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, having co-supervised two doctoral students to completion and currently co-supervising another student.

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, I have turned my attention to questions of linguistic justice, building strong collaboration ties with colleagues in political philosophy and political theory. My point of entry to discussions of linguistic justice is the role of English as a global lingua franca and the search for conceptual ways of overcoming its related injusitces. 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

• 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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• 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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• 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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• 'Rethinking language policy' Bernard Spolsky (2021)

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

  Article

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• ‘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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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Show all publications by Josep Soler Carbonell at Stockholm University