English in Norway

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English in Norway

• With a special view of
• English used in a shopping center and
• English used in Norwegian academic life
• based on Brit Mæhlums article Engelsk eller
  norsk

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Companies, products and advertising

• Ten minutes at Byporten shopping centre, Nov. 27.
  2007

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Academic life

• University of Oslo 2002 9th semester medicine
  is taught only in English.
• Beneficial for students?
• How will the teaching be?
• Beneficial for patients?
• New terms in higher education
• Bachelor, master, PhD
• No mention of Norwegian in Univ law

16
Internationalization

• the use of English
• The dictatorship of the circumstances
• The optimism of powerlessness
• Nobody asks the fundamental questions
• Which train is it thats leaving?
• When and where does it go?
• IS there a train?
• Where does the pressure to use English come from?

17
Do we dare ask questions?

• Is it really unproblematic for Norwegians to
  speak and write (ie think and perceive) in a
  language that is not their mother tongue?
• Are Norwegians as good in English as we like to
  think?
• Do we know enough about the consequences of
  having to learn in a foreign language?
• Which consequences might the extensive use of
  English have for the development of students
  competence in Norwegian?
• What are the pedagogical consequences?

18
Publishing

• 2000 70 of all publications at Norwegian
  institutions of higher learning were in English
• ?The loss of Norwegian terminology?
• Loss or renunciation of domains?

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Norwegian a complete language?

• Will Norwegian survive on all levels in society?
• Will Norwegian be reduced to a language for
  everyday affairs?
• Will Norway experience a linguistic situation
  similar to that of former colonies?

20
The myths of progress

• English is associated with human progress,
  development, modernization, Westernization,
  globalization
• Resistance to English is reactionary,
  old-fashioned
• English is natural, neutral and beneficial
• English a symbol of science and technology,
  efficiency, rationality, a great civilization

21
Academic life and the myths

• Should intellectuals break with the dictatorship
  of the circumstances?
• Isnt it the role of the intellectual to raise
  embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and
  dogma and be unwilling to accept easy
  formulas? (Said)
• Has academic life become totally dominated by
  economic interests and issues of growth and
  competition?

22
English a cultural tyrannosaurus rex?

• The loss of cultural diversity?
• The rise of a global monoculture?
• Accelerating language death?
• English - a linguistic cannibal that gobbles up
  others and eliminates cultural practices?
  (Phillipson)

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English in Norway a gordian knot?

• What should the role of English be?
• How can we best preserve Norwegian?
• How can Norwegians be helped to see that there is
  a problem?