State categories, state vision and vernacular woes in Sweden’s language politics

Abstract

This article deals with the politics of classification in contemporary Sweden. It analyses the language political dispute that has developed over the language political regulation of Ö vdalsk, a non-standard form of Scandinavian spoken in Ä lvdalen in northern central Sweden. The analysis focuses on the ways in which a discursive exchange over metalinguistic categories contributes to the efficacy of a state vision of linguistic divisions. In the wake of Sweden's ratification of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages (ECRML), and the language political reforms in which the ratification was embedded, Ö vdalsk has emerged as a contentious issue. Over three decades (1990s-2010s), the question of what Ö vdalsk 'is'-a 'language', a 'dialect' or something else-has surged repeatedly in political, public and scholarly deliberations (i.e. in expert reports, in policy documents and in scientific publications). Nevertheless, the interests placed in this muddled taxonomic issue have not yet been subjected to any sociolinguistic analysis. Drawing on Bourdieu's work on the state, the article attends to the ways in which the exchange over Ö vdalsk has paid tribute to an increasingly entrenched symbolic order. Commenting on Sweden's commitment to the ECRML more generally, the article accounts for how and why an officialised vision of linguistic division has been rendered symbolically effective. Accordingly, the article argues that a sensitisation to the forms of tacit agreement that underwrite contention is a suitable lens for grasping the maintenance of a political order as legitimate and effective.

Language Policy in Ukraine in the Context of European Integration

“…The author argues that neither politics nor language is ever neutral but interrelated which highlights the significance to adopt an approach to language policy given full consideration to "real social actors" [5]. Karlander D. researches language politics in Sweden, specifically the dispute that has developed over the language political regulation of O¨vdalsk, a non-standard form of Scandinavian spoken in A¨ lvdalen in northern central Sweden following the ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages [6].…”

Mother tongue instruction in Sweden and Denmark

“…In his later writings, Bourdieu (2014) came to theorize the state as a 'meta-field' within such societies, one that is able to exercise power over other fields because of the concentration of capital it has come to accumulate (e.g., Bourdieu 1994Bourdieu , 2014Wacquant 1996). Correspondingly, it possesses a form of 'meta-capital', granting power over other kinds of capital (Bourdieu 2014: 345), and acts as 'the central bank of symbolic credit [which] guarantees and consecrates a certain state of affairs' (Bourdieu 1996: 376; see Karlander 2017). Of particular interest here is that the state is in the position to exercise power over the exchange rates between different species of capital and, thereby, over the relative worth of their holders (Bourdieu 1994: 4).…”