Discourses of functional bilingualism in the Sami curriculum in Sweden

Abstract

ABSTRACTSami are Indigenous languages spoken by the Sami people in the northern parts of Scandinavia and Russia. All Sami languages are endangered because of historically aggressive assimilation policies. Currently Sami communities are working actively with language revitalisation processes. This article examines pupils’ access to knowledge in and about Sami languages and functional bilingualism in Sami and Swedish within the curriculum for the Sami schools in Sweden. Through a multifaceted lens of functional linguistic analysis, Bloom’s revised taxonomy of knowledge types and processes, and Bernstein’s concepts of vertical and horizontal discourse we examine the learning outcomes in the Sami and Swedish syllabi. The findings show an unequal balance between the two languages with the Sami syllabus containing fewer knowledge types, cognitive processes, verb processes, a stronger focus on oracy, and a stronger horizontal discourse than the Swedish syllabus. We conclude that the discourses about functional bilingualism that underpin these policy documents is contradictory and does not support Sami to be a fully functional language for all domains of society.