Of Ethics and Multilingualism in Internationalising Academia : Ethical Events in Swedish University Life

Abstract: This thesis engages ethnographically with actors whose practices constitute contemporary Swedish universities and who pose and respond to everyday questions of ethics and multilingualism. In contradistinction to the discursively monolingual horizon of contemporary academia, the thesis thinks questions of language differently, contributing to the growing body of knowledge on socially and linguistically diverse practice in internationalising university life. By analysing the discursive practices of university students, administrators, teachers, and researchers, it aims to illuminate potential new ways of engaging, learning, and knowing that might be more justifiably described as ethical and multilingual. With participants who fulfil the key missions of an academic institution in the faculties of the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, the thesis provides a full and nuanced sense of university life in Sweden, relevant to those working in, or in relation to higher education institutions across the globe. The thesis is based on three studies which all focus on participant representations and interactions to reveal the different ways in which the dominant discourse relating to language, multilingualism, and ‘internationalisation’ is being reproduced, responded to, and transcended. Study I engages with research and teaching staff to explore the extent to which their practices and representations relate to the ideologically double monolingual language policy, debate, and scholarship in Sweden. Revealed through various language ideological processes, participant representations were found to reproduce a dual monoglossic logic and linguistic order, favouring a Swedish and English linguistic repertoire to the extent that other multilingual research and social practices were rendered invisible and problematic. Studies II and III move beyond study I’s foregrounding of participants’ representations to instead focus on participants’ engagement in everyday ‘ethical events’, a notion inspired by the work of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. They are here defined as interactions involving that which is not known, normative, or ordinarily visible, but for which all involved are called upon to take responsibility. Such events allow for the analysis of interactions in which interlocutors voice and respond to social, linguistic, and epistemic difference. Study II uses a Derridean notion of hospitality to illuminate ethical events in which administrators’ responses to multilingual interlocutors point towards the challenges and potential for ethical becoming and improved sociality in an internationalising university. Study III engages with international students compelled to perform in order to question and sometimes transcend the norms seen and felt to govern classroom engagement, learning, and knowing. The thesis summary locates the studies within the changing political discourse of higher education in Sweden and beyond. It also provides a framework for the three studies that works to show that questions of ethics and multilingualism are particularly pertinent for critical engagement with contemporary university life. Overall, the questions posed in this thesis highlight the multilingualism yet to be convincingly responded to in the sectoral, national, and institutional policy, planning, and debate on internationalisation and language in higher education. The thesis’ focus on ethical events emphasises both the exhaustion and the potentiality of spaces in which actors struggle to foster improved sociality, mutual responsibility, and more truly international academic practice.