Since 2004, I have taught language and culture courses at the universities of Barcelona, Oxford, Tallinn, and Tartu. At Stockholm University, I have developed, taught, and coordinated various courses within the English Studies programmes at both graduate and undergraduate levels, including sociolinguistics, English language education, language and gender, and intercultural communication. I am also actively involved in teaching at the PhD level, currently co-supervising two doctoral students.

My research is primarily in language policy. Over the past few years, I have investigated how, in non-Anglophone contexts, universities and their stakeholders adapt to the growing presence of English in their daily realities. Empirically, my material comes first and foremost from Estonia, a country with which I have established personal and professional ties since 2005. In addition, and in collaboration with colleagues around Europe, I have conducted comparative university language policy analyses across an ample spectrum of countries and contexts. In parallel to the role of English in higher education, I have also developed an interest in multilingual families, and have published case studies of parental language ideologies in multilingual homes in Estonia, Sweden, and the UK. More recently, my research has started to delve into the topic of publishing in English for research purposes, specifically looking at how multilingual scholars handle the need to publish in academic English. Finally, I remain interested in the sociolinguistics of minority language situations, with Catalonia as a central focus of attention.

 

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Language diversity management in higher education

  2020. Jeroen Darquennes, Theo Du Plessis, Josep Soler. Sociolinguistica 34 (1), 7-29

  Article

  Linguistic diversity and its management have become increasingly significant for higher education institutions around the world. Indeed, in the context of a growing student and staff mobility, information exchange, and networked multilateral interactions, the multiplicity of languages used by university stakeholders in more and more contexts has steadily grown over the past decades. A wide range of scholars (from applied and sociolinguists to higher education researchers) have responded with an equal growing attention to this phenomenon. In this paper, we funnel some of the relevant recent scholarship on the language-planning dimension of the internationalization of higher education, providing as a result an analytical framework that attempts to capture the complex sociolinguistic nature of present-day universities. To date, with only a handful of exceptions, few attempts have been made to provide a comprehensive overview of the different levels, stakeholders, and contexts of language use in higher education. Given the rapid changing nature of language matters in such context, the framework we present in this paper should be useful to both sociolinguists interested in language issues in higher education and to on-the-ground university administrators actively engaged in language planning initiatives in their institutions. The framework, however, is not conceived of as a closed-end solution to language problems at universities today, but rather as a guiding roadmap to think productively about such issues.

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• Language policy and the status of languages in contemporary Catalonia

  2020. Josep Soler, Iker Erdocia. European Journal of Language Policy 12 (2), 215-234

  Article

  Language ideological debates are a constant feature of virtually all language contact situations, particularly in contexts of a conflictive nature. In this article, we analyse one recent debate about languages in Catalonia. In April 2016 a group of linguists and language professionals published a manifesto – the Manifest Koiné – that provoked an explosion of opinions in mass-media outlets in the region. In the article, we analyse both the content of the manifesto and the reactions that it sparked. Our analysis shows that in presenting the situation of Catalan in a rather pessimistic light, the manifesto finds itself in line with a long-solidified line of thought in the Catalan language imaginary. At the same time, the negative terms that are used to portray both Spanish and bilingualism in the manifesto are the points that gathered the strongest opposition during the debate. In addition, the single official status for Catalan in an imagined future independent state (the position implicitly endorsed by the manifesto) also was not supported in the debate. We conclude that these results are in line with the changing nature of the language ideological landscape that Catalonia has experienced over the last decades.

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• Linguistic Injustice and Global English

  2020. Josep Soler. Nordic Journal of English Studies 19 (3), 35-46

  Article

  In recent years, the position of English as the main language of international research publishing has become a growing source of language ideological debates within academia and most notably, of course, amongst Applied Linguists. In very short terms, there seems to exist a division between those who regard English as an agent of linguistic injustice for multilingual scholars, versus those who would place more emphasis on other, non-linguistic factors in accounting for the injustices perceived to exist in the publishing enterprise. In this article, summarising some of my own recent work on this topic, I suggest that looking at the issue as an ‘either-or’ is not only not useful, but it can also be counterproductive for our analyses. Instead, I propose we need to look at the question of English for research publication purposes as a ‘both-and’, meaning that both linguistic and non-linguistic factors have to be taken into consideration, and I sketch some ideas as to how that can be done.

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• University branding and the internationalization of higher education in the Baltic states

  2020. Josep Soler. Language Perceptions and Practices in Multilingual Universities, 137-163

  Chapter

  This chapter explores the multimodal resources employed by three higher education agencies in the Baltic states in their effort to promote their universities internationally as attractive study places. In the context of the marketization of higher education, previous studies have explored the branding of universities from the point of view of management and marketing studies, but little attention has been paid to the role of language and, more broadly, to discourse in connection to university branding. The main goal of the chapter is to investigate the tension between the national/local and the global scales in the promotion of Baltic higher education and to examine how such a tension is discursively realized, paying special attention to language(s) and their associated discourses and ideologies.

