This article analyses language policies in higher education in Finland, Estonia and Latvia, as well as the European Union. We take a multilayered approach to language policies in order to illuminate the complex and intertwined (and sometimes contradictory) nature of local, national and international language policies in higher education. We are particularly interested in the construction of national or local language(s) and the language(s) of internationalisation in our case countries. Finland, Estonia and Latvia share common features as relatively small non-Anglophone countries in the Baltic region, while simultaneously having somewhat differing political and cultural histories. The results of our discursive analysis indicate that while the three countries have relatively different national language policies, regarding e.g. the position of the national language(s), the institutional policies are more similar in the three cases. For universities, the positioning of English as the de facto language of internationalisation turns the ideology of language choice in higher education into a practical rather than political question. However, at the state level, the promotion of English runs contrary to national policies. The European Union higher education language policy seems to acknowledge the institutional level's practical demands of English as de facto language of internationalisation rather than follow its own formal language policy of official languages.

Abstract. This paper analyses language policies in higher education in Estonia and Latvia. Both countries are currently in search for a balance between national and international in the sphere of higher education. Higher education in Estonia and Latvia mainly functions in the official languages of the countries, Estonian and Latvian. Yet, the international nature of tertiary education has brought these languages into contact with others, mostly English and Russian. The paper seeks to find out how the relationship of internationalisation and language is construed in state-level policy documents comparatively in Estonia and Latvia. The results of the analysis show that the issues of language are more thoroughly covered in Estonian policy documents than Latvian policy documents. However, in both countries internationalisation is mostly driven by the need to attract foreign students in order to fill the domestic demographic gap. Thus, both Estonia and Latvia connect internationalisation mostly to foreign-medium instruction.

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