Language Policy in Higher Education: The Case of Medium-Sized Languages (Multilingual Matters): 158 - Softcover

F. Xavier Vila

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1783092742 ISBN 13: 9781783092741

Publisher: Multilingual Matters, 2014

Synopsis

In today's increasingly interconnected, knowledge-based world, language policy in higher education is rapidly becoming a crucial area for all societies aiming to play a part in the global economy. The challenge is double faceted: how can universities retain their crucial role of creating the intellectual elites who are indispensable for the running of national affairs and, at the same time, prepare their best-educated citizens for competition in a global market? To what extent is English really pushing other languages out of the academic environment? Drawing on the experience of several medium-sized language communities, this volume provides the reader with some important insights into how language policies can be successfully implemented. The different sociolinguistic contexts under scrutiny offer an invaluable comparative standpoint to understand what position can - or could - be occupied by each language at the level of higher education.

About this title

About the Author

F. Xavier Vila is an associate professor in the Department of Catalan Philology and Director of the University Centre for Sociolinguistics and Communication at the Universitat de Barcelona. He has published widely in the areas of sociolinguistics, demolinguistics and language policy, including Survival and Development of Language Communities: Prospects and Challenges (Multilingual Matters, 2013). Vanessa Bretxa is a researcher in the sociology of language at the University Centre for Sociolinguistics and Communication at the Universitat de Barcelona and a part time lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at the same university. She is also the co-editor of the academic journal LSC - Language, Society and Communication.

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Language Policy in Higher Education

The Case of Medium-Sized Languages

By F. Xavier Vila, Vanessa Bretxa

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2015 F. Xavier Vila, Vanessa Bretxa and the authors of individual chapters
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78309-274-1

Contents

Tables and Figures, 
Contributors, 
1 Language Policy in Higher Education in Medium-Sized Language Communities: An Introduction F. Xavier Vila, 
2 The Position of Danish, English and Other Languages at Danish Universities in the Context of Danish Society Hartmut Haberland and Bent Preisler, 
3 The Position of Czech and Other Languages at Universities in the Czech Republic: Some Initial Observations Tamah Sherman, 
4 The Position of Finnish and Swedish as well as Other Languages at Universities in Finland Sabine Ylönen, 
5 Challenges for Hebrew in Higher Education and Research Environments Drorit Ram, 
6 Challenges for South Africa's Medium-Sized Indigenous Languages in Higher Education and Research Environments Anne-Marie Beukes, 
7 The Position of Catalan in Higher Education in Catalonia Eva Pons Parera, 
8 Medium-Sized Languages as Viable Linguae Academicae F. Xavier Vila, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Language Policy in Higher Education in Medium-Sized Language Communities: An Introduction

F. Xavier Vila

The Challenge of Internationalisation for Linguae Academicae Other than English

The world of higher education is changing at a rapid pace. Universities all over the world are taking on the increasing pressures exerted by globalisation, the commodification of education and the economic crisis. As a result, in recent years, universities from both hemispheres and all continents are increasingly embarking upon the process of 'getting international', a process that, first and foremost, involves the irruption of English in contexts where it used to be absent (Arzoz, 2012a).

In truth, up to quite recently, language policy and language management issues in higher education had attracted relatively little interest from researchers. During the 19th and 20th centuries, universities abandoned Latin and transited towards the national university model (Haberland & Preisler, this volume; Mortensen & Haberland, 2012: 192), where the nation-state's language was adopted as the main medium of instruction. This was the case not only for the demographically major languages, but also for a remarkable number of medium-sized languages (Vila, 2013), especially in Europe and some central and eastern regions of Asia. Universities located in colonial and postcolonial countries followed a parallel path, except that they rarely substituted the colonial language for an indigenous one. All over the world, in fact, the lingua academica, i.e. the language used for most university functions, tended to coincide with the country's official language. It was only in very specific functions, in many ways oriented towards international diffusion, such as the production of written dissertations and the dissemination of science via scientific journals and books, that a handful of academic linguae francae competed for supremacy. Indeed, even at the beginning of the 21st century, it was the language of science, not the language of universities themselves, that was the main object of research for language policy researchers (Ammon, 2001).

But especially since the last decade of the 20th century, the ever ongoing upsurge of university internationalisation has led to the blossoming of English-medium courses in countries where this language had never been used (BrennWhite & van Rest, 2012; Wächter & Maiworm, 2008), and this development has spurred the research on multilingualism in higher education. The orientation of these studies is, as expected, variegated: a significant percentage of these studies have adopted a pedagogical or applied linguistics stance and occupy themselves with applied linguistic issues (Björkman, 2012; Doiz et al., 2013), including the development of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) methods (Fortanet-Gómez, 2013) or the introduction of bilingual education principles and techniques into higher education contexts (van der Walt, 2013). Others, like Preisler et al. (2011), have focused on the management of the learning processes in multilingual, international universities. It is impossible to summarise here the growing literature on multilingualism in higher education. But irrespective of whether it shows a more educational, pedagogical, anthropological or other approach, most research on language management in higher education puts only English at the centre of its attention (Söderlundh, 2012: 90). And this is, without doubt, a serious limitation to our understanding not only of the internationalisation of higher education, but also of language policy in higher education. While English is without doubt the language most favoured by globalisation processes, it should not be forgotten that it is all languages that are being globalised (Blommaert, 2010). There is, therefore, a real need that the analysis of the internationalisation process does not restrict its attention to just the hypercentral language (de Swaan, 2001), at least for two reasons.

