Assessing the challenges in Sweden’s national minority-language policy and planning
Presenter(s)
Affiliation
Topic
Bottom-up and top-down language policy and planning
Type
Papers
Abstract
The purpose of our study is to assess the challenges in Sweden’s language policy and planning (LPP). Since 2000, Sweden’s national minority languages are Finnish, Meänkieli, Romani Chib, Sámi, and Yiddish. We are including Elfdalian, that lacks official status, to this study as its situation is comparable and well-documented.
We follow Spolsky’s (2012) LPP theory that comprises the actual language practices in the speech community, values and ideologies about the practices, and languge management (i.e. planning) that involves the assertion of authority over others on language use.
Our research questions are: How is LPP in Sweden’s minority languages carried out in practice? What are the challenges? What agendas do stakeholders have? In other words, we are concerned with the way ideologies and practical issues govern LPP agendas in Sweden as seen by those who implement the policies (cf. Sheyholislami and Vessey 2024).
Our data consists of semi-structured interviews with members of the minority communities who work for state authorities or community organisations, as well as publicly available online material such as reports, newspaper articles, and social media posts. Our method for the analysis of the discourse data is qualitative thematic content analysis.
Our analysis identifies tensions between top-down and bottom-up policies (cf. Elfdalian), practices in Sweden vs. outside Sweden (e.g. the transnational North Sámi), varying priorities (e.g. textbooks, language technology, orthography), competing ideologies or frameworks (e.g. polynomy, one standard, translanguaging, multilingualism), conflicting goals (e.g. revitalisation, symbolic value). We examine the role of experts, activists, and speakers, and the way the languages are treated equally despite their differences.
Our study is timely as Sweden has, despite many positive developments, received criticism for its implementation of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages (CoE 2024). So far there are no holistic academic studies on Sweden’s national minority-language policy and planning.
