Volume 33, Issue 3-4 - Special Issue: English in the language ecology of “high proficiency” European countries

In this study perceptions of post-compulsory school studies in Iceland were investigated through semi-structured interviews. While colloquial English suffices for entertainment, hobbies and Internet use in Iceland, a high level of proficiency is required for employment and tertiary study. School learners and young people in tertiary study and employment comment on their perceived proficiency in English and their present and anticipated future uses of the language. Implications for English instruction in Iceland are put forward and it is suggested that Iceland stands outside recognised frameworks of motivation because of its context of high exposure to English.

This article explores some dimensions of how the role of the English language in Norway has been discursively constructed in newspapers during recent years, based on the analysis of data from the five-year period 2008–2012. The analysis is conducted using a specialised corpus containing 3,743 newspaper articles which were subjected to corpus-based macro-analyses and techniques, as well as manual micro-level analyses and categorisation. The main focus of the analysis is on the manifestation of attitudes through various ways of expression, such as the occurrence of lexical sequences and conceptual metaphors related to language. The results show that even though positive perceptions of English were quite frequent in the data, the main part consisted of expressions where English is seen in a negative light. Hence, a fairly negative attitude towards the role of English is predominant, as illustrated by the most frequent conceptual metaphor, language is an invading force , where English is at war with and seen as representing a threat to the Norwegian language.

This study investigates attitudes towards varieties of English among Norwegian adolescent learners and assesses the role of social evaluation for second language (L2) pronunciation choices by combining a verbal guise test with speaker commentary and reports of language choices. The results suggest that while American English is the most accessible English accent and the preferred L2 choice, Standard Southern British English remains the most prestigious English accent and retains its position as a formal English language teaching standard. However, not all learners want to convey the social meanings attributed to these widely identified English varieties, and therefore aim towards a “neutral” variety of English not associated with any native-English-speaking people or culture. The avoidance of standard varieties as L2 targets suggests that the tradition of questioning standard language norms in Norway is mirrored in L2 practices. The investigations into social motivations for L2 behaviour contribute to the ongoing discourse on the global spread and local appropriation of English. The results have implications for English language educators, who must meet the needs of proficient learners in an environment with increased intra-national use of English and no explicit model of pronunciation.

This article presents an analysis and interpretation of language policy documents from eight Swedish universities with regard to intertextuality, authorship and content analysis of the notions of language practices and English as a lingua franca (ELF). The analysis is then linked to Spolsky’s framework of language policy, namely language practices, language beliefs, values (and ideology), and language planning or management (Spolsky 2004). The results show that the language policy documents refer heavily to official documents that have as their primary aim to protect and promote the Swedish language (e.g., the Language Act 2009), which appears to have been the point of departure for the language policy work in these settings, reflecting their protectionist stance towards the local language, Swedish. Little focus is put on actual language practices in these policy documents. The description of language practices is often limited to the description of the existing situation, based on concerns about Swedish losing ground as a result of the widespread use of English. Similarly, the notion of ELF is used primarily for description of the existing situation without sufficient guidance as to how students and staff in these university settings are to use English in their everyday practices. These results bring to the fore the question of what the purpose of university language policy documents should be with reference to a speech community’s everyday practices. It is suggested here that university language policy documents would benefit from taking research on actual language practices as their starting point and base their work on research on language practices, striving to provide guidance on local choices made for communicative effectiveness.

We investigate the current position of English in the language ecology of Swedish academia, with a special focus on the humanities. Semi-structured interviews with 15 informants from the fields of Anthropology, General Linguistics and History were carried out to explore how non-native speakers of English experience using academic English in their research. In contrast to other recent findings, our study shows that while some differences along disciplinary lines emerged, on the whole, English does not pose a significant challenge for scholars when writing for publication. Furthermore, our informants do not perceive themselves to be disadvantaged by their non-native status. The study casts some doubt on Swales’ well-known dinosaur metaphor; while English does indeed dominate in the sphere of international publication in terms of production, multilingual research practices are evident within the research and publication process.

European universities have, since the late 1990s, undergone dramatic changes centred on internationalisation, harmonisation and competition. This paper is concerned with two specific consequences of these changes and their interrelationship: rankings and Englishisation, the latter defined as an increase in the use of English at universities of nation states where English is not the official language. Despite a recent surge in research into Englishisation, it is not yet clear to what extent current organisational changes inevitably entail an orientation towards both rankings and Englishisation or whether a high rank can be attained without the use of English being increased and vice versa. Using as a case study Denmark’s eight universities, this paper examines the relationship between the combined rank on seven well-known ranking lists of each of Denmark’s eight universities and the extent to which English is used in them, drawing on recently compiled government statistics. The findings suggest that while there is some evidence in support of a correlation, in that lower-ranked universities are, on the whole, less likely to use English than higher-ranked ones, there are some notable exceptions. It is suggested that the findings may shed light on whether Englishisation at the universities of Northern Europe is best explained in terms of unintended consequences or rational choices.

The role of English as a global language and its consequences for the internationalization of higher education are matters that have increasingly drawn the attention of researchers from different fields of language and communication. In this paper, an overview of the situation in Estonia is presented. The Estonian context has not previously been analyzed along these lines. The author suggests looking at Ph.D. dissertations as a site of tension between the need to effectively incorporate English as an academic language and the need to maintain Estonian as the national language. The article views this question in the context of some relevant language policy documents and other macro indicators. It then focuses on the number of Ph.D. dissertations defended at four main public universities in the last few years and the languages they have been written in. It appears that, although the language policy documents seem to correctly capture this tension between English and Estonian, the language most commonly used when writing dissertations is overwhelmingly English, with only the humanities providing some counterbalance to that trend. The current situation is different from that of past decades, when English was absent from Estonia’s scientific production and Estonian was significantly employed in that context, alongside Russian. In the discussion section, some lines for further inquiry are presented, together with a proposal for integrating complexity theory in such analyses.

As a result of globalisation and the European integration process, identity concepts of young Europeans are becoming more and more diverse and possibly heterogeneous. The factors that influence the development of identity formation and impact on identity constructions are complex – but language seems to be of central importance. It is generally accepted that language and identity are closely connected and that identities are shaped to a large extent through discursive practice. These interactions no longer take place in the mother tongue alone; they are increasingly affected by the wide use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in Europe or, Euro-English. This raises the question of whether European identity should be built upon linguistic diversity, as officially promoted by the European Union, or whether the use of ELF could help to fulfill this unifying function. Drawing on a questionnaire survey conducted at the University of Braunschweig with 1061 students, the article investigates the potential role of ELF in the formation of a common European identity.