The colonial legacy in educational language planning in Scandinavia: The colonial legacy in educational language planning in Scandinavia

The article discusses linguicide and linguicism in relation to the more generalrole of language in the unequal distribution ofpower and resources at amore general level (induding some of the tatest attempts to secure bindinglinguistic human rights to minorities) and uses the struggle of Sweden-Finns to become accepted äs an official national minority äs an example.Finland and Sweden are neighboring Nordic countries. Finland was colo-nized by Sweden for some 650 years, up to 1809 when it became a RussianGrand Duchy, to gain its independence in 1917. Swedish is the largestminority language in Finland, and Finnish in Sweden. Swedish Speakers inFinland have possibly the best legal protection ofany linguistic minority inthe world. Finnish Speakers in Sweden have almost no linguistic rights.They are not accepted äs a national linguistic minority. The article claimsthat Sweden, by preventing Sweden Finns and the Finnish language fromachieving any kind of official Status, guaranteed by international law, andby making it difficult to use Finnish äs a legitimate medium of educationthroughout the educational process, is attempting to commit linguistic geno-cide. It is not done openly, but by sophisticated means, through ideologicalglorification ofthe majority language andculture, stigmatization, invisibili-zation and invalidation of minority languages and cultures, and a rational-ization of the relationship between them so that everything promotingSwedish at the expense of minority languages is presented äs goodfor theminorities, the majority "helping" them