Language Policy and the Internationalization of Universities

A Focus on Estonian Higher Education

Josep Soler

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781501515019
• eBook ISBN:
  9781501505850
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Many universities around the world are actively engaged in the process of the internationalization of their higher education systems, trying to become more competitive in all possible respects, especially in the areas of research and teaching. Language, naturally, plays a central role in this process, but this is not always explicitly recognized as such. As a result, key sociolinguistic challenges emerge for both individuals and groups of people. Most prominently, the question of whether English constitutes an opportunity or a threat to other national languages in academic domains is a controversial one and remains unresolved. The analysis featured in this book aims at addressing this question by looking at language policy developments in the context of Estonian higher education. Adopting a discourse approach, the book emphasises the centrality of language not only as a site of struggle, but as a tool and a resource that agents in a give field utilize to orient themselves in certain positions. The book will be of interest to language policy scholars, linguistic anthropologists, and critical sociolinguists. Education scholars interested in discourse studies will also find it useful.

1Sociolinguistic and language policy perspectives on the internationalization of higher education. An introduction to the volume

Public university brands are probably the most undermonetised asset in the American economy. The way we have gone about it has been very limiting, and that is move students across borders, bring them to the United States, bring them to the source of knowledge, and that has given them a great cultural experience, and it is something which we should continue to do. But to go to scale, to offer the quality of an American brand to the whole world is now possible and inevitable.

(Randy Best, founder and chairman of Academic Partnerships)

The difficult questions regarding the future of Estonian higher education are tied to the competitiveness of Estonian higher education compared to English higher education. Master’s and doctoral studies are inevitably becoming more English-based. Students will increasingly go abroad for niche disciplines […] We are often unaware of the price of preserving Estonian-language higher education.

(Volli Kalm, late rector of the University of Tartu)

1.1Introduction

This book is about the sociolinguistic dimension of what has come to be known as the internationalization of higher education, a process in which many universities around the world find themselves engaged in. Over the past few years, the terms ‘internationalization’ and ‘higher education’ have been paired together more and more frequently, with universities immersed in processes of trying to become internationally competitive, more attractive to larger numbers of foreign students at both graduate and undergraduate levels, aspiring to climb higher up in the popularized university rankings, and struggling to find additional sources of funding. Very often, discussions around the internationalization of higher education have revolved around the economic dimension of it, as the quote above from Randy Best illustrates. In this brief but revealing statement, Best synthesizes one common view of why American public universities need to become more international. In the short clip,1 he continues to explain what becoming more international might mean for American public universities: “a substantial and sustainable and growing revenue stream”, something that will “change the flavour of universities”. Even though it can be argued that universities have historically been international by nature (Altbach 2004), it is precisely the economic angle that distinguishes present-day internationalization trends at universities more distinctively (Holborow 2015). Needless to say, this kind of discourse is not exclusive to American universities, but has now permeated higher education systems around the world (Qiang 2003).

Indeed, in recent years the role of universities has evolved into something of a double bind. In late-capitalist contexts, universities seem to have entered a ‘post-national’ stage (Bull 2004, in Mortensen and Haberland 2012), increasingly seen as “international businesses competing as economic agents in an open and lucrative market” (Hultgren et al. 2014: 7). In that position, universities are supposed to strive for excellence and competitiveness in the global sphere. At the same time, however, higher education institutions are also perceived as essentially national entities “integral to the national culture and with certain obligations towards the nation state”, institutions largely funded by taxpayers’ money and on which members of the public can place legitimate demands (Hultgren et al. 2014: 7). This situation puts universities in a somewhat contradictory position, especially those from outside anglophone contexts (e.g. Cots et al. 2012; Vila and Bretxa 2015). Such a contradictory position is well illustrated by the second quotation included in the opening above by Volli Kalm, the rector of the University of Tartu from 2012 until 2017. At a conference in Pärnu in 2012, shortly after the start of his appointment, Kalm expressed doubts in connection to the sustainability of a higher education system functioning in Estonian. In view of the increased use of English in Estonian universities, Rector Kalm publicly wondered how feasible it would be to continue offering higher education in Estonian, something that provoked a somewhat heated media debate in the subsequent weeks (a debate we shall analyze in more depth in Chapter 3). In a similar way to companies and other for-profit organizations, universities seem to be hard-pressed, caught between global discourses of profit and national discourses of pride, a commodification of authenticity (Heller and Duchêne 2012; Heller 2011; Thurlow and Aiello 2007). Quite clearly, language plays a central role in shaping the discourses of the internationalization of universities. Not only do there exist contradictory discourses around universities (seen as international enterprises and national institutions at the same time), but each of these discourses is also presented as linked (inevitably) to different languages: English, on the one hand, and a local (national) language, on the other. This is despite the fact that language per se is not always explicitly recognized as a problematic issue in discussions of higher education internationalization (Saarinen 2012). It is either invisibilized (i.e. intentionally not referred to as a problem) or simply erased (not recognized as a potential problematic issue).

