Languages and Linguistic Exchanges in Swedish Academia

Languages and Linguistic Exchanges in Swedish Academia Practices, Processes, and Globalizing Markets Linus Salö Centre for Research on Bilingualism Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism Stockholm University Doctoral Dissertation 2016 Centre for Research on Bilingualism Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism Stockholm University Copyright: Linus Salö, Stockholm University 2016 Printing: Holmbergs, Malmö 2016 Correspondence: SE 106 91 Stockholm www.biling.su.se ISBN 978-91-7649-326-7 ISSN 1400-5921 Acknowledgements Socially, professionally and otherwise, the Centre has provided a splendid environment in which this thesis could grow. For that reason, I thank all of those belonging to the Centre’s present and past leadership who have provided the material and symbolic means for maximizing my preconditions for achieving this work. Above all, I have had the privileged access to a network of highly qualified peers and discussants, the contributions of whom have been invaluable. At the outset, thanks go to my thesis advisors K. Hylten- stam and C. Stroud – two strategic and ‘non-policing’ field founders with an eye for removing institutional obstacles when so required. In their roles as scholarly sounding boards and comrades, I thank first and foremost D. Kar- lander along with N. Ganuza, C. Kerfoot, G. Norrman, M. Bylund, and G. Montero. Outside of the Centre, I am in intellectual debt to a large group of people, many of whom have contributed substantially. First and foremost I shall mention L. Hanell and, moreover, O. Josephson, D. Broady, S. Sörlin, V. Muni-Toke, T. Milani, and E. Nylander. To this group I also count F. Gregersen and a bunch of other Denmark-based scholars: A-K Hultgren, J. Thøgersen, H. Haberland, J. Mortensen, A. Holmen, M.S. Karrebæk, J.S. Møller, M. Maegaard, and T.R. Nørreby. Thanks also go to L. Antieau for extraordinary language editing, and to the editors, reviewers, and co-authors with whom I have communicated and collaborated in the fruitful efforts crowned by this thesis, as well as in work published elsewhere. Apart from regularly presenting my work at the Centre’s seminar series, different parts of this thesis have been aired at a number of conferences and workshops over the past few years, including the following: The Sociolin- guistics of Globalization, Hong Kong, 2015; GURT, Washington D.C., 2015; The First Stockholm Roundtable in Linguistic Anthropology, Stockholm, 2015; The Politics of Institutional Multilingualism, Paris, 2014; Sociolin- guistic Symposium 20, Jyväskylä, 2014; Orders of Visibility, Stockholm, 2013; Calpiu, Roskilde, 2012; ETHOS, Uppsala, 2012; 4 or More Lan- guages for All, Faroe Islands, 2011. In addition, work has been presented at a number of seminars such as the following: The Swedish Language Council, Stockholm, 2015 and 2011; SeDyL, Paris, 2015; The LANCHART Centre, Copenhagen, 2015; KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 2014; Lund Univer- sity, 2013. I am grateful to those who invited or accepted me, and to those who contributed in discussing the work. Linus Salö Stockholm, March 2016 The present thesis is based on the following studies: I. Salö, L. 2014. Language ideology and shifting representations of linguistic threats. A Bourdieusian re-reading of the conceptual history of domain loss in Sweden’s field of language planning. In Hultgren, A.K., Gregersen, F. & Thøgersen, J., eds. English in Nordic Univer- sities. Ideologies and Practices. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 83– 110. II. Salö, L. under review. The sociolinguistics of academic publishing: A relational approach to language choice. III. Salö, L. 2015. The linguistic sense of placement: Habitus and the entextualization of translingual practices in Swedish academia. Journal of Sociolinguistics 19(4): 511–534. IV. Salö, L. & Hanell, L. 2014. Performance of unprecedented genres. Interdiscursivity in the writing practices of a Swedish researcher. Language & Communication 37: 12–28. Languages and Linguistic Exchanges in Swedish Academia Practices, Processes, and Globalizing Markets 1 Introduction 1.1 Discourse in and about Swedish academia This thesis is concerned with language issues and phenomena in the linguistic marketplace of Swedish academia, as well as the discourses surrounding this vast site of discursive exchange. Narrowed down somewhat, this course of sociolinguistic inquiry is delimited to linguistic practices and processes related primarily to scientific research, as they unfold in history, psychology, physics, and computer science. The thesis focuses on exchanges involving both Swedish and English. The main rationale for doing so pertains to the politics of language: over the past two decades or so, the position of English in Sweden amounts to a – arguably the – key concern in Swedish language policy and planning, LPP (e.g., Milani 2007a). What is more, as part of LPP struggles to manage the Swedish language situation in times of rapid social change, the position of English has long been perceived as most palpably reflected in academic life – research being a