This book analyses universities as sites of nationalist, post-nationalist and new nationalist language policy construction. The historical trajectory ranges from the mid-nineteenth century, continuing to the post-nationalist period of the 1980s and 1990s, and finishing in the 2010s, when new nationalist and populist policies have emerged in higher education and elsewhere not just in former colonial powers such as the UK and the USA (see Mathies and Weimer 2018 on USA and Great Britain), but also in the different contexts of Western Europe (Eger and Valdez 2015), sub-Saharan Africa (Kersting 2009) and, somewhat belatedly also Finland, with the rise of populist and nativist politics in the 2010s (Lähdesmäki 2019).
Finland, with two constitutional national languages (Finnish and Swedish) within the borders of one state, does not look like the obvious choice to study the (one) language and (one) nation state ideologies. Nonetheless, the Finnish context gives me a chance not just to problematize the often simplified links between “language” and “nation”, but also to analyse alternate histories and futures (Wenzlhuemer 2009) in a context where several languages operate hierarchically.
While the book focuses on Finland as an example of a Nordic country, peripheral from the Anglo-American perspective, the themes of nationalism, post-nationalism and new nationalism in language policy and higher education are thoroughly international, as language ideological discourses “fluctuate between the nationalising and the globalizing poles” (Soler and Gallego-Balsá 2019, p. 154). An analysis of recent post-nationalist (Heller 2011; Holborow 2015) and neo-nationalist (Lee 2017) language policies in Finnish higher education is one way of understanding the intertwined roles of the nation state and globalization (see Buckner 2017), in higher education as well as societally.
The Finnish historical and political developments will be reflected particularly against Nordic and Baltic contexts (see, for instance, Hult and Källkvist 2016; Soler 2019; Soler et al. 2018; Hultgren 2014), but also other non-Anglophone contexts (see Lee et al. 2016 for East-Asia; Lee 2017 for South Africa; Kersting 2009 for sub-Saharan Africa). The Baltic states make for an interesting comparison as “nationalizing” post-Soviet states, with Estonia and Latvia first orienting towards protecting and empowering the nation, and then subsequently becoming more assimilationist and culturalist (Brubaker 2011). Eastern Asia provides contexts with relatively similar ethnolinguistic developments after World War II and decolonization (see Kamusella 2018). The phenomenon of “protecting” national languages easily lends itself to new nationalism(Lee 2017; Kelly 2018). The book is thus not only relevant for Finland; with the rise of political populism and new nationalism worldwide, research is needed that examines whether and how new national interests permeate different societal contexts, with potentially very material consequences for these societies and for the lives of individuals.
Empirically, this book depicts the 100-year trajectory of Finnish constitutional bilingualism from the viewpoint of university language policies and is thus positioned in the terrains of higher education policy and language policy. It gives an empirical example of the study of language indexing and co-constituting political developments by beginning with the emerging Finnish nation state language policies and the first Constitution of 1919, and linking these developments to larger societal and higher education policy developments.
It is clear that the increasing concern (particularly) for Finnish and Swedish in higher education does not only have new nationalist but also learning and knowledge construction implications (Kuteeva and Airey 2014). These, in turn, are linked to the basic tasks of universities as providers of knowledge and professionals for the nation state (Buckner 2017), making the ostensibly neutral knowledge production function of higher education also an exercise in nation state higher education policy. The new nationalist turn now calls for further analysis both inside universities and in relation to societal developments, in the case of this book in education, migration, economy and labour policies.
The book opens with a theoretical and methodological framing of language, politics and history in a higher education context, continuing to a discussion of different nationalisms and the higher education and language policy context. Chapter 2 focuses on the historical trajectory of language and nationalism in Finnish higher education from mid-nineteenth century to post-World War II years. Chapter 3 outlines the post-nationalist, post-Cold War period from 1990s to early 2000s. Chapter 4 presents the new nationalist period from around 2010s, as a concern for the position of Finnish from the threat of English took over from the traditional language ideological tensions between Finnish and Swedish. The book closes with a discussion (Chapter 5) that summarizes the main results and presents some future outlooks for Finnish and international higher education.
1.1 Multi-Sited, Contingent and Historically Layered Language Policies
The study of situated and contemporarily emerging language policies, such as the higher education language policies in the first decades of the twenty-first century, makes visible larger developments that characterize Western societies. In this book, I analyse the emerging and existing new nationalist developments in higher education by considering historically and politically intertwined, layered and (re)cycled language policy discourses. I will next explain the theoretical approach.
1.1.1 Language Indexing and Co-Constituting Politics
We are accustomed to saying and thinking that language is political, often implying that language reflects political and ideological structures. However, the relationship is stronger than that—language not only reflects or mirrors, but construes and co-constitutes those structures (Gal 2006). As Woolard and Schieffelin (1994) argue, study of language ideology provides a bridge between language and social theory. Language and languages are not ideologically neutral (even if they are politically often presented as such), but are intertwined with the political, economic, social and cultural structures which they “cloak in linguistic terms”’ (Baločkaitė 2014, p. 42). We should not let “language” divert us from acknowledging the political, demographic, social, economic or even natural environment factors in the “sociolinguistic ecology” of a community (Spolsky 2018).
What do we, then, talk about when we think we talk about language? Language is an easy proxy for, among other things, ethnicity, which in turn is an equally easy proxy for national identity (Blommaert 2006). However, when talking about language and nationalism, we, in fact, eventually talk about speakers (Halonen 2012; Flores and Chaparro 2018) and the political and social hierarchies(Gal 2006; Ennser-Kananen et al., Forthcoming) that structure our societies. This book expands on the current language policy research by applying and developing an approach that acknowledges the multi-sited nature of language policy (Halonen et al. 2015). A multi-sited conceptualization means that the temporal, spatial and material features of language policy need to be taken into ac...