In Sweden, curricula and syllabi for education are politically determined after public consultations. Thus, these educational documents are discursive trade-offs reflecting research, traditions in the educational system, and political ideologies. This study maps the discourses in the syllabus for Sami as L1 mother tongue for preschool class-Year…

Sweden is often commended for the inclusion of home languages in the formal education system: both mother tongue instruction (where a pupil's home language is taught as an optional school subject) and study guidance (where a pupil is given content support in their home language or prior language of schooling) are offered. Still, while many…

This study responds to calls for more research on motivations for learning languages other than English (LOTEs) in the new era dominated by global English. In particular, it focuses on the role of societal contextual factors surrounding the status of English and the status of the LOTE as an L2/L3, as factors which may offer a more nuanced…

In this paper we conduct a poststructural discourse analysis inspired by Carol Bacchi's 'What's the problem represented to be?' (WRP) approach. We explore what kinds of problems are formulated in preschool educational policy on multilingualism, and what underlying assumptions underlie the dominant discourse on language proficiency in Sweden.…

This article explores students' perspectives on English language learning in relation to the Language Introduction Programme in Sweden, which is an individual transitional programme for newly arrived immigrants and seeks to quickly transition adolescents into further education or the job market. High proficiency in English is vital in Swedish…

The study describes a pedagogic adaptation of the matched guise technique with the aim to raise linguistic self-awareness of L2 accentedness stereotyping effects among Swedish pre-service teachers. In the experiment, 290 students attending teacher training programs were exposed to one of two matched guises, representing either L1 accented Swedish,…

In this paper, we critically discuss the impact of policy documents on the construction of national narratives on the provision of support for cultural-linguistic diversity in education systems in two European countries. The analysis focuses upon a selection of national policy documents that deal with the planning and provision of HLE since the…

Standard language cultures are characterised by beliefs in idealised standard forms of the language in question. In this paper, these beliefs are connected to the concepts of referee design and speech community, through analysis of how Swedish adolescents reflect upon and self-assess their language proficiencies. The data consist of interviews…

This paper explores family language policy in Turkish-speaking families in Sweden. Questionnaires were administered to the parents of 105 Turkish/Swedish children (age 4-7), targeting family language practices (including parent-parent, parent-child, child-parent, child-and-sibling conversation and language-fostering activities such as joint book…

We examined factors determining parental success in transmitting heritage language (HL) and literacy in Russian-speaking migrant families of comparable socioeconomic status (SES) in Cyprus, Ireland, Israel and Sweden. A total of 345 Russian speakers completed a questionnaire about their language use and home language practices. Of those, we chose…

Exploring multilingualism as a complex, context-related, societal and individual phenomenon, this book centres around perspectives on how multiple languages are made (in)visible within educational settings in the Global North. The authors of each chapter compare and contrast findings across geographical contexts with the goal of understanding the…

The authors investigate the sociolinguistic dynamics in multilingual families from the point of view of speakers' linguistic trajectories, ideologies, and repertoires. Drawing on interview data from intermarried couples of different generational and linguistic profiles of two families in Sweden, the authors examine how speakers' lived experience…

Conceptualizations of English as standard, as a lingua franca, or as part of translingual practice form part of the discourses surrounding its use in EMI. While researchers generally agree that the 'E' in EMI should not stand for native varieties of standard English, the stakeholders' perceptions of English call for further research. This paper…

Our paper focuses on new ways to address silence and feelings of sadness surrounding language and cultural loss in Indigenous contexts, sometimes resulting in deep inter-generational trauma. As a consequence of two Council of Europe conventions ratified by Sweden, Indigenous and minority language maintenance and revitalization was included in the…

Both Sweden and Finland have education systems promoting equity and equality. However, recent societal and political changes linked to increased immigration have created new challenges in efforts to support linguistic diversity. This paper aims to explore how multilingualism is represented in the national compulsory school curricula in the two…