Contrasting a university's language policy with its linguistic landscape: a Norwegian case study

Abstract

This study demonstrates that linguistic landscape analysis is a powerful tool for assessing the effectiveness of a university language policy, as it provides in situ evidence for discursive patterns shaping language use in public space. It uses the official language policy of a Norwegian institution of higher education (Høgskulen på Vestlandet, HVL) as a case study, contrasting its language guidelines with the linguistic make-up of the signage in the linguistic landscape on one of its campuses. The comparison shows that the linguistic landscape prioritizes the national representational level (use of Bokmål) in its bottom-up signage, while the language policy of the university mainly highlights regional and international aspects (connected to the parallel use of Nynorsk and English). At the same time, it is shown that the top-down signage issued by the university does not efficiently implement its language policy goals, as bilingual Nynorsk-English signs are rare, Nynorsk faces substantial competition from Bokmål, and English is both neglected and constructed as a less important variety.