Nordic universities at the crossroads: Societal responsibility, language perceptions, and policies

This chapter focuses on questions surrounding universities’ societal responsibility in connection to language use, going beyond the national language(s) versus English dichotomy. As a result of university internationalisation and increased migration, both student and faculty populations at Nordic universities have diversified. Nordic universities are currently facing multiple challenges: to maintain academic autonomy and freedom of thought, to protect democratic ideals, to prove the validity of scientific findings, and to conduct most of their activities with the support of digital media. Drawing on findings from recent research conducted in Sweden and Finland and the latest Nordic language policy document (Gregersen et al. 2018), our chapter critically discusses how researchers and students with transnational trajectories perceive their language use. In particular, we consider the role of English vis-à-vis the national language(s) and other languages for purposes of research outreach and widening participation. We argue that there is a mismatch between university policies assuming that societal responsibility concerning language use is largely limited to local national and (to a lesser extent) minority languages, and the translocal experience of university stakeholders who often deal with a range of linguistic resources on a daily basis.