Swedishization or Internationalization? Negotiating the Common Language and Culture in a Swedish-Baltic Financial Institution

Abstract

Not all multinational companies adopt corporate language policies to regulate language use. However, as several researchers have pointed out, there is seldom a true absence of a language policy in multilingual communication settings, and language management takes place whenever it is possible to identify language managers. In companies with no language strategies, internal communication managers often take decisions on language use and status. With the aim of detecting language management in a Swedish financial institution operating in the Baltic states with no explicit language policy, a nexus analysis of internal communication managers’ weekly telephone conferences was carried out. Since nexus analysis examines how discourses of multiple scales interact in language policies as social actions, the recordings of the interactions during the conferences were supplemented with interviews with the participants and with analysis of the company’s official policy texts and reports. Language management is a complex social phenomenon influenced by the social, cultural and institutional contexts it takes place in and in which different, sometimes even contradictory discourses related to language use and status, such as internationalization, multiculturalism and multilingualism, intersect, depending on the participants backgrounds and positions in the institution.