On the one hand, we know at least since Haugen's (1971) seminal work that any sociolinguistic approach should be ecosystematic. The spread of any given language in one particular sphere of life is deemed to have an impact on the other languages that used to occupy it, or might have occupied it. We still know very little about the actual consequences of the spread of English on other linguae academicae. Scandinavian societies, for instance, have discussed the risk of actual 'domain loss' (e.g. Haberland & Preisler, this volume; Kangas Christiansen, 2009; Ljosland, 2007; Preisler, 2009), but it is not clear that internationalisation has actually led to the total relinquishment of any lingua academica. In fact, from the theoretical perspective of the political economy of languages, not only English, but also many other languages, could become valued linguistic capital (Heller & Duchêne, 2012). The loss of state control over education may favour access to higher education for historically minoritised languages, and higher facility for mobility and the enhanced use of information and communication technologies might, in fact, create opportunities for increased cooperation in language communities up to now separated by nation-state boundaries (Arzoz, 2012b: 230). But these prospects may be too optimistic. Not many languages seem to be enjoying the purported benefits of liberalisation and commodification. In fact, '[...], as regards traditional higher education (i.e. physical colleges and campuses), the trend appears to be rather the reduction, not the expansion, of languages of tuition' (Arzoz, 2012b: 231). Voices such as Robert Phillipson (2006, 2009) denounce the progress of English at the expense of other languages as a 'pandemic', and compare English as 'a cuckoo in the European higher education nest of languages'. In any case, too little is still known to evaluate properly the result of the process.

On the other hand, attention to the 'other' languages is also fully justifiable on a simple quantitative basis. It should never be overlooked, unless we want to fall into what we could describe as the 'English-only delusion', that, as Haberland and Mortensen (2012: 1) put it, 'English is not spoken in every corner of the world, just in more places than any other language ever before'. In the real world, dozens of other languages are vibrant mediums of instruction in higher education, hundreds of thousands of university professors develop most of their professional lives without much recourse to English, millions of students follow their courses in other languages, uncountable researchers all over the world generate knowledge and make discoveries in their own languages and the amount of scientific publications in languages other than English can be counted in the thousands – although many of them are not necessarily registered by English-medium agencies (Vivanco Cervero, 2010). The negative impacts derived from the biased perception that English is the 'only' language of science and knowledge have been repeatedly denounced from different perspectives (Gazzola, 2012; Hamel, 2013; Phillipson, 2006, 2009). Beyond the undesirable consequences of not taking into account the scientific results produced in languages other than English, it is clear that any theory of language policy in higher education should not be built exclusively on the basis of one single language, even if it is the major language of internationalisation.

The Goal of this Volume

This volume is designed to help answer some of the questions that surround the rapid changes that are taking place in universities around the world in non-English-dominant countries. The volume focuses its attention on medium-sized languages, i.e. all those placed between the biggest and the smallest languages (Vila & Bretxa, 2013). Whereas it is difficult to imagine that big languages like Chinese, Spanish or Russian might be massively abandoned as a medium of instruction in the next decades, the growing role of English in higher education may pose a realistic challenge for languages whose presence in higher education depends on their actual use in a small number of university centres. It should not be forgotten that, at the end of the day, it is only a very small percentage of the world's languages that have actually entered the field of higher education and science (Laponce, 2006). It is not at all inconceivable that, under the pressure of internationalisation, some of these may simply quit the club. Taking into account that university provides one of the highest levels – if not the highest level – of linguistic elaboration that a language can reach, it is not at all surprising that many decision-makers, linguistic activists and even plain scholars within the language communities whose language has entered this select club feel worried that it could lose such a status. What are the actual prospects for such a change? Is it really taking place? What would the social, political, economic, cultural and linguistic consequences of such a loss of status be? Simultaneously, all around the world there are a significant number of societies whose languages have not managed to penetrate the fortress of higher education, or have done it only partially, but have the potential – in demographic, economic and sociopolitical terms – to attempt it. In view of the predominant discourses insisting on the hegemony of English, they have good reasons to ask themselves whether the efforts needed to conquer such a status are (still) worth it and/or are realistic. Will it still pay off?

This volume is devoted to exploring the current situation and immediate prospects for a number of selected medium-sized languages in the sphere of higher education. The volume constitutes an effort to understand not only the actual situation of these languages in this sphere, but also the dynamics that are sustaining, promoting and/or reducing their use as linguae academicae in the current situation of the globalisation, internationalisation and commodification of higher education associated with the information society that has developed in this phase of late capitalism (Heller & Duchêne, 2012).

