This chapter provides an overview of the background of English-medium instruction (EMI) in the Scandinavian region. While there are different views on what the Scandinavian region covers geographically, for our present purposes, we include, alphabetically, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. In our overview, we will touch upon some important differences that these four countries have despite the frequent discussion of the homogenous nature of these countries. Among these differences are the status of the local languages, the history of higher education, and the different implementations of EMI, which we believe are important. In search for a better and more nuanced understanding of EMI in the region, we will discuss the development and expansion of EMI in Scandinavian higher education and draw some conclusions on the differences and similarities that emerge from our review. We also argue that we need continued, fine-tuned research that carefully considers the histories and current sociolinguistic realities of these countries, thereby explaining the many faces of EMI in this geographical region.

This chapter recognizes the fluidity of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) as a resource employed primarily by multilingual speakers who perform in "transient multilingual communities". It focuses predominantly on the well-documented morphosyntactic commonalities that emerge in ELF interactions as well as the processes behind them. The chapter reviews the now well-known features reported from empirical ELF studies along with a review of the features of different varieties of English covered in the World Englishes paradigm, showing a considerable degree of overlap. The linguistic diversity present in ELF settings naturally reflects itself in several areas, including variation in morphosyntactic use. The chapter highlights the need to problematize the theoretical construct 'variety' on empirical grounds. Taking into account the overlap of features from varieties covered in World Englishes, and what has been suggested previously in literature about stabilization and spreading, a problematization of variation and variety does not seem irrelevant.

This paper focuses on the under-researched genre of PhD supervision meetings (but see Vehvilainen, Sanna. 2009a. Problems in the research problem: Critical feedback and resistance in academic supervision. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 53[2]. 185-201; Vehvilainen, Sanna. 2009b. Student-initiated advice in academic supervision. Research on Language and Social Interaction 42[2]. 163-190; Bjorkman, Beyza. 2015. PhD supervisor-PhD student interactions in an English-medium Higher Education [HE] setting: Expressing disagreement. European Journal of Applied Linguistics 3[2]. 205-229; Bjorkman, Beyza. 2016. PhD adviser and student interactions as a spoken academic genre. In K. Hyland & P. Shaw [eds.], The Routledge handbook of English for Academic Purposes, 348-361. Oxon: Routledge; Bjorkman, Beyza. 2017. PhD supervision meetings in an English as a Lingua Franca [ELF] setting: Linguistic competence and content knowledge as neutralizers of institutional and academic power. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 6[1]. 111-139) and investigates knowledge construction episodes in PhD students' discussions with their supervisors on their co-authored papers. In these meetings, all supervisors and students use English as their lingua franca (ELF). Such supervision meetings are made up of social negotiation and collaborative sense-making, providing a good base for learning to take place (Vygotsky, L. S. 1978. Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), which in the present context is the enculturation of the PhD student into the research community (Manathunga, Catherine. 2014. Intercultural postgraduate supervision: Reimagining time, place and knowledge. New York: Routledge). It is precisely these negotiation and collaborative sense-making practices that the present paper focuses on, in order to investigate knowledge construction practices. While there is an abundance of research in disciplinary knowledge construction and academic literacy practices from cognitive and behavioral sciences, knowledge about novice scholars' knowledge construction practices is scant in applied linguistics (but see Li, Yongyan. 2006. Negotiating knowledge contribution to multiple discourse communities: A doctoral student of computer science writing for publication. Journal of Second Language Writing 15[3]. 159-178). Even less is known about how PhD students may negotiate knowledge construction and engage in meaning-making practices in interaction with their supervisors. The material comprises 11 hours of naturally occurring speech by three supervisors and their students where they discuss the reviewers' comments they have received from the journal. The predominant method employed here is applied conversation analysis (CA) (Richards, Keith & Paul Seedhouse [eds.]. 2005. Applying conversation analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), which includes both local patterns of interaction as well as the tensions between [these] local practices and any 'larger structures' in which these are embedded, such as conventional membership categories, institutional rules, instructions, accounting obligations, etc. (Have, Paul ten. 2007. Doing conversation analysis. London: Sage 199). The analyses here aim to show how the PhD supervisors and students discuss the reviewers' comments with reference to (i) their own disciplinary community of climate science, and (ii) the domestic discourse community of the target journals (see also Li, Yongyan. 2006. Negotiating knowledge contribution to multiple discourse communities: A doctoral student of computer science writing for publication. Journal of Second Language Writing 15[3]. 159-178). The preliminary findings of the analyses show a tendency by the PhD students to focus more heavily on the domestic discourse community of the target journals, especially when justifying their methodological choices. The PhD supervisors, on the other hand, base their meaning-making on the conventions of the disciplinary community of climate science, pointing out broader disciplinary community practices. These findings, highlighting a need to focus on novice scholars' meaningmaking efforts, can be used to inform PhD supervision in general.

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.

The present paper investigates PhD supervision meetings, using material from naturally occurring speech of ten hours by PhD supervisors and students who all use English as a lingua franca (ELF) for research purposes. The recordings have been transcribed in their entirety, with conversation analytical procedures and additional ethnographic interviews with the PhD supervisors. The present paper is a follow-up to the two previous studies by the author (in European Journal for Applied Linguistics 3[2], 2015, and The Routledge Handbook of English for Academic Purposes, 2016) and focuses on linguistic competence and content knowledge as factors possibly mitigating the power asymmetry present in the interactions. The findings show no observable power asymmetries manifested in the interactions or in the interview responses by the supervisors. The analyses showed that the supervisors’ and the students’ level of linguistic competence seemed very similar, which was further supported by the supervisors’ self-reports of their own English and their informal evaluations of their students’ levels of proficiency. When it comes to content knowledge, the students overall showed very good command of their subjects, disciplinary conventions and their projects in general, further supported by their supervisors’ evaluations in the interview data. Based on these findings, it is suggested here that in ELF interactions of this particular type where the speakers have similar levels of linguistic competence and content knowledge, power asymmetries become less visible.

Den här artikeln handlar om doktorandhandledningsmöten och är baserad på inspelningar av 10 timmars interaktion mellan handledare och doktorander som alla använder engelska som lingua franca (ELF). Alla inspelningar har transkriberats i sin helhet och analyserats genom att använda metodprocedurer tagna från samtalsanalys. Etnografiska intervjuer har genomförts med handledarna i anslutning till inspelningarna för att få ytterligare information om dessa samtals natur. Denna artikel är en uppföljare till författarens två tidigare studier (Björkman 2015. PhD supervisor–PhD student interactions in an English-medium Higher Education (HE) setting: Expressing disagreement. European Journal for Applied Linguistics (EUJAL) 3(2). 205–229; och 2016. PhD adviser and student interactions as a spoken academic genre. In Ken Hyland & Philip Shaw (eds), The Routledge Handbook of English for Academic Purposes, 348–361. Routledge.) och fokuserar specifikt på språkfärdighet och maktobalans i handledningsmöten. Studiens resultat visar att handledarnas och doktorandernas språkfärdigheter är lika. Detta resultat bekräftas av handledarnas bedömningar av sina egna och av doktorandernas språkfärdighetsnivåer. Av inspelningarna framgår även att doktoranderna i studien har mycket goda ämnes- och disciplinkunskaper, vilket bekräftas av handledarna i intervjuerna. Baserat på dessa resultat kan man konstatera att maktobalanser blir mindre synbara när talare har liknande språkfärdigheter och ämneskunskaper.