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• University language policy in Estonia and Catalonia

  2020. Josep Soler. Sociolinguistica 34 (1), 57-70

  Article

  Within the context of the internationalisation of higher education, language matters have become increasingly prominent for universities across a wide variety of contexts. This has made the higher education domain an attractive site for applied linguists and sociolinguists to investigate in close detail. One relatively consolidated idea is that contexts in which English has made further incursions in universities are more internationalised than those settings where English has penetrated to a lesser extent. In line with that, a supposed north-south divide in European higher education has been conceived of, with universities in the north leading in terms of internationalisation efforts, while those in the south lag behind. In this article, I problematise this idea and suggest instead that a narrower and more focused contrastive analysis between language ecologies across different countries and contexts might be more useful. In doing that, we can thus avoid the dangers of binarism and lumping that can come associated to holding preconceived geographical borders. In particular, the comparative analysis proposed here allows us to highlight two key issues that seem to be highly pressing in present-day higher education domains: the language-ideological and the socio-economic. I build the argument in the paper by utilising empirical material from Estonia and Catalonia, two contexts that have been at the centre of my own work in recent years.

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• Academic Publishing in English

  2019. Josep Soler. Journal of Language, Identity & Education 18 (6), 389-399

  Article

  This paper explores the trajectories of six young academics (early-stage researchers) currently active in the context of Swedish academia in two different fields: English Linguistics and Political Science. Through a series of narrative interviews, the analysis investigates the development of their scholarly work, the relationship with their texts, and the negotiation of their position as contributors to their academic field. The paper discusses issues of language attitudinal and ideological nature, emphasising the need to focus on writers, rather than texts. The discussion revolves around the role of access to scholarly networks and to quality publication outlets as some of the key factors in shaping their development as young scholars and enabling opportunities to publish in highly-ranked journals. The goal of the article is to contextualise and problematize the notion of privilege that is customarily attributed to L1 English-speaking scholars, and to provide a more nuanced understanding of how young academics tackle the publishing enterprise.

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• Language policy and the internationalization of universities

  2019. Josep Soler.

  Book

  Many universities around the world are actively engaged in the process of the internationalization of their higher education systems, trying to become more competitive in all possible respects, especially in the areas of research and teaching. Language, naturally, plays a central role in this process, but this is not always explicitly recognized as such. As a result, key sociolinguistic challenges emerge for both individuals and groups of people. Most prominently, the question of whether English constitutes an opportunity or a threat to other national languages in academic domains is a controversial one and remains unresolved. The analysis featured in this book aims at addressing this question by looking at language policy developments in the context of Estonian higher education. Adopting a discourse approach, the book emphasises the centrality of language not only as a site of struggle, but as a tool and a resource that agents in a give field utilize to orient themselves in certain positions. The book will be of interest to language policy scholars, linguistic anthropologists, and critical sociolinguists. Education scholars interested in discourse studies will also find it useful.

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• Language policy and ‘new speakers’

  2019. Josep Soler, Jeroen Darquennes. Language Policy 18 (4), 467-473

  Article

  In recent years, sociolinguistic research on minority languages in Europe, particularly in the Galician context, has chiefly contributed both theoretically and empirically to the growing attention given to ‘new speakers’, as well as to the emergence of a European research network in 2013 entitled ‘New Speakers in a multilingual Europe: Opportunities and challenges’ (www.nspk.org.uk). As documented in special issues and edited volumes, the research activities in the network not only aimed at adding the term ‘new speaker’ to the growing pool of analytical terminology in critically oriented sociolinguistics. Employing ‘new speaker’ as a lens rather than as a clear-cut notion is what we—as editors—had in mind when giving shape to this volume, drawing on discussions during the final phases of the above-mentioned research network. This seemed especially useful because such a broad take on ‘new speakerness’ opens up avenues for comparative research under a common label. In sum, it is certainly worth the effort to continue delving deeper into the notion of ‘new speakers’, and particularly to do that from the perspective of language policy. The articles collected in this thematic issue aim at contributing into that direction.

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• Linguistic differences between well-established and predatory journals

  2019. Josep Soler, Ying Wang. Learned Publishing 32 (3), 259-269

  Article

  Predatory publishing has become a much-discussed and highly visible phenomenon over the past few years. One widespread, but hardly tested, assumption is the idea that articles published in predatory journals deviate substantially from those published in traditional journals. In this paper, we address this assumption by utilizing corpus linguistic tools. We compare the 'academic-like' nature of articles from two different journals in political science, one top-ranking and one alleged predatory. Our findings indicate that there is significant linguistic variation between the two corpora along the dimensions that we test. The articles display notable differences in the types and usage of keywords in the two journals. We conclude that articles published in so-called predatory journals do not conform to linguistic norms used in higher-quality journals. These findings may demonstrate a lack of quality control in predatory journals but may also indicate a lack of awareness and use of such linguistic norms by their authors. We also suggest that there is a need for the education of authors in science writing as this may enable them to publish in higher-ranked and quality-assured outlets.

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• Parents’ and grandparents’ views on home language regimes

  2019. Josep Soler, Tim Roberts. Critical inquiry In Language Studies 16 (4), 249-270

  Article

  The authors investigate the sociolinguistic dynamics in multilingual families from the point of view of speakers’ linguistic trajectories, ideologies, and repertoires. Drawing on interview data from intermarried couples of different generational and linguistic profiles of two families in Sweden, the authors examine how speakers’ lived experience with different languages shapes their stance toward bi- and multilingualism and how that particular stance in turn produces a series of effects and helps constructing specific language ideological frameworks from where speakers in that given context operate. From our analysis, it appears that an ideology of the native speaker as the legitimate and authoritative type of speaker is strongly present; the native speaker is in turn the one responsible for transmitting his or her language to the children. This is problematized by the reported language mixing that occurs in the home environment and the resulting nonobservance of the one person–one language strategy. More important than that, we argue that speakers’ ideological viewpoint in a social environment takes place dialogically and discursively. This has important consequences individually, for the speakers involved in that context, and collectively, for the type of framework that emerges.

