Abstract
Language policy (LP) has become a heated topic of debate in Norwegian higher education (HE) and research in recent years. This Master’s thesis has investigated how LP has been practiced—specifically the language requirement (LR) for international academic staff (IAs) on permanent contracts to learn Norwegian fluently within the first few years of their employment. This research was organized as a qualitative case study of the LP practices of a single faculty at the University of Oslo and utilized institutional theory to analyze how institutionalized LP practices have become in the case faculty. In addition, this study applied institutional logics to analyze the various—and at times conflicting—pressures present in the context of LP practice in Norwegian HE. Examples include pressures to internationalize the sector, political signals from the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, the history and traditions of the academic professions and its many disciplines, and the pragmatic considerations in organizing the ever-expanding sector and the Higher Education Institutions (HEI) themselves. This study’s thematic analysis of language policy documents and semi-structured interviews with key actors at UiO identified a variety of resources organized at the central (institutional), faculty, and departmental levels which support the Norwegian language training (NLT) of IAs. The case faculty has developed a more standardized process for informing IAs of this language requirement and for monitoring their NLT progress. However, the irregular utilization of these resources and varying experiences with faculty practices indicated LP practice to be low to moderately institutionalized. The analysis of institutional logics uncovered a complex web of dynamics between the logics present in LP practice within UiO and the case faculty, which ultimately point toward two approaches to LP and practice. From the top-down—most prominent in policy documents from the Ministry and other sector-level bodies—there is a focus on the importance of language for its own sake and for its relevance to the future of Norwegian society and culture. From the bottom-up, the case faculty appears instead to promote the NLT of IAs for their own integration, and for the wellbeing of their department, faculty, and university, which will ultimately benefit from having staff who are able to participate fully in all parts of university work and democracy. It appears that framing this requirement from the perspective of inclusion and integration has been advantageous for the case faculty: The perspective bypasses some of the core arguments that arise between the more nationalistic arguments for the Norwegian language in policy documents and the professional considerations regarding language choice in academia. This thesis adds knowledge to the field of LP research by filling the gap observed in the empirical knowledge about the kinds of resources and processes that have been developed to support the NLT of IAs in Norwegian universities. It also makes a conceptual contribution to the use of institutional theory through the combination of institutional logics and institutionalization into an integrated framework to analyze the institutionalization of practices pressured by multiple legitimate institutional logics.