Ever since Finnish was ratified as a national minority language in Sweden in 2000, pupils belonging to the Sweden Finnish minority have had the right to study the language in municipal schools. Though the right to receive Finnish mother tongue instruction is inalienable, the minority’s rights are not always met (Vuorsola 2019). The lacking support for adequate municipal mother tongue instruction (MTI) in Finnish and other heritage languages in Sweden is widely documented in research as well as in Council of Europe’s monitoring reports (Council of Europe 2022). However, the processes regarding enrollment for MTI has been under researched. As an attempt to partly rectify this, we examine how the procedures regarding the enrollment in the Finnish as a heritage language instruction in Sweden are presented in websites of different municipalities that offer additional support for the Sweden Finnish minority and the Finnish language in Sweden, and how comprehensible the instructions are.

As a theoretical background for this study, we use Ruiz’s (1984) orientations for language planning. Ruíz (1984) defines a language orientation as “a complex of dispositions toward language and its role, and toward languages and their role in society” (p. 16). Specifically, he describes three distinct orientations to language at a societal level: language-as-problem, language-as-right, and language-as-resource. Supported by international treaties on human rights, the language-as-right orientation views speaking and maintaining one’s home language as a human right (Hult & Hornberger, 2016; Ruiz, 1984; UN General Assembly, 1948). Moreover, Skutnabb-Kangas (2017) has defined linguistic human rights as inviolable basic rights.  In language-as-resource orientation, multilingualism and cultural diversity are valued as resources for both individuals and society (Ruiz, 1984). Moreover, language is seen as having value with regard to identity construction, self-esteem, and intellectual engagement (Hult & Hornberger, 2016). In contrast, in the language-as-problem orientation, monolingualism is valued, while multilingualism is perceived as a threat to national unity (Ruiz, 1984). Multilingual speakers are believed to lack ability in the majority language (Ruiz, 1984) and have “reduced academic achievement” (Hult & Hornberger, 2016, p. 33), and issues of language learning are seen to correlate with larger societal problems. In this study, Ruiz’s language orientations are a relevant framework to qualitatively analyze, categorize, and discuss descriptions regarding the enrollment in the Finnish as a heritage language instruction in Sweden.

The data is analyzed through a critical genre analysis lens, which entails that discourse consist of three levels namely text,genre and professional practice (Bhatia 2015). While the text level refers to the content and composition of the information provided on the websites, discourse as genre goes beyond the text’s composition and deals with how it is “interpreted, used and exploited in specific contexts, whether social, institutional, or more narrowly professional, to achieve specific disciplinary goals, which often require the use of methods that investigate not only linguistic issues, but also socio-pragmatic ones” (Bahtia 2015: 10). Finally, we adapt the level of discourse as professional practice to apply for the families of Finnish speakers in Finland to discuss “challenges and benefits such genres are likely to bring to a particular set of readers” (Bhatia 2015: 10). Even though critical genre analysis is mostly utilized for professional genres, the methodology has been implemented by Björkvall and Nyström Höög (2021) when analyzing municipal ‘platform of values -texts’. 

Our research questions are the following:

1)    How comprehensible are the descriptions regarding the rights to receive instruction in Finnish as well as the procedures on how to enroll in the Finnish as a heritage language instruction in Sweden?

2)    To what extent do the descriptions reflect the language policies of Sweden as well as Ruiz’s orientations?