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• The Sociolinguistics of Higher Education

  2019. Josep Soler, Lídia Gallego-Balsà.

  Book

  This book investigates the sociolinguistic dimension of the internationalisation of higher education, examining the linguistic tensions and ambiguities experienced by universities around the world, particularly in non-anglophone contexts. Joining current debates within discursive and ethnographic approaches to language policy, the authors analyse the narrative emerging from university language policy documents, and then trace the stance-taking processes of different stakeholders at a small university in Catalonia. They pay particular attention to how teachers, administrative staff, and exchange students position themselves in connection to the role of Catalan and its coexistence with other languages at the university. This book will be of interest to language policy scholars and practitioners, as well as graduate students in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics

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• Unexpected emails to submit your work: Spam or legitimate offers? The implications for novice English L2 writers

  2019. Josep Soler, Andrew Cooper. Publications 7 (1)

  Article

  This article analyzes the discourse of what have been termed ‘predatory publishers’, with a corpus of emails sent to scholars by hitherto unknown publishers. Equipped with sociolinguistic and discourse analytic tools, we argue that the interpretation of these texts as spam or as legitimate messages may not be as straightforward an operation as one may initially believe. We suggest that English L2 scholars might potentially be more affected by publishers who engage in these email practices in several ways, which we identify and discuss. However, we argue that examining academic inequalities in scholarly publishing based exclusively on the native/non-native English speaker divide might not be sufficient, nor may it be enough to simply raise awareness about such publishers. Instead, we argue in favor of a more sociologically informed analysis of academic publishing, something that we see as a necessary first step if we wish to enhance more democratic means of access to key resources in publishing.

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• ‘New speakers’ and language policy research

  2019. Jeroen Darquennes, Josep Soler. Language Policy 18 (4), 475-491

  Article

  In this article, we reflect on the extent to which ‘new speaker’ research feeds into recent theoretical discussions in language policy scholarship, especially in connection to the discursive and ethnographically oriented perspectives which of late have become increasingly prominent. We begin with a brief overview of the ‘new speaker’ concept, its theoretical and empirical origins, and then we situate the discussions on ‘new speakers’ against the background of traditional language policy research. Thereafter the bulk of the article is dedicated to developing two main arguments: first, we provide an overview of the language policy themes that are already present in ‘new speaker’ research; and secondly, we elaborate on how ‘new speaker’ studies can contribute to current discussions in the field of language policy. We conclude with a short overview of future research directions that, in our view, can strengthen the link and the mutual benefits of the connection between ‘new speaker’ and language policy scholarship.

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• Language ideology and language planning in Estonian higher education

  2018. Josep Soler, Virve-Anneli Vihman. Current Issues in Language Planning 19 (1), 22-41

  Article

  In recent years, interest in the study of language policy issues in the context of universities has grown considerably. One reason for this is the coexistence of two apparently contradictory discourses, centring around nationalising and globalising orientations. Universities are seen by many as the key institutions for safeguarding the sustainability of national languages, while in order to operate on a global scale, an increasing use of foreign languages (particularly English) is necessary in those same institutions. In our paper, we explore the tensions and ambiguities provoked by this scenario in the context of Estonian higher education (HE), focusing on the University of Tartu. More specifically, we look at how different stakeholders orient themselves towards the language question at the university: university officials, members of the university (staff and students), and members of society outside the university. Using discourse analytical tools, we map the ideological constructs with which these different stakeholders take a stance towards the two dominating discourses. In our analysis, we show that these different groups re-create and shape both the nationalising and the globalising discourses currently present in the field of HE by strategically mobilising a set of semiotic resources available to them.

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• New speakers and language policy

  2018. Bernadette O'Rourke, Josep Soler, Jeroen Darquennes. The Oxford Handbook of Language Policy and Planning

  Chapter

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• University language policies in Estonia and Sweden

  2018. Josep Soler, Beyza Björkman, Maria Kuteeva. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 39 (1), 29-43

  Article

  As universities seek to become more international, their need to engage with a wider range of languages, particularly English, seems more prominent. At the same time, universities are also regarded by many stakeholders as key institutions to preserve a given national language and culture. This apparent tension makes universities a fruitful ground to explore relevant issues of language policymaking. This paper analyses language policies in higher education in two northern European countries, Sweden and Estonia. Applying qualitative content analytical tools, we tackle the following questions: (1) what major themes emerge from the analysis of institutional language policy documents in Estonia and Sweden? and (2) how is English perceived in relation to other languages? Our analysis shows that, despite their different historical and sociopolitical trajectories, universities in the two countries tend to adopt similar stances vis-à-vis their language policy developments. There also exist, however, different nuances in approaching the language question, which we interpret as being the result of the particular cultural backgrounds of each country.

