UVT, Alm.del - 2010-11 (1. samling) - Bilag 23: Invitation til symposium: "Om brug af dansk på det internationaliserede universitet", fra Center for Internationalisering og Parallelsproglighed

CIP Symposium, 11 November 2010, 12:00 to 17:00Danish in the practice of parallel language useThe use of Danish in the internationalised University of CopenhagenThe universities in Denmark are undergoing a steadily increasing internationalisation process. Attractinginternational researchers and students has become a priority. Meanwhile ever greater linguistic demandsare being put on the universities’ Danish employees. They are expected to be able to teach in Englishand to publish in international – generally English language – journals. We are now in a situation whereEnglish is anecessityfor employees and students in Danish universities. If, on the other hand, English issufficientis more debatable.There are two areas where this issue is most pressing: firstly, with regards to international employees’needs for Danish; secondly, with regards to the future of the status of Danish as an academic languageand whether it is being threatened with so-calleddomain loss.The debate at the CIP Symposium 2010will from a number of different viewpoints revolve around these two issues.The symposium is comprised of four parts.

1. Panel on international academic staff at the University of Copenhagen: Languagedemands, needs and experiencesThe participants on the panel are all international research staff at the University of Copenhagen.JacobusJ. (Koos)Boomsma, Director at the Centre for Social Evolution, Department of Biology, Martin Pessah,Assistant Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, Natalie Wahl, Professor at the Department of MathematicalSciences and Peter Leese, Associate Professor at the Department of English, Germanic and RomanceStudies. The panel will discuss the motivation for learning and using Danish and their own experiences inthis regard. The panel discussion will be mediated by Nina Møller Andersen, Associate Professor at theDepartment of Scandinavian Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen.

2. Two presentations about international employees in Denmark and language andintegrationAna Mosneaga, PhD student, & Lars Winther, Associate Professor, Department of Geography andGeology, University of Copenhagen:Emerging talents? International students before and after theircareer start in DenmarkEva Ersbøll, Senior Research Fellow, The Danish Institute for Human Rights:Can highly skilled labour migrants be subjected to integration requirements?

3. Two presentations about Danish as an academic language and domain lossDeborah Cameron, Professor of Language and Communication, University of Oxford:Nostalgia, guilt and panic: some remarks on verbal hygiene in the age of globalizationAnna Kristina Hultgren, Postdoc Fellow, Centre for Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use,University of Copenhagen:What is language and what have people got to do with it?

4. Panel on the implications on the language policy for the University of CopenhagenThe participants on the panel are all centrally involved in policy making at the University of Copenhagen:Jørn Lund, Member of the Board of the University of Copenhagen, Mike Young, Editor of the UniversityPost, Per Holten-Andersen, Dean of the Faculty of LIFE, Thomas Bjørnholm, Prorector and Vivian TosLindgaard, Senior Executive Consultant, International Staff Mobility.The central topic of the discussion is how to facilitate internationalisation while at the same time securingthe status of Danish as an academic language. The panel will be mediated by Frans Gregersen,Professor, Department of Scandinavian Studies and Linguistics, Member of the Board of CIP.

Emerging talents? International students before and after their career start in DenmarkAna Mosneaga, PhD student, & Lars Winther, Associate Professor, Department of Geography andGeology, University of CopenhagenInternational students are seen as potential skilled migrants in the intensifying competition for talentdriven by the globalised knowledge economy. However, little is known about what shapes individualdecisions to go and study abroad or to continue their career in the host country. The paper aims toaddress this research gap by examining international students’ perspectives on and internationalgraduates’ experiences with the transition from study-to-work life in Denmark. It does so by exploring thecomplexity of opportunities and factors that come into play at both the contextual and personal levels inthis status transition process. The analysis is based on qualitative research with international studentsenrolled in science and technology degree programmes at Danish universities and recent internationalgraduates who stayed on in the country as foreign workers after completing their studies. Looking atindividuals from diverse national backgrounds (EU/EEA and non-EU/EEA), the study considers howdifferent circumstances have impacted on the ways through which individuals perceive and manage thestatus transition process. Denmark represents an interesting host country context. While the country isincreasingly focusing on the attraction and retention of foreign students as skilled workers, it is alsoknown for its restrictive approach to immigration. The discussion provides an insight into the centralparameters that influence the positions of skilled migrants and in this way opens up the “black box”surrounding the individual in the existing accounts of the globalised knowledge economy.

Can highly skilled labour migrants be subjected to integration requirements?Eva Ersbøll, Senior Research Fellow, The Danish Institute for Human RightsIn 2010 the Danish Integration Act and the Aliens Act were amended. Highly skilled labour migrants arenow covered by the Integration Act and they and their spouses have access to introduction programs,including free Danish language lessons, etc. However, highly skilled migrants (and their spouses) whowant a permanent residence permit and/or Danish citizenship are subjected to obligatory integrationrequirements, among others a requirement to be able to speak, read and write Danish at a certain leveland to pass a test on the knowledge of Danish society (or demonstrate active citizenship in Denmarkthrough at least one year’s participation on boards, in organizations, etc.). Little is known about the actualeffects of the requirements on the behaviour of highly skilled migrants. There are, however, some resultsfrom a recent research project on language and integration tests which will be discussed in thepresentation.

Nostalgia, guilt and panic: some remarks on verbal hygiene in the age of globalizationDeborah Cameron, Professor of Language and Communication, University of OxfordThe current debate on the status and development of Danish is examined closely from a sociolinguisticperspective by A-K Hultgren in the other presentation in this slot. The aim of this presentation, bycontrast, is to place the Danish debate in a wider context. As well as looking at its relationship to currentverbal hygiene concerns, many of which arise in response to social changes engendered by globalization,I will consider how far the concerns which are central to it are either historically novel, or specific to thesituation of languages like Danish (i.e. the national languages of small modern nation-states, which arenot widely learned and used outside their borders). In the latter connection, I will examine some parallelsbetween the way Danish is figured in public discourse—as threatened by English—and the way Englishitself is figured as threatened in various ways by popular commentators in majority English-speakingsocieties. While it is certainly possible that one threat is real while the other is entirely imaginary (i.e., thatDanish is threatened whereas English is not), the similarities which exist at the level of representation arenot just irrelevant or coincidental. Threats to the integrity or status of languages are a recurring theme inverbal hygiene discourse. Whether or not there is any empirical foundation for the sense of threat, it mustbe understood as symbolic of other and perhaps deeper anxieties, and addressed in a way whichrecognizes that the issue is not just a technical linguistic one.

What is language and what have people got to do with it?Anna Kristina Hultgren, Postdoc Fellow, Centre for Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use,University of CopenhagenIn this talk Hultgren takes a closer look at the debate about the use of English in Danish universities as ithas unfolded in Danish print media and other relevant documents over the past decade. She shallscrutinize taken-for-granted assumptions about language as a living organism existing independently oflanguage users, for example as reflected in representations of it as being ‘society-bearing’ and at risk of‘losing domains’. She shall then contrast such conceptualizations of language with theories which haverecently been developed within sociolinguistics to capture the messy and complex linguistic realities ofglobalization, characterized by an extensive mobility of people and practices. In essence, such theoriesreverse conventional understandings of language as an idealized and abstract system existinga prioriofit being used and propose instead to take language use as the starting point and consider the output,whatever form it takes, as language. Hultgren concludes by raising the question of whether such radicallydifferent views of language can be reconciled. The overall objective is to seek a middle way which mightusefully move forward both the debate about English at Danish universities as well as theoreticaldevelopments within sociolinguistics.