Resumen de Discursive mechanisms and human agency in language policy formation: negotiating bilingualism and parallel language use at a Swedish university
Marie Källkvist, Francis M. Hult
In the wake of the enactment of Sweden's Language Act in 2009 and in the face of the growing presence of English, Swedish universities have been called upon by the Swedish Higher Education Authority to craft their own language policy documents. This study focuses on the discursive negotiation of institutional bilingualism by a language policy committee at one Swedish university during the process of developing a draft language policy. Following an ethnographic/discourse analytic orientation to language policy and planning research, data were collected during language policy committee meetings at the university. Using nexus analysis, circulating discourses are mapped and analyzed, with a specific focus on how these discourses were negotiated through mediated actions during committee meeting interaction and then entextualized in a draft policy. Analysis reveals how ‘bilingualism’ became reinterpreted as ‘parallel language use,’ a concept developed and used in Nordic language planning over the past 15 years. Analysis further shows how committee members negotiated the meaning of parallel language use and the processes of resemiotization that took place as discourses from other sociolinguistic scales entered into the committee's discussion and writing. In all, the study highlights discursive mechanisms of language planning and the interplay of social actors and texts.