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• Multilayered perspectives on language policy in higher education

  2017. Josep Soler-Carbonell, Taina Saarinen, Kerttu Kibbermann. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 38 (4), 301-314

  Article

  This article analyses language policies in higher education (HE) in Finland, Estonia, and Latvia, as well as the European Union (EU). We take a multilayered approach to language policies in order to illuminate the intertwined nature of local, national, and international language policies in HE. We are particularly interested in the construction of national language(s) and the language(s) of internationalisation in our case countries. Finland, Estonia, and Latvia share common features as relatively small non-Anglophone countries in the Baltic region, while simultaneously having somewhat differing political and cultural histories. The results of our discursive analysis indicate that while the three countries have relatively different national language policies, regarding, for example, the position of the national language(s), the institutional policies are more similar in the three cases. For universities, the positioning of English as the de facto language of internationalisation turns the ideology of language choice in HE into a practical rather than political question. However, at the state level, the promotion of English runs contrary to national policies. The EU HE language policy seems to acknowledge the institutional level’s practical demands of English as de facto language of internationalisation rather than follow its own formal language policy of official languages.

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• Complexity perspectives on linguistic landscapes

  2016. Josep Soler-Carbonell. Linguistic Landscape 2 (1), 1-25

  Article

  Linguistic landscape studies (LLS) have become popular tools to investigate multilingual settings; yet they often lack theoretical elaboration. This paper tries to contribute to filling this gap by combining the postulates of complexity theory with the concept of ‘scale’. Taking Tallinn as a case study, I conceptualise scales as nodes of complexity, dynamically produced and reproduced by the inter-connection of different agents in interaction. The results show a significant degree of language heterogeneity in Tallinn’s LL, but one that adopts different forms in different places, something that indexes the diverse types of mobility in those settings. What appears as multilingual messiness becomes logically coherent when we look at how different semiotic resources are mobilized to co-construct different scalar frameworks. In conclusion, it is argued that a scalar analysis informed by a complexity perspective can be beneficially exploited for theoretical and methodological purposes in LLS.

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• Emerging ELF as an intercultural resource

  2014. Josep Soler-Carbonell. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 3 (2), 243-268

  Article

  This article discusses the possibility of English becoming a lingua franca in Estonia. It builds on Laitin's (1996) observations regarding the fact that English would become the country's language of inter-group communication among Estonian and Russian speakers. By providing ethnographically collected data and discussing it from the paradigm of language ideologies, the present article clarifies some of Laitin's original observations. While it appears that English has not become a lingua franca in Estonia, this possibility works in given circumstances, even if just sporadically, in order to help solving possible communicative obstacles. It is therefore argued that ELF is actually an extra resource, a tool that speakers can make use of if needed.

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• University language policies and language choice among Ph.D. graduates in Estonia

  2014. Josep Soler-Carbonell. Multilingua - Journal of Cross-cultural and Interlanguage Communication 33 (3-4), 413-436

  Article

  The role of English as a global language and its consequences for the internationalization of higher education are matters that have increasingly drawn the attention of researchers from different fields of language and communication. In this paper, an overview of the situation in Estonia is presented. The Estonian context has not previously been analyzed along these lines. The author suggests looking at Ph.D. dissertations as a site of tension between the need to effectively incorporate English as an academic language and the need to maintain Estonian as the national language. The article views this question in the context of some relevant language policy documents and other macro indicators. It then focuses on the number of Ph.D. dissertations defended at four main public universities in the last few years and the languages they have been written in. It appears that, although the language policy documents seem to correctly capture this tension between English and Estonian, the language most commonly used when writing dissertations is overwhelmingly English, with only the humanities providing some counterbalance to that trend. The current situation is different from that of past decades, when English was absent from Estonia’s scientific production and Estonian was significantly employed in that context, alongside Russian. In the discussion section, some lines for further inquiry are presented, together with a proposal for integrating complexity theory in such analyses.

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• New spaces of new speaker profiles

  2017. Josep Soler, Anastassia Zabrodskaja. Language in society (London. Print) 46 (4), 547-566

  Article

  This article looks at Spanish-Estonian speaking families and their language ideologies in relation to language use in the family setting-how parents decide to use languages among themselves and with their children. Family members choose different languages for different purposes when they talk to one another. In our study, parents draw on their knowledge of the 'one parent-one language' strategy but also translanguage for different reasons, constructing new patterns of bilingual modes. In the article, we examine parents' attitudes towards language maintenance, transmission, and use with their children. We incorporate the lens of 'new speaker' research to analyse the empirical data collected in Tallinn households among Spanish-Estonian speaking families so as to contribute to a better understanding of family language policy, planning, and management, highlighting how macro-level sociolinguistic expectations and norms might be elaborated on the micro level in everyday social interactions.

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• English as an Academic Lingua Franca in Estonia

  2015. Josep Soler-Carbonell. Attitudes towards English in Europe, 213-238

  Chapter

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• Language and education issues in global Catalonia. Questions and debates across scales of time and space

  2016. Josep Soler-Carbonell, Lídia Gallego-Balsà, Víctor Corona. Language, Culture and Curriculum 29 (1), 1-5

  Article

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• Language policy in Estonian higher education

  2015. Josep Soler-Carbonell. English-medium instruction in European higher education, 247-268

  Chapter

  This chapter offers an analysis of Higher Education policy documents in Estonia, with a focus on language and sociolinguistic matters. Although the dominance of English as an international language in the fields of science and academic research has been amply documented in recent years, Estonia appears to be still under-studied in this matter. However, because of historical reasons it provides a context that may yield interesting insights into the question under study. In barely two decades, the country has moved from a Communist regime to a neoliberal economy, from being a Soviet republic to recovering independence and then joining other supra-national units (the EU and NATO). By conducting a content analysis of key Higher Education policy documents, the paper shows some key tensions and contradictions arising from them in relation to the position of different languages in the domain of Higher Education. I conclude that in the analysed context, an ill-defined notion of English may cause us to poorly grasp who in fact benefits from such policies, and this, indeed, has to be a key and very central issue in language policy design and research, since it can potentially have important consequences for all involved.

