There has been some talk about language lately. In an opinion piece in Svenska Dagbladet (30/8) Maren Eckart and Anneli Fjordvik at Dalarna University advocate for the value of studying language. ”One becomes more employable – not less – by knowing several languages” they write in view of how the number of students choosing to focus on languages has gradually diminished over the years.
This shift is one motivation behind the SU president’s initiative to fund the Forum for language and literature, the festive inauguration of which takes place at Accelerator on 24 September. In a related vein, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond is developing a national initiative to support language-focused research. The point behind all of this being that the linguistic competence in Sweden needs strengthening.
It may seem as though I am beating my own drum, since I belong to the Faculty of Humanites and am based in a language department. But this is a question of broader relevance, also here at Stockholm University. It is, indeed, worth asking just how multilingual we are in our own academic practice.
Sweden clearly belongs in the Anglosphere, which means that English, in this society, is no longer a foreign language but a self-evident second language. Globally, of course, English has achieved a position without any historical parallel. Never before has a language been used in so many different language contexts across the entire world. This also means that what we conveniently call ”English” contains an incomparable inner diversity.
The situation coaxes us to follow a path of least resistance: since ”everybody” uses English, we apparently only need to master English when we do research – and increasingly when we teach. Even though not everyone is comfortable using the language.
Against this, I wish to highlight the affordances of academic multilingualism. Especially within the human sciences there are large volumes of knowledge production in, for example, German, French, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Chinese and – yes – Swedish that strangely enough become invisible once we publish in English. The English language, it seems, sets the limits as well as the norm for what counts as knowledge.
This is, I believe, not so much a concern for the language departments: it has rather to do with our very conception of knowledge. Linguistically, more and more academics are running in the same direction. The question then becomes: what do we lose when fewer and fewer of us are academically literate in other languages than English? To counteract this trend, perhaps we should publish multilingually, translate more often, and also actively use academic sources from various languages.
This text is written by Stefan Helgesson, Deputy Vice President. It appears in the section ”Words from the University’s senior management team”, where the management take turns to write about topical issues. The section appears in News for staff.