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The Dynamics of Multilingualism: Affinities and Affordances, 7,5 ECTS

This course is offered by the Department of English in collaboration with the Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism, Centre for Research on Bilingualism, as a part of the Doctoral School in the Humanities. The course is offered during the spring semester of 2025 and online.

Course content

The overarching aim of the course is to address the need for a multidisciplinary approach in relation to the global challenges of increased mobility and multilingualism. More specifically, the course addresses the emergence of new global – often temporary – linguistic communities, associated communicative practices and the affordances that enable their existence. The course examines how these communities are formed by and through different languages. In contrast, it also considers the more traditional and new (e.g. academic) diasporas.

Within the course, students explore different research issues through empirical analysis of data related to various language phenomena such as writing across languages, language and luxury tourism, research communities, and protest movements. They work with and apply different theoretical frameworks, including poststructuralist, postcolonial, and posthumanist approaches, discourse analysis, Bourdieu’s field theory, nexus analysis, linguistic ethnography or linguistic landscapes in multidisciplinary contexts. Within the course, students explore research questions related to the course content and to their own interests through empirical analysis of data related to various language phenomena in order to develop a research proposal or a piece of empirical data analysis, which is presented at the final mini-conference.

In order to pass the course, students are expected to be able to:

  • engage in an interdisciplinary dialogue and peer review around the analysis of authentic language material
  • creatively apply the theoretical frameworks discussed in the course in order to formulate specific research questions relating to language and globalisation in their respective disciplines
  • carry out a small-scale independent research project within a subject area related to the theme of the dynamics of multilingualism and course content in a theoretically and methodologically insightful manner

The course generally attracts students from the language departments but also from Ethnology, Education, Sociology, Social Anthropology, and so on. In previous editions, it has attracted participants from other Scandinavian universities and our CIVIS network of 10 European universities. The international component of our previous courses has been highly appreciated and is essential for the type of research issues explored within the scope of the course.

What has been most positive about the course?

  • "I am really satisfied with this course. The workload was very well managed and distributed within the timeframe of the course. I was impressed with the guest lecturers and their rich and fulfilling seminars. Also, additional tutoring was offered, concerning the data analysis for the exam, which I found very useful."
  • "Great course leaders, insightful guest speakers, interesting topics!"
  • "The course was very good, with a great selection of studies and speakers. We also developed interesting small-scale independent research projects with engaging discussions about them."
  • "The course is highly recommended to earl-stage researchers, esp. to who have collected some parts of their data. It is helpful to conceive, draft and discuss the preliminary analysis with the professors and peers for further developing the work."

Would you recommend the course?

  • Spring 2023: 6/6
  • "It is a great course, especially for those in the beginning of their studies, as it introduces many different theorectical frameworks and encourages to try them in analysing a piece of your own data."
  • "Great course to explore some issues on multilingualism!"

We encourage all our students to turn their course assignment into an article or chapter manuscript.

Many of the course alumni have published their course work in international peer reviewed journals and several of them have also been published in the book Dynamics of Multilingualism: Spatialised Repertoires and Representations. The book includes five chapters by alumni from the course.

Mandatory elements

The following compulsory components will be included: completion of all oral and written tasks ahead of each seminar; a research presentation at a doctoral student conference at the end of term; seminar participation.

Examination

The course is examined through shorter written assignments for each seminar and presentation of empirical data analysis at the doctoral student conference at the end of term.

Instruction

Teaching activities include lectures, seminars, tutorials and a student conference.

NB. The course is offered online.

Period: spring semester 2025.

Course dates: The course will take place between 24 March and 28 May, with seminars on Tuesdays.

Schedule Affinities Affordances pdf, 126.1 kB.

Language of instruction: English

Course plan: Course Syllabus EN1AFDC pdf, 493.4 kB.

Application

Applications for courses starting in the spring semester 2025 are received between May 15 and June 15 2024, as well as between November 15 and December 15 2024. Notifications of acceptance are sent out as soon as possible after the final date.

All applications are sent by the supervisor to: doctoralschool@hum.su.se. Official transcript of records, or certificate of registration, verifying the applicant's status as doctoral student should be enclosed with the application.

All courses are free of charge, and they are open to all who are admitted to studies on PhD-level, regardless of faculty or university. Prerequisites and special admittance requirements may apply for some courses.

How do I apply?

The application form (document link below) is used to apply for a place in a course. The supervisor (or equivalent) must support the doctoral student’s application with a motivation as to why the doctoral student should participate in the course. The supervisor also submits the proposal to the following address: doctoralschool@hum.su.se.

Application form for place in a joint faculty course docx, 294.6 kB.

Who can apply?

The Faculty of Humanities’ doctoral students have priority for places, and external doctoral students (from Stockholm University or another university) can be admitted to a course subject to availability. External doctoral students will be registered in Ladok in order to enable the Board to monitor all participants in a course.

Last updated: 2025-12-09

Source: Faculty of Humanities