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• The anonymity of Catalan and the authenticity of Estonian

  2013. Josep Soler. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 16 (2), 153-163

  Article

  Catalan and Estonian can be considered ‘medium-sized’ languages with some key common features that allow us to analyze the evolution of the two cases comparatively. Firstly, other formerly hegemonic languages (Spanish and Russian, respectively) have historically minoritized them. Secondly, the political equilibrium has now changed in such a way that the ‘medium-sized’ languages have been resituated in the public sphere, regaining some institutional recognition. In turn, this has caused the formerly dominating languages to be resituated too, where a high degree of contact between the two linguistic communities exists. Finally, in the globalization era, ideologies about (minoritized) languages may shift from identity-based values toward more pragmatic and instrumental ones. This article presents ethnographically collected data from both Tallinn and Barcelona (2008–2009), providing a reading of the Catalan case and evolution as seen through the Estonian experience. The study examines language-ideological constructs underlying the discourses of the linguistic groups in contact, how they affect and are affected by the context, how they interact with and co-modify each other and ultimately, how can they affect the process by which a ‘medium-sized’ language may be adopted by ‘new speakers' and acquires a stable position at the level of its public functions.

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• Investigating predatory publishing in political science

  2021. Ying Wang, Josep Soler. Applied Corpus Linguistics 1 (1)

  Article

  This article explores the application of corpus linguistics methods in dealing with an underexplored area concerning predatory publishing, with a focus on lexical bundles and formulaicity. Using a comparative approach, the study employs two corpora of more than 1,6 million words, consisting of 220 research articles drawn from two comparable journals in the field of political science, one predatory and one top-ranking. The results show that writers publishing in the top-ranking journal use a more limited range of lexical bundles with a higher frequency, giving further evidence for the highly formulaic nature of the genre. The two groups of writers also display different preferences for lexical bundles with particular functions and/or forms. While the top-ranking journal articles feature more disciplinary-specific bundles with noticeable variation across the main sections of the research article, the predatory journal articles highlight in particular a set of common-core lexical bundles typical of general academic language use. Our findings also demonstrate the potential of lexical bundles in revealing the amount of scientific information research articles contain as well as the level of scientific literacy of the authors.

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• Linguistic injustice in academic publishing in English

  2021. Josep Soler. Journal of English for Research Publication Purposes 2 (2), 160-171

  Article

  In recent years, an intense debate in English for research publication purposes (ERPP) has developed around the question of whether linguistic injustice exists or not in academic publishing in English. In this Perspectives piece, I wish to engage in this debate by first situating the terms in which it is being developed, and then pointing out some of its limitations. In doing that, I argue that the view of language that is currently held in the debate seems problematic, and that a more explicit attention to the socially stratified nature of academic publishing seems missing from the debate. Suggesting potential ways forward, I propose that it seems crucial to adopt a view of language that anchors it more firmly as a social phenomenon, inherently connected to its speakers and the socially situated and stratified position that they inhabit. Remembering this is important in order to remain aware of the fact that both linguistic and non-linguistic factors are at play in shaping the uneven nature of academic publishing in English.

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• Sociolinguists and their publics

  2021. Iker Erdocia, Josep Soler. Journal of Sociolinguistics

  Article

  This article aims to investigate the relationship of sociolinguists with the publics in Catalonia and to disentangle the complex interrelationships among academics within the discipline. By examining material from mainstream media outlets and data from interviews with a selected number of sociolinguist scholars, we show how the public sphere is a site in which competing epistemological and disciplinary visions contest for discursive dominance in language-in-society matters, institutional authorization, and resources. Rather than seeing the engagement of sociolinguists with publics as a disinterested activity of knowledge dissemination and the provision of facts, we argue that the publics are better conceived as a terrain toward which sociolinguists direct institutional, disciplinary, and professional interests. Ultimately, our article contributes to a more encompassing understanding of ourselves as sociolinguists. 

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• The Englishization of higher education in Estonia and Latvia

  2021. Josep Soler, Kerttu Rozenvalde. The Englishization of Higher Education in Europe, 57-75

  Chapter

  In Estonia and Latvia, the focus on the domain of higher education as a site of linguistic tension has emerged more powerfully only in recent years. In this chapter, we show how the two sides of the Englishization of higher education (as an opportunity and as a threat) emerge discursively in two public debates that we analyse. Although the issues that are brought up in the debates take a dif ferent shape in the two countries, at a fundamental level, similar concerns are discussed. These include language relationships and linguistic hierarchies in higher education, questions on the quality of higher education, and the role of legal measures applied to manage language matters at universities.

