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English in Nordic Universities: Ideologies and practices
Edited by Anna Kristina Hultgren, Frans Gregersen and Jacob Thøgersen
[Studies in World Language Problems 5] 2014
► pp. 83–110

Language ideology and shifting representations of linguistic threats

A Bourdieusian re-reading of the conceptual history of domain loss in Sweden’s field of language planning

This chapter presents a sociological account of the language ideological representations underpinning discourses about perceived threats from English in Sweden. The objective is to contextualize the conceptual history of “domain loss” within Sweden’s field of language planning, in conjunction with crossing discourses about minority languages and EU membership. With Bourdieu, the safeguarding of Swedish is comprehended as linked to struggles where the role of the nation-state is set in flux, opening up linguistic markets beyond its control. As a product of the relation between agents’ habitus and the field, domain loss has served to legitimize discourses about the disestablishment of the national language regime, which is interpreted as a strategy to defend the market into which agents have invested capital.
Published online: 24 October 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/wlp.5.04sal
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