the language use at the university.

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