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• Resistance and adaptation to newspeakerness in educational institutions

  2019. Josep Soler, Heiko F. Marten. Language Policy 18 (4), 553-572

  Article

  The term ‘new speaker’ has recently emerged as an attempt by sociolinguists not only to understand the different types of speaker profiles that can be found in contemporary societies, but also to grasp the underlying processes of becoming a legitimate speaker in a given society. In this article, we combine the results from two studies situated in two educational institutions in Estonia in order to find out about speakers’ language attitudes and experiences in connection to learning and using Estonian. We concentrate on members of the international community who have relatively recently arrived to the country. Our results indicate that these speakers fluctuate between two prototypical discourses, which we broadly dub as ‘resistance’ and ‘adaptation’ to newspeakerness. Our study thereby adds to current debates on ‘new speaker’ and language policy issues by illustrating how tensions around language legitimacy are played out on the ground in a small nation state such as Estonia.

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• The multilingual landscape of higher education in the Baltic states

  2019. Josep Soler. Multilingualism in the Baltic States, 443-477

  Chapter

  In recent years there has been increasing debate about the role and status of different languages in the domain of higher education, with an emphasis on how a multilingual balance can be reached at that level. Language and education issues in the Baltic states have been controversial topics for quite some time. Nevertheless, to date not much attention has been paid here to analysing the sociolinguistic situation at universities. This chapter proposes an analysis of the discourses circulating in the university space in the Baltic states. Methodologically, the chapter draws on ‘nexus analysis’. The results show that the three universities examined (the University of Tartu (UT), the University of Latvia (UL) in Riga and Vilnius University (VU)) follow state official monolingualism to some extent, especially in their material space. However, there are also other spaces where other languages can be more actively incorporated. The implications of the current situation are discussed at the end of the chapter, along with a brief discussion on its effects for actual speakers.

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• English in the language ecology of Europe

  2016. Josep Soler-Carbonell. Investigating English in Europe: Contexts and Agendas, 53-58

  Chapter

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• Doing language policy

  2017. Josep Soler, Merike Jürna. Language Policy Beyond the State, 45-60

  Chapter

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• The internationalisation of higher education in two different contexts

  2016. Josep Soler-Carbonell, Lídia Gallego-Balsà. Language, Culture and Curriculum 29 (1), 40-55

  Article

  The topic of the internationalisation of academia has recently attracted attention from sociolinguists and language-policy scholars. In this paper, we compare two different universities from two contrasting contexts in Europe in order to find out more about their projected stance [Jaffe, A. (2009). Stance in a Corsican School: Institutional and Ideological Orders and the production of Bilingual Subjects. In A. Jaffe (Ed.), Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives (pp. 119–145). New York, NY: Oxford University Press] and attitudes towards the different languages present in their immediate contexts. In particular, we compare the University of Tartu (Estonia) with the University of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain), analysing several key parameters. The purpose of the comparison is to contrast, from a sociolinguistic point of view, the higher education setting of two medium-sized language contexts in Europe [Vila, F. X., & Bretxa, V. (Eds.). (2015). Language policy in higher education. The case of medium-sized languages. Bristol: Multilingual Matters] with different demolinguistic and language political features. The results show that both institutions adopt a similar stance in connection to their respective national language (a protectionist attitude), but they take different approaches towards the other societal language and English. We read these differences in light of the broader historical and socio-political backgrounds, which we suggest are reflected in the microcosm of the universities here analysed.

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• What’s so funny now? The strength of weak pronouns in Catalonia

  2013. Kathryn Woolard, Aida Ribot-Bencomo, Josep Soler-Carbonell. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 23 (3), 127-141

  Article

  John Gumperz's foundational analyses of linguistic convergence and of code-switching in bilingual and multilingual settings continue to influence work in interactional sociolinguistics, where these phenomena are seen as systematic mobilizations of the bilingual repertoire to cue interlocutors to the ongoing construction of situated meaning. However, the utility of Gumperz's approach is not restricted to interactional, micro-social questions. As Gumperz's own earliest work showed, varying patterns of code-switching and of linguistic convergence can reveal significant macro-social differences in communities across space as well as changes within a community across time. In earlier work, I have used code-switching and convergence as tracers to help gauge sociopolitical change in Catalonia across several decades, particularly by examining the changing patterns of mixed-language practices that make people laugh. In this article, I analyze new Catalan mass-media data (2006–2013) in order to assess the evolution of the serio-comic situation of Catalan three decades after I first investigated it as a student of Gumperz at the moment of the return to Catalan political autonomy.

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• Linguistic justice and global English: Theoretical and empirical approaches

  2022. Josep Soler, Sergi Morales-Galvez. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2022 (277), 1-16

  Article

  The global spread of English and its impact on the pursuit of linguistic justice has been a topic of concern for scholars in a wide range of different fields in the humanities and social sciences. Firmly convinced of the usefulness of cross-field collaboration to advance our understanding of the expansion of English globally, in this special issue we bring together experts in sociolinguistics and political theory with two goals in mind: (1) to illustrate, empirically, its consequences for speakers in situated contexts; and (2) to propose potential normative responses to the global spread of English. In order to frame the overarching theme of the special issue, and to show our stance as guest editors in connection to global English, in this opening piece we develop a critique to Philippe Van Parijs’ notion of linguistic justice. In particular, we take issue with his vision that promoting English as a global lingua franca is a good idea in order to enhance everyone’s equality of opportunities (e.g., in the labour market). We question such an assumption from both a theoretical and empirical point of view, and argue that having equal access to English is not sufficient to equalize everyone’s opportunities.

