Thammasat University students interested in English, linguistics, education, European cultural studies, sociology, and related subjects may find a new book useful.

English in the Nordic Countries: Connections, Tensions, and Everyday Realities is an Open Access book available for free download at this link:

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003272687/

It is edited by Elizabeth Peterson and Kristy Beers Fägersten.

Dr. Elizabeth Peterson is a lecturer in the Department of Languages at the University of Helsinki, Finland.

Professor Kristy Beers Fägersten teaches English linguistics at the School of Culture and Education at Södertörn University, Sweden.

The Thammasat University Library collection includes other books about different aspects of English language usage worldwide.

The publisher’s description of English in the Nordic Countries reads:

People in the Nordic states – Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland – rank as among the most proficient speakers of English in the world. In this unique volume, international experts explore how this came to be, what English usage and integration looks like in different spheres of society and the economy in these countries, and the implications of this linguistic phenomenon for language attitudes and identity, for the region at large, and for English in Europe and around the world.

Led by Elizabeth Peterson and Kristy Beers Fägersten, contributors provide a historical overview to the subject, synthesize the latest research, illustrate the roles of English with original case studies from diverse communities and everyday settings, and offer transnational insights critically and in conversation with the situation in other Nordic states.

This comprehensive text is the first book of its kind and will be of interest to advanced students and researchers of World/Global Englishe and English as a lingua franca, language contact and dialect studies/language varieties, language policy, multilingualism, sociolinguistics, and Nordic/Scandinavia and European studies.

The book’s introduction notes:

While the elevation of English to its current status in the Nordic countries is often touted as a “success story”, the situation also serves as an experiment, revealing how opening up to English has led to a spectrum of outcomes from positive to negative.

The language situation in the Nordic countries thus becomes a case study of contemporary multilingualism, revealing the dynamics that occur when a single language, English, is imposed across large swaths of the population in multiple formats throughout a sustained period of time.

It is of primary importance to establish that English is a mother tongue for only a small portion of the overall population of the Nordic region. For the vast  majority  of  Nordic  citizens, English is an additional language, something intimate yet still “other,” a language acquired alongside or subsequent to the mother tongue(s).

Such a scenario opens up opportunities for a compelling investigation, and it is such an investigation that comprises the chapters of this volume. Numerous tensions characterize the relationship between English and the national (and other) languages of the Nordic region.

This volume brings these tensions to light through various perspectives, all through the general lens of sociolinguistics and the related research areas of multilingualism, language contact, and ideologies. […]

A major challenge in adopting a World Englishes perspective is that, at this stage in history, the populations of the Nordic  countries  do  not  fit  comfortably  into existing models of World Englishes, mostly due to the ambiguity of the status of English in the Nordic countries.

In other words, English is officially a “foreign” language in the Nordic countries, yet at the same time it is a language which is deeply imbued within multiple aspects of everyday life, sometimes at a remarkably intimate level.

Indeed, several of the chapters in this volume call into question the status of English as a “foreign” language – and, in the same vein, as a second or first language. A related challenge in a World Englishes tradition was chronicling any discrete linguistic features that would typify Nordic English or Englishes; such an endeavor would be unreliable at best and unwarranted for the reasons explained here. […]

First,  a critical property is that English has entered into Nordic societies through what has been called “soft” or “cultural” imperialism. In other words, English did not enter into the Nordic setting as a result of colonization or colonialism, as it did, for example, in the Americas, Africa, and Asia.

Rather, starting in the period leading up to World War II and taking off in earnest in the post-war period, English was introduced as a foreign language as a component part of a new world order. In this world order, of course, the United States of America (USA) and Great Britain emerged as powerhouses of influence and, at the same time, exerted enormous cultural, economic, and political influence over other countries – including through the English language.

For their part, the Nordic countries were eager to participate in this symbolic exchange, with the primary means of exposure stemming at the earliest stages from English-language learning, including in public schools.

A function  of  the  social  welfare  system,  the  Nordic  countries  boast  a relatively high overall standard of education. Finland, for example, has ranked among the highest in international  assessments of  education and  learning (e.g.,  Programme  for  International  Student Assessment,  PISA)  for  several years, and Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are also among the highest-ranking countries in terms of student learning.

A component of the Nordic educational system is the formal acquisition of foreign languages, which, since the post-World War II era, has mostly prioritized the English language. The use of English, in turn, is a heavy feature of contemporary globalization. The Nordic countries are, in the terminology of Buschfeld and Kautzsch (2017), societies that are open to or accepting of globalization, which connects specifically to English in its role as a global language.

This means, for example, that the Nordic countries find “expression in […] linguistic and also cultural influences coming from the Internet, US popular culture, and modern media as well as trading relations between countries,” while at the same time offering an openness to accepting and not limiting access to these influences.

While English instruction was first introduced in the Nordic countries before the turn of the 20th century (see Chapter 3), the English education movement was launched in earnest after World War II. By the 1960s, the inclusion of English in the national school curricula was a fait accompli and understood as integral to socioeconomic advancement.

Thus, the promotion of English as a required school subject was explicitly related to the use of English in business, industry, and trade in order to target international markets and to maximize each nation’s global reach.

In effect, the use of English has been institutionalized in the Nordic countries, with the goal of facilitating mutual communication with and contact between external parties. It is no exaggeration that the use of English in the Nordic countries is something extraordinary in the current era. A recent survey of Nordic citizens aged 16–25 showed the astonishing  result that 95 percent of the respondents state that English is “easy,” and 65 percent of respondents go so far as to claim that expression is “easier” in English than in their mother tongue.

Compared to the other citizens of the European area and EU, those from Nordic countries routinely rank among the most proficient English speakers. For example, survey data from a Eurobarometer study show that 70-80 percent of Nordic respondents claim they could have a conversation in English.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)