This study features a thematic content analysis of online descriptions on procedures regarding the enrollment in the Finnish as a heritage language instruction in Sweden. Specifically, we focus on the information provided by the websites of 66 so called administrative areas, which offer additional support for the Sweden Finnish minority and the Finnish language in Sweden For the content analysis we implement methods from critical genre analysis to the data. To begin the qualitative content analysis (Krippendorff, 1980) on the text level, the first author reads the online descriptions on enrollment procedures to gain an initial understanding of the data and identify sub-categories for coding the data. The suggested categories are then discussed among the two authors; categories are decided upon, and the procedure descriptions are coded by the authors independently. After the initial coding, the categories are discussed again, and some are combined and revised. If cases are unclear, the definitions of the categories will be negotiated and recalibrated. The categories are then divided to reflect Ruiz’s three language orientations (1984). Secondly, we will analyze which additional measures the websites require the end-users to take in order to be able to interpret and achieve the goals that the genre described necessitates. Such social actions may entail following links to read information referred on the initial website or use translator features to get the information in the goal language of Finnish. Finally, to analyze the discourse as practice level we will utilize a focus group of 10 university students to assess the comprehensibility of municipal information. With this triangulation of methods, we seek to de-mystify the genre of municipal information regarding MTI enrollment and illuminate inconsistencies that might hamper stake-holders’ ability to enroll their children to Finnish MTI in Sweden.

We expect that the results will be varied but indicate that the information regarding minority rights and enrollment for Finnish MTI in Swedish municipal schools is lacking and confusing. The given information combines different categories of minority speakers who have different rights which causes confusion. Secondly, information is not given in other languages than Swedish, such as the target language Finnish, which does not correlate with the special administration area’s obligation to inform national minorities of their rights and provide MTI. Initial results also show, that the provided information does not fulfill the above-mentioned obligation to inform the minorities, since the websites direct stake-holders elsewhere to seek information. The fact that the provided information is usually given in the majority language, the rights of the Sweden Finnish minority are not presented separately and that stake-holders need to seek and interpret the information on their own from other sources suggests that the municipal information practices mostly connect with the language-as-problem orientation in Ruiz’s model. This study is relevant in the European context since the Council of Europe is promoting the rights of heritage language speakers for example to receive mother tongue instruction, but the actual delivery of information regarding the right to receive mother tongue instruction is lacking or in some cases wrong (SOU 2017:91: 175-176; 300-301). Thus, this study provides both an example of a way to examine this topic in any country, but also an example of how information is delivered in Sweden, a country that is described as a place where all residents have the right to preserve and develop their mother tongue and their national minority languages in The Declaration of a Nordic Language Policy (NCM, 2007).

Bhatia, V.K., 2015. Critical genre analysis: Theoretical preliminaries. HERMES-Journal of language and communication in business, (54), pp.9-20. Björkvall, A. & Nyström Höög, C., 2021. Semiotic vagueness as a tool for goal fulfilment:'Platforms of values' in Swedish public administration. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, 16(1), pp.5-28. Council of Europe. 2022. Eighth evaluation report on Sweden. Committee of Experts of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. URL: https://rm.coe.int/swedenecrml8-en/1680aa8932 Hult, F. M., & Hornberger, N. H. (2016). Revisiting orientations in language planning: Problem, right, and resource as an analytical heuristic. The Bilingual Review, 33(3), 30–49. NCM (2007) = Nordic Council of Ministers (2007). Deklaration om nordisk språkpolitik [Declaration on Nordic Language Policy]. http://norden.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:700895/FULLTEXT01.pdf Ruiz, R. (1984). Orientations in language planning. NABE Journal, 8(2), 15–34. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2017). Language rights. In W. E. Wright, S. Boun, & O. García (Eds.), The handbook of bilingual and multilingual education (pp. 185–202). Wiley. SOU 2017:91. Lainio, J. (2017). Nationella minoritetsspråk i skolan—förbättrade förutsättningar till undervisning och revitalisering. Betänkande av utredningen om förbättrade möjligheter för elever att utveckla sitt nationella minoritetsspråk. Regeringskansliet. https://www.regeringen.se/contentassets/1223a145243f4c0aa25c0f3dc55b6965/sou-2017_91_webb.pdf UN (United Nations) General Assembly. (1948). Universal declaration of human rights (217 [III] A). Paris, art. 1. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ Vuorsola, Lasse. "Societal support for the educational provisions of Finnish in the Swedish school system in theory and practice." Language Policy 18, no. 3 (2019): 363-385.