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• Language policy in Italian universities Navigating the language ambiguities of higher education internationalisation

  2022. Beatrice Zuaro, Josep Soler, Beyza Björkman Nylén. Language Problems and Language Planning 46 (3), 231-255

  Article

  In recent years, the significant expansion of English-medium instruction (EMI) programmes across higher education institutions outside English-speaking contexts has brought with it an inherent set of language-related tensions and ambiguities. In this article, we explore how a selection of Italian universities have tackled these tensions. Via a content analysis of university policy documents, we investigate the key language-related themes in them, and the orientations to language that these themes entail. The results show that English is seen as necessary for and almost synonymous to internationalisation, as well as a language that can bring benefits to both institutions and individuals. However, a commitment to multilingualism and to the promotion of Italian from a non-protectionist stance is apparent in the documents analysed. This finding, we argue, puts the Italian context apart from other settings that have been previously investigated (e.g. the Nordic countries), and points to an original way in which universities can navigate the language ambiguities that come with the process of higher education internationalisation.

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• A Longitudinal Perspective on Language Ideological Debates in Estonian Higher Education: Current Trends and Tensions

  2022. Josep Soler. English Medium Instruction Practices in Higher Education

  Chapter

  This chapter analyses the linguistic representations in a series of recent language ideological debates in public media on the question of language in Estonian higher education. Revealing of the current tensions between Estonian and English in this field, in the chapter I discuss the evolution of such ideological debates since 2012 until the present moment. In the context of a significant growth and consolidation of English-medium programmes across all public universities in the country, linguistic polarization (the opposition between Estonian vs. English) in Estonia has now consolidated itself and has reached similar levels as in the Nordic countries. Such developments, of course, are not disconnected from broader societal and political changes, influenced by new-nationalist and populist trends. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the implications for researchers and practitioners, with a particular emphasis on the consequences of the ideological frameworks that emerge from the analysed debates.

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• When the scales of home and the academy collapse: Gender roles and chronotopes in online discussions of scholarly publishing during the Covid-19 lockdown

  2023. Kate O'Farrell, Maria Kuteeva, Josep Soler. Women in scholarly publishing, 126-139

  Chapter

  Issues surrounding gender disparities in academic publishing, especially for women with children, have long been reported. The pandemic exacerbated and underscored these issues to an even greater extent. This study explores the ways in which experiences of life during lockdown are narrativized by academic mothers in the comment sections of online news articles covering the topic of gender imbalance in academic publishing during the pandemic. Each of the three articles used in the study was published in the early months of the 2020 lockdown, when evidence of gender disparity was still mostly anecdotal. Methodologically, the study first applies membership categorization analysis in order to understand how gender roles in the academy emerge in the online discussions. Second, narrative analysis is applied to investigate how contributors to the comment sections tell stories of their own and others’ experiences. The intensification of personal and professional pressures is represented in the narratives through shrinking space and time. Exploring this as a chronotope, the study shows how the lockdown caused a collapse between the scales of home and work, which was felt deeply by academic mothers.

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• Predatory Publishers’ Spam Emails as a Symptom of the Multiple Vulnerabilities in Academia

  2023. Josep Soler, Ying Wang. Predatory Practices in Scholarly Publishing and Knowledge Sharing

  Chapter

  This chapter analyzes a large corpus of spam emails spanning a six-year period (2016–2021) with the following two main goals: firstly, to uncover the linguistic features of these texts, and secondly, to connect the linguistic and textual analysis with the discursive and cultural contexts in which these spam emails are embedded. The corpus-based analysis performed in the chapter shows the different topics that predatory publishers’ spam emails focus on, and the ways in which these topics have changed and evolved over time. The main argument in the discussion is that predatory publishers are acutely aware of some of the key features structuring present-day academic publishing. In conclusion, in order to enable more effective ways of tackling the challenges posed by predatory publishing, both analyses and discourses about them should be shifting from a focus on the danger and risks they represent to the actual structuring features that make the existence of predatory publishing possible and viable.

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• Clausal and phrasal complexity in research articles published in well-established and predatory journals

  2023. Ying Wang, Josep Soler. Apples - Journal of Applied Language Studies 17 (1), 65-84

  Article

  Predatory publishing has attracted much scholarly attention recently, but little is known about the actual material published in predatory journals. In this paper, we address this gap focusing on syntactic complexity. Using both traditional syntactic complexity measures and more fine-grained indices of phrasal and clausal complexity, the study explores the similarities and differences between two corpora consisting of 220 research articles drawn from two comparable journals in the discipline of Political Science, one purportedly predatory and one top-ranking. The results show that the articles look similar in many respects (e.g., mean length of sentences/T-units, number of T-units per sentence). Differences are found in more fine-grained indices such as clausal complements, adverbial clauses, and noun phrases with noun premodifiers, which are associated with discipline-specific rhetorical and ideational functions. The study demonstrates the potential of linguistic analyses in contributing to our understanding of predatory publishing as a complex phenomenon. 