Certainly, then, universities today are increasingly prone to ambiguities and paradoxes produced by and through language, and as such, they are rich sites for exploring contemporary sociolinguistic tensions (Haberland and Mortensen 2012; Cots et al. 2014). However, the awareness that higher education and scientific research constitute a domain of potential political and sociolinguistic struggle is not something new (cf. Ammon 2001), although it is true that in recent years, the double-sided nature of universities (as both flagship national institutions and business-like international companies) has become more of a tangible reality for all kinds of groups and collectives, from students to teachers and researchers (local and international), to administrative staff, high-tier university officials and lawmakers (Hultgren et al. 2014). The difficult position of present-day universities can be summarized briefly thus: on the one hand, they need to remain locally relevant and nationally leading institutions (a function that sometimes they are required to fulfil by law, as in the case of the University of Tartu that will be analyzed in this volume); on the other hand, they are also required to pursue an international agenda, competing side by side with other universities from abroad at a global scale for key resources such as international students and staff, which can subsequently generate increased revenue for their institution. This kind of paradox leads to an apparent sociolinguistic conundrum. Briefly put, the national scale and its concomitant nationalizing discourses will likely require universities to work in a local or national language, whereas the global scale and its associated globalizing discourses will often be linked to a global language, nowadays almost exclusively English.

The above discussion should not make us lose sight of the fact, mentioned already, that the for-profit nature of universities is not at all something entirely new, neither is it something that universities based in anglophone countries are exempt from, quite the contrary, even if such paradoxes might be more relevant for universities in non-anglophone contexts (cf. Vila and Bretxa 2015). In fact, Fairclough (1993) already remarked on the marketisation strategies employed by public universities in the UK and their accompanying discursive practices: “Institutions of higher education come increasingly to operate (under government pressure) as if they were ordinary businesses competing to sell their products to consumers” (Fairclough 1993: 143). More recently, and in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, discourses of austerity and entrepreneurship have been more and more prominent. Holborow (2015) presents empirical materials from the context of Irish universities to illustrate how the discourse of the university as an enterprise has come about and gained force in recent times, and how this discourse in turn is mobilized in order to hide the economic reality of reduced funding and budgetary cuts (Holborow 2015: 98); in the US, Rhoades and Slaughter (2004: 37) find that higher education institutions (particularly those more vulnerable to losing state support) “now develop, market, and sell a wide range of products commercially in the private sector as a basic source of income”, a range of products that touch upon universities’ core activities, that is, educational, research, and service functions (see also Slaughter and Rhoades 2004 for a lengthier analysis of the notion of ‘academic capitalism’).

Still, returning to the point of higher education institutions in non-anglophone contexts, it seems indeed that the current economic context has linked internationalization demands with an increased presence of the English language, whose growing importance, in turn, is key in shaping particular policies and practices of university members. Documenting the situation of Korean universities, Piller and Cho (2013) find that neo-liberalism and its associated set of ideological tenets acts as an implicit language policy baseline, channelled through the English language, in particular through the introduction of English-medium instruction (EMI) as a means to affect university rankings and for institutions in the country to climb up those rankings in a cost-effective manner at the expense of the social suffering and stress of university members (Piller and Cho 2013: 25). Even though this may be a specific feature of the Korean context (Hultgren 2014 does not find a determining correlation between the use of English by Danish universities and their position in university rankings), what seems more and more established is that internationalization and its accompanying globalizing discourse are inextricably linked to the English language.