The roots of this volume are to be found in the Medium-Sized Language Communities Project, a project aimed at analysing the conditions for the sustainability of medium-sized languages and language communities (Milian-Massana, 2012; Vila, 2013). The first conclusions of this project pointed out that the critical demographic mass for the complete development and comfortable sustainability of a language community may be well below one million speakers, i.e. that the number of speakers could not be argued as an ineluctable factor promoting a language shift in many communities around the world. The project also identified higher education and science as one of the fields, if not the field, where most medium-sized languages faced serious difficulties (Vila, 2013). Indeed, for many of these languages the crucial question was not one of internationalisation and anglicisation, but a more basic one: to what extent were medium-sized languages (still) viable as languages of university and research activities? Comparative research suggested that different strategies and different discourses were being developed to respond to these challenges (Arzoz, 2012a; Cots et al., 2012). But irrespective of the particularities, two pieces of evidence were especially troublesome: on the one hand, most medium-sized languages around the world have so far not been developed as linguae academicae, i.e. they have virtually no presence in higher education. On the other hand, it is precisely among some of the medium-sized languages with an older and stronger position in higher universities, like the Nordic languages and Dutch, that the process of the anglicisation of higher education is apparently making more inroads. Once combined, these two facts seem to suggest that the age when medium-sized languages managed to occupy the sphere of higher education might be coming to an end. But is this really so? While some sources confirmed that English was replacing the local languages in some of the existing courses, quite often the courses where English was used were newly created and explicitly designed to attract foreign students, especially internationally oriented postgraduate courses. On the other hand, although diagnosing a global trend towards linguistic homogenisation and attributing it to globalisation in general terms was tempting, it was necessary not to overestimate partial evidence. National and regional factors might predominate over global trends. At the end of the day, previous research has shown that medium-sized languages are extremely sensitive to the legal and political factors of their nation states (Milian-Massana, 2012; Vila, 2013). The orientation adopted by each university is crucial to understanding the ultimate position of each language in its practices and discourses: universities that are primarily oriented to serve the needs of the immediate community and are less market oriented prove surprisingly able to function in local, demographically small languages, and they even manage to become international without becoming globalised (Bull, 2012).

In other words, empirical research showed different, even contradictory evolutions, with some languages retaining the upper hand in their universities or even gaining ground, whereas others were losing ground. It is within this context that the Medium-Sized Language Communities Research Team decided to focus its third round of conferences in Barcelona (Catalonia) to discuss the actual position of these languages in higher education. With this goal in mind, several scholars from three continents who had investigated the effects of globalisation and internationalisation on higher education language policies in higher education in medium-sized language communities were invited to present the results of their research and to discuss them from a comparative perspective in Barcelona in October 2011.

In order to enhance the comparative approach, the medium-sized languages selected for exploration had significantly different positions and histories in the field of higher education. In this respect, the lack of recent research substantially reduced the number of potential candidates. To carry out the selection, a number of criteria were taken into account to guarantee that a variety of experiences could be compared. To start with, the focus was placed on languages that already enjoyed the full status of lingua academica, assuming that these languages were the natural source of information on the challenges and opportunities generated by the internationalisation of higher education. Some of these languages had been linguae academicae for a long time, while others had achieved this status more recently. The different role of English in each society was also taken into consideration: in some of the societies selected for comparison, English enjoyed a wide currency, but its presence was much lower in others. A majority of the candidates came from Europe, which is not surprising considering that most medium-sized languages that have achieved the status of lingua academica are from this continent, but some medium-sized languages from two other continents were also included in the analysis. While a larger number of scholars were initially invited to the conference, in the end the number of cases presented was six. These were, in alphabetical order: Catalan in Catalonia, Czech in the Czech Republic, Danish in Denmark, Modern Hebrew in Israel, Finnish and Swedish in Finland, and South African medium-sized languages in South Africa. As is clear from the list, four of these case studies deal with a single, medium-sized language, while two deal with two or more medium-sized languages. It goes without saying that while our focus of interest was the respective medium-sized languages, the analysis of their reality had to be done necessarily in a holistic, ecological perspective, which means that several other languages – not only English of course but also Castilian/Spanish, Arabic, German, Russian, Slovak, etc. – entered once and again into the picture.

Like any other possible choice, our selection might have improved had other cases been included in the sample. To mention but a few factors, a wider representation of Asian medium-sized linguae academicae would have greatly enriched the possibility of comparison. The analysis would also have been enhanced by the presence of some smaller language communities, such as the Baltic countries or Iceland. Less-affluent countries might have offered a different picture in several respects, but it should not be forgotten that in a majority of these countries medium-sized languages are absent from higher education, which made them non-candidates for the sample. However, these and other considerations do not alter the fact that the selection of the cases presented here was variegated and highly illustrative, and allowed for much discussion and comparative analysis both during the conference and afterwards.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1783092742
• ISBN 13: 9781783092741
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232
• Editor: F. Xavier Vila, Vanessa Bretxa