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• (Im)possible change: Criticality and constraints in the infrastructures of the academic knowledge economy

  2023. Josep Soler, Iker Erdocia, Kristof Savski. Language, Culture and Society 5 (2), 167-181

  Article

  This article examines three sets of infrastructures that give shape to the academic knowledge economy, namely: institutional infrastructures (universities and conferences); gate-keeping infrastructures (journals and publishers); and validation infrastructures (competitive assessments of individuals and institutions). We analyse the tensed interplay between critical perspectives in applied linguistics and the influence of academic neoliberalism. We develop our argument in three parts: (1) Academic critique and its emancipatory epistemologies are intertwined with established systems and coexist with mechanisms that perpetuate inequalities. (2) Inequalities in knowledge production reverberate in knowledge dissemination, where the hegemonic role of English as the language of academic publishing reinforces the unequal position of different actors in their academic fields. (3) These inequalities (that originate in institutional and gate-keeping infrastructures) extend to the validation of knowledge, which is entrenched in the audit culture that pervades academia and further reinforces neoliberal competitive dynamics. We conclude by reflecting on the possibilities for change at these three levels.

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• 'Rethinking language policy' Bernard Spolsky (2021)

  2023. Josep Soler. Sociolinguistic Studies 17 (1-3), 269-277

  Article

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• World Englishes in ELT textbooks in Swedish upper-secondary schools

  2024. Nellie Lindqvist, Josep Soler. World Englishes 43 (1), 125-140

  Article

  In this article, we investigate how different varieties of English are represented in a selection of materials used in upper-secondary schools in Sweden. A 2011 policy reform of the curriculum for the teaching and learning of English at upper-secondary level underscored the global dimension of the language, taking a distance from the traditional focus on British English. Findings from our content analysis of two selected textbooks suggest that despite this policy change, emphasis is still placed on standard varieties of Inner Circle countries. When other varieties are represented, the characters that utilise them are often portrayed in a more negative light than their Inner Circle counterparts. We suggest that this is indicative of a policy–practice disconnect. We discuss the pedagogical implications for the students of the limited exposure to linguistic variation in English that emerges from the textbooks and point at different ways to continue investigating this issue. 

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• Linguistic domination or discrimination?: Local and international academic staff contest the (in)justice of English as the language of international academic mobility

  2024. Josep Soler, Kerttu Rozenvalde. Journal of English-Medium Instruction 3 (1), 11-29

  Article

  This article analyses some of the linguistic tensions derived from international academic mobility in English-medium instruction multilingual university contexts, focusing on local and international academic staff’s interests from a linguistic justice viewpoint. Firstly, we develop a normative argument to explore whether international academic mobility and increased use of English can become a source of linguistic domination for local staff, or if suggested countermeasures, such as requiring international scholars to learn the local language, might lead to linguistic discrimination against the latter group. Secondly, via a qualitative analysis of survey data, we ask local and international scholars at the University of Tartu about their views on the language policy regime at the university. Protective language policies that encourage locals to use Estonian more and require internationals to learn some Estonian could help enhance linguistic justice, according to local staff. However, international scholars may perceive such requests as discriminatory. Linguistic domination and discrimination play a key role in the clashing interests of stakeholders, creating tension. The study highlights the complexity of the dilemmas faced by many university officials today in their attempt to balance institutional goals with on-the-ground realities.

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• In pursuit of epistemic authority in public intellectual engagement: the case of language and gender

  2024. Iker Erdocia, Josep Soler. Multilingua - Journal of Cross-cultural and Interlanguage Communication 43 (1), 91-118

  Article

  Public intellectual life is an area of inquiry that has not received a great deal of attention within the field of sociolinguistics. This article investigates the performative dimension of public intellectual engagement in the area of language and gender and, more specifically, how epistemic authority about gender-neutral language is constructed in public intellectual contributions in Catalonia, Spain. Adopting Arendt’s notion of truth claim and the Foucauldian concepts of regimes of truth and epistemic sovereignty, we empirically examine the mechanisms of reception and validation of the public engagements of one highly visible linguistic scholar. Our study shows the ways in which this intellectual figure strives to be recognised as having exclusive scientific authority about language. We argue that pursuing the allegedly impartial standpoint of epistemic authority about gender and language inevitably advances the interests of specific political actors and large media corporations of a conservative strand that fervently oppose gender-neutral language. 

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• English language and the career progression of academics in Anglophone universities

  2024. Iker Erdocia, Josep Soler. Higher Education 88, 939-956

  Article

  This study aims to contribute to the ongoing scholarly debate about linguistic privilege in academia. The article pushes this debate forward by considering the role of English in the career development of academics in Anglophone universities. More concretely, our study empirically explores the career trajectories of multilingual scholars in Ireland who speak English as an additional language (EAL). Adopting a Bourdieusian lens, the article conceptualises academia as a locus of competitive struggle over authority, recognition, and prestige, in which scholars avail themselves of different kinds of capital, including linguistic capital, and deploy strategies to flourish. Through a qualitative approach, the article examines data from university documents and procedures, from interviews with EAL scholars in different disciplines and at different stages of their career, and from interviews with academics holding senior management positions in three universities in Dublin. We analyse the language-related challenges that EAL scholars encounter and the affordances with which Anglophone universities provide them, as well as the ways in which language impacts on their career progression. The empirical data reveals a complex and nuanced interplay between language and other academic factors. Our findings suggest the need to go beyond simple hierarchies of academic privilege or disadvantage based on a scholar’s first or additional language alone.

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Show all publications by Josep Soler Carbonell at Stockholm University