In line with Piller and Cho (2013), Fabricius et al. (2017) are critical of this fact, and they insightfully point out several contradictions that the taken-for-granted connection between English and internationalization might provoke. Importantly, if internationalization is to entail university models designed to bring together students and staff from a range of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and in so doing foster successful intercultural milieux, then language policies should be designed in a way that can lead to this kind of objective. However, at present, and with the Danish context in mind, Fabricius et al. emphasize that language policies “act as structural obstructions to this kind of internationalization, because they institutionalize a non-integrated perspective on the local and the transnational” (2017: 592). The kind of language policy that the authors have in mind is what has come to be popularly known in the Nordic countries as “parallel language use”, a concept whose “practical applications remain unclear, and to this day it largely remains an unoperationalized political slogan” (Kuteeva 2014: 333). Indeed, discussions on what internationalization really is and how institutions are to apply it in practical terms have not been thoroughly conducted, beyond the idea of the potential economic gains and benefits, as Fabricius et al. (2017: 590) have pointed out as well.

So, language policy, understood in its more classical sense as a means of affecting the status, use, and acquisition of a certain language(s) in a given context, is in this case also a resource that universities, public officials, and administrators have in order to craft specific agendas associated with internationalization goals, while at the same time responding to nationalizing anxieties. This type of double-edged sword associated with language practice and ideology is not exclusive to universities, but is observed in other areas as well, including the tourism industry (e.g. Heller et al. 2014). Even if not in the exact same terms, both the sociolinguistics of tourism and the sociolinguistics of higher education highlight how mobility (of people and resources) disrupts previously conceived markets and creates new ones, emphasising the key role that language plays in this process. Whether it is globally-minded airlines producing visual meanings that are highly localized while appealing to an international market (Thurlow and Aiello 2007), or whether it is locally produced souvenirs in a Sámi village that can circulate globally with some degree of ease (Pietikäinen and Kelly-Holmes 2011), so too universities in increasingly more geographical areas seem to be experiencing similar processes of discursive tension.

In fact, Gallego-Balsà and Cots (2016), from the perspective of universities in Catalonia, propose precisely a reading of the internationalization of Catalan universities in the framework of the discourse of tourism, showing how universities mobilize a discourse of the commodification of the Catalan language as a way to increase the value of a particular university and to potentially attract more foreign students; for their part, however, international students may not be fully receptive to this strategy, and tensions associated with their position as tourists versus sojourners may arise throughout their exchange period. Initially, universities will tend to portray students as tourists, a position that would not require them to engage extensively with the local language and culture; on the contrary, the local language and culture might be initially presented to students as a means of performing cultural authenticity (Gallego-Balsà and Cots 2016: 18), tasting local foods, enjoying tours to tourist attractions, and so on. However, quickly following a short period of adaptation, universities might expect students to adopt a sojourner position, one that demands a more intense engagement with the local language and culture (particularly for teaching and learning purposes, and for academically related activities, where stakes are certainly higher). These two positions may generate feelings of discomfort and tension in the students and their teachers. While these tensions can be smoothed out with the passage of time, as Gallego-Balsà’s (2014) ethnographic study illustrates, Gallego-Balsà and Cots (2016) reveal important sociolinguistic tensions and anxieties associated with and emanating from language; these issues, however, are unlikely to be exclusive to the Catalan context, and can be observed in increasingly more universities across Europe and elsewhere.

In a context full of contradictions, then, universities are particularly rich sites for exploring tensions and ambiguities around language policy matters from a language ideological perspective, which is the angle that will be developed in this book. As already noted, the growing trend towards becoming more international and the rising demands placed on universities to function as global companies is normally accompanied by an increased use of English. In parallel, the view of universities as quintessentially state institutions emphasizes a discourse of protection and promotion of the national language, which is to be academically cultivated and developed. How are these two discourses encompassed? How is English constructed both as a friend and a foe in the context of a growing number of universities at present? How is the protectionist discourse presented? What is at stake for the relevant stakeholders in these debates? How do they position themselves vis-à-vis the two broad discourses mentioned above? These are some of the broad questions that guide the exploration and inquiry presented in this book.