case in point. English in the globalizing markets of Swedish academia is therefore a vexed question, and as such an ideologically situated and contested object of knowledge. Ex- ploring it, then, is to delve into a research topic situated ‘between the scientific and the political registers’ (Wacquant 2009a, 125). This, in effect, is what the present thesis does, and by doing so, it contributes to an understanding of what LPP is, and how it functions. Moreover, it furthers the knowledgebase concerning the sociolinguistics of Swedish university life and proposes a number of thinking-tools for its future exploration. In the four separate yet interconnected studies that form the thesis, a set of different lenses are adopted with the aim of foregrounding different parts constitutive of this topic. For its part, this summarizing chapter serves to fo- cus and contextualize the research object, as well as to pull some of the threads together as they appear in the included studies. I shall be using one of the key opportunities provided by this progressing, article-based format of doctoral theses to apply a metareflexive gaze to the re-reading the studies as part of a whole, as quite naturally, ‘scholars develop and build complexity into their views over time’ (Lizardo 2008, 2). In a similar vein, an ample share of attention will here be given to epistemological matters concerning 2 Languages and linguistic exchanges in Swedish academia my own relationship to the object I have undertaken to study. This pursuit – one facet of epistemic reflexivity (e.g., Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992) – will be a central theme in this summarizing chapter, because, as I shall contend, it is a pivotal driver for yielding better sociolinguistic research. As an instrument, it offers researchers a disposition for grasping the principles of their knowledge production (Brubaker 1993). In the main, two of the studies (1–2) included here are attuned to histori- cizing, while the other two studies (3–4) probe into the everyday linguistic practices of contemporary Swedish academia. Extensive summaries and commentaries will be presented in section 7. In brief, the studies can be in- troduced as follows: 1. Study 1: The book chapter Language ideology and shifting representations of linguistic threats investigates processes of shifting language ideologies underpinning threats to Swedish in Sweden’s field of language planning and policy (LPP). It presents a historical analy- sis of the social life of the language notion ‘domain loss’ as it emerged and eventually won recognition in Sweden, vis-à-vis other relevant societal discourses. 2. Study 2: The sociolinguistics of academic publishing (manuscript) delves into the longue durée of publishing language in two discipli- nary fields: history and psychology. It seeks to develop an in-depth understanding of the ever-increasing significance of English as a language of scientific publishing. The study combines accounts of the fields’ historical struggles with accounts of the uptake of these histo- ries among contemporary researchers in the two fields. 3. Study 3: The linguistic sense of placement is a research article concerned with the place of Swedish in contemporary research practices of computer science and physics. It seeks to account for discourse in the scientific practices that feed into the production of finalized texts in English in these disciplines. Based on observations and interview accounts, the study theorizes regularities in linguistic practices vis-à- vis the researchers’ ideas of acceptable language use. 4. Study 4: The research article Performance of unprecedented genres examines a Swedish computer scientist’s ability to use Swedish in his writing practices. The matter at issue is whether advanced genres can be performed in Swedish here, since Swedish has almost never been used in publishing in the discipline. The study explores the ways in which the resources comprising the scientist’s language knowledge come into play in new discursive events. Linus Salö 3 All in all, then, the studies comprising the thesis endeavor to shed light on discourse in and discourses about Swedish academia over historical courses and in contemporary times, spanning from accounts of ‘the big picture’ to accounts of detailed discursive phenomena. It can be reasoned that large- scope studies and small-scope studies complement and necessitate each other. This is so because different aspects of empirical reality tend to be dis- closed at different magnitudes of zoom. On the one hand, large-scale studies dealing with the language situation in Swedish academia often provide use- ful overviews (e.g., Salö 2010), but seldom are they sensitive to the sociolinguistic realities unfolding in practice, that is, actual language use. But, on the other hand, the so-called microsociological vision leaves out a good number of other things: as often happens when you look too closely, you cannot see the wood from the tree; and above all, failing to construct the space of posi- tions leaves you no chance of seeing the point from which you see what you see.

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