Policy is what happens while you’re busy doing something else: introduction to special issue on “language” indexing higher education policy

Abstract

Traditionally, language has had three functions in higher education. It has been seen as a medium of teaching; as a means of archiving knowledge in different text depositories like books and libraries; and as an object of theoretical study (Brumfit 2004, 164). Brumfit's typology acknowledges the fact that language somehow crosses the everyday experience of everyone working, studying or otherwise engaged at universities-in other words, in knowledge production.In recent years, however, two major trends in higher education policies have challenged Brumfit's classification and called for attention to language in a new way: internationalization and globalization policies on the one hand, and knowledge society and knowledge economy policies on the other. Both internationalization (with its connotations to intercultural linguistic contact and communication) and knowledge economy or knowledge society (composed of the informational and cultural contents of immaterial labour; Williams 2010) are highly language-intensive phenomena. This highlights the need to rethink the role of language 1 in when practices and policies of higher education are studied. Empirically, language in higher education policy research has been studied mainly in the context of internationalization, in the frame of Brumfit's first category of language as a medium of teaching. In Higher Education, 35 articles have in the years 2000-2014 somehow focussed on language. However, majority of these lack the policy dimension, and deal with English language learning in the context of internationalization, and the (usually

Multilayered perspectives on language policy in higher education: Finland, Estonia, and Latvia in comparison

“…Policies (in our case language policy) have different inputs from different policy sectors, and looking at an individual sector gives only part of the picture (see Saarinen, 2016 & articles in the forthcoming special issue of Higher Education on 'Language' indexing higher education policy). The state-level documentation reflects national policies with national needs and link carefully to the national ideological debates.…”

Studying international doctoral researchers: nexus analysis as a mode of inquiry

“…Such an exploration would be important, however. As Wilkins (1999) states, applied language studies, as a field, is specifically 'concerned with increasing understanding of the role of language in human affairs and thereby with providing the knowledge necessary for those who are responsible for taking language-related decisions whether the need for these arises in the classroom, the workplace, the law court, or the laboratory' (p. 7; on higher education and language policies more specifically, see Saarinen, 2017Saarinen, , 2020. Although those who study international doctoral researchers or those who make decisions regarding them are not only addressing language-related challenges or making language-related decisions, language-related approaches and viewpoints cannot be excluded from the range of expertise that is needed to address the challenges of the heterogenous group of international doctoral researchers.…”

Global English: From “Tyrannosaurus Rex” to “Red Herring”

“…Consequently, the only thing that could possibly reverse this trend would be to put into place another research policy with a different aim or indeed not to have any research evaluation regime at all. What will not revert the trend is a policy centred on language alone, even if this policy declares the institution as being committed to parallel language use (see also Fabricius et al 2017;Saarinen 2017).…”