Even though these questions are, of course, not entirely new, in recent years, there has been a surge of publications on the topic of the role of the internationalization of higher education from a sociolinguistic perspective, including a number of journal thematic issues and edited collections (e.g. Cots et al. 2014; Doiz et al. 2013; Haberland and Mortensen 2012; Hultgren et al. 2014; Liddicoat 2016; Saarinen 2017; Vila and Bretxa 2015). However, the interest in sociolinguistic issues in the context of higher education and scientific research goes back at least several years further, namely to the turn of the century, in the context of a then-solidifying body of work on issues of language and globalisation (e.g. de Swaan 2001; Maurais and Morris 2003). Ammon’s (2001) collection of essays is one of a kind, for its inclusion of perspectives from a variety of countries with different degrees of presence of English in their respective academic traditions. The angle taken in that volume is already visible in its title: The dominance of English as a language of science. In short, already at the turn of the century, before the Bologna process had reached full speed in many European countries, there was a realisation among some linguists that academia – that is, higher education – deserved to be analyzed sociolinguistically. In particular, it was the role of English that seemed to be most worthy of analysis, a role which for some was problematic in different ways, notably in the advantage that native speakers of English enjoy vis-à-vis non-native speakers. Ammon takes this advantage as “self-evident” (2001: vii). Whether or not this is the case is a question that has gained more attention since the early 2000s and the debate has evolved in different directions, including analyzes of English as a lingua franca in academic settings that show how speakers in micro-level situations work to achieve communicative effectiveness (e.g. Björkman 2013). While the analysis presented in the current volume does not engage specifically with this particular question (i.e. the advantage/disadvantage of native/non-native speakers of English), the point to take from this discussion is that it is the English language and its role in academia and higher education that have fuelled the debate in recent years in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics circles.

The presence of English in higher education today tends to be seen in binary, opposed, terms: as a language that facilitates global contacts and international collaboration, “international English”, or as a language that poses a serious challenge (or even a threat) to the presence of other national/local languages in academia, “global English” (Bull 2012). The former tends to be associated with the globalizing, entrepreneurial discourse described above, and the latter with the nationalizing, protectionist discourse. The coexistence of English with national languages in higher education is certainly of a complex nature, and some authors have attempted to capture such complexity from the point of view of language policy analysis with discourse-analytical tools (e.g. Dafouz and Smit 2016; Hult and Källkvist 2016). The conceptual framework provided by Dafouz and Smit (2016) takes as its point of departure a set of theoretical standpoints from recent sociolinguistic research, particularly considering language as a set of resources with different indexical values that are shaped and affected by globalisation flows (Blommaert 2010). Inspired by a language-ecological perspective (Haugen 1972), Dafouz and Smit (2016) suggest that language policy-making is of a multi-sited nature, which eludes simple dichotomies of macro and micro levels. Their framework highlights the fact that different languages fulfil different functions within the domain of higher education, from teaching to conducting and communicating research, to the languages used in more informal situations.

In an earlier and well-considered model along the same lines, Hamel (2008) outlines three different spheres with a number of different activities and sub-activities within these spheres in the context of higher education. Depending on the context, each of these activities can be carried out more frequently in one language or another. In Hamel’s model, the three main spheres in higher education consist of (a) scientific research or knowledge production, (b) diffusion and communication or knowledge consumption, and (c) scientific training. Haberland (2014) adds a fourth dimension to Hamel’s model: administration, which is now increasingly seen as another key part of universities’ language ecologies in the context of higher education internationalization (Llurda et al. 2014; Siiner 2016). All these different spheres are context-dependent and they may entail different linguistic practices and ideologies (Haberland 2014: 253–254). When conducting research, for example, everyday conversations in laboratories and departments, discussing project developments and so on, can be certainly done in languages other than English in non-anglophone universities (e.g. Bretxa et al. 2016). Scientific communication (diffusion) and knowledge consumption is increasingly dominated by English, a trend that is discipline-specific (Kuteeva and Airey 2014: 539) and more recent in the humanities than in the natural sciences. In terms of scientific training (i.e. education), again there is field-specific variation, as well as degree-level variability, with more English being used in the hard sciences and in graduate courses than in the humanities and in undergraduate degrees (Wächter and Maiworm 2014).

So, there are a variety of situations and contexts, and the variability in the languages used in them is contingent on a great number of factors. Going back to the broad questions previously outlined, this makes it all the more challenging for language policy-makers and university official...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• 1 Sociolinguistic and language policy perspectives on the internationalization of higher education. An introduction to the volume
• 2 Language policy responses to the internationalization of higher education: Conceptual and material discourses in place
• 3 University language regimes in Estonia: (Re)creating discourses in place
• 4 Language ideologies and the internationalization of higher education in Estonia
• 5 A historical perspective on language choice and attitudes in academia and higher education in Estonia
• 6 Language policy discourses at the internationalizing university: Estonian perspectives on a global issue
• Bibliography
• Index