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Language policy on multilingual state websites (completed)

Portrait.

Maimu Berezkina.

Photo: Nadia Frantsen, UiO.

About the project

This PhD project investigates the inclusion of various linguistic groups into the increasingly digitized state communication of two multilingual European nation-states: Estonia and Norway. The focus lies on institutions offering public services, such as the tax office, labor and welfare departments, the police, and the directorate of immigration, which are all central to connecting authorities with the public. The project employs an actor-centered approach to analyzing overt and covert language policies and aims to provide an overview of the factors influencing decisions about the state institutions’ communication strategies with a multilingual public.

This project contributes to research on institutional language policy, more specifically to the investigation of institutional language policies in complex multilingual states in late modernity. Some of the central themes characteristic for this period in time are the importance of communication technologies, the influence of global English and non-predictable migration from different parts of the world. At the same time, linguistic minorities in Europe are granted certain sovereignty and rights that need to be catered for. So how do state institutions as central actors of the nation-state respond to this complex reality in their language policy?

Duration

2013–2016

Published Dec. 8, 2013 10:45 PM - Last modified Apr. 21, 2020 12:04 PM

Contact

Maimu Berezkina

Participants

  • Maimu Berezkina Universitetet i Oslo
Detailed list of participants