The Language Campus Strategy

Our mission

The Language Campus aims to create a community among the units at the University of Jyväskylä that work with language and enhance the cooperation between these experts. Language Campus enhances critical understanding and upholds ethical and socially responsible discourse on themes related to language. This discourse on languages, language teaching and multilingualism happens both within the university community and in societal interaction.

Strategic aims (for 2022-2027)

No.	Strategic aim
1	Promoting a sense of community at Language Campus	Language Campus enhances network-like activities and structures that support the participation of diverse staff and students.
2	Equitable and ethically sound teaching, research and community work	Language Campus enhances ethical and socially responsible language expertise that is based on equitable teaching, research and other communal work.
3	Re-conceptualising multilingualism	Language Campus enhances re-conceptualising of multilingualism in research, teaching and societal interaction.
4	Developing stakeholder connections and societal impact	Language Campus brings forth its work to stakeholders and the wider society.

Aims explained

The Language Campus builds a sense of community between departments and actors working with language at the University of Jyväskylä. People at Language Campus bring forward the voices of a diverse community, and promote recognizing, valuing and getting to know this diversity. These issues are promoted in research, teaching, studies and in other communal work and in recreational activities. We come from different cultures and backgrounds and know different languages, which affect our interaction with other Language Campus members.

By working together, we learn more about others and ourselves. We also learn how to increase transparency and equality of our activities. By this learning, we develop strategies and objectives with the aim to positively impact all parts of our multilingual work life. The Language Campus encourages the use of different languages and translanguaging in work and studies and creates opportunities for staff and students to get to know all of its institutions and players.

The starting point of socially equitable teaching and research is the recognition that our current society, including higher education institutions and the Language Campus is not equal or fair, and that this situation can and has to be challenged by education and research. Education and research that aims for social equity show how discrimination and exclusion operate and practice critical and self-critical approaches that target discriminatory processes and practices.

Members of the Language Campus highlight the role linguistic practices, languages, and communication play in creating and perpetuating inequities and are constantly seeking ways to change that. All these efforts are understood as long-term and sustainable commitment to a more equitable society, university, and Language Campus.

The Language Campus promotes the view of multilingualism as a significant resource for socially, ethnically, culturally and linguistically varied societies. It sheds light on the role of various linguistic and other semiotic resources from the point of view of individuals and groups as part of social practices and processes taking place in society.

Our basic idea is to act as a cohesive Language Campus to achieve wider social impact and visibility. We work closely with our stakeholders and strive to form new cooperation networks. We are doing impressive work in areas such as language and language education policy making, for example by actively participating in the debate on linguistic minorities. In the area of language education, we want to demonstrate the need for diverse language skills. The language campus publishes research findings and statements on current social issues in various forums

The Language Campus activities

The activities of the Language Campus are pictured in the figure below. Every second year the Language Campus Board, where possible with input from the larger Language Campus community, decides on a biennial theme that will guide its activities and events (pictured as the blue circle). In particular, it will shape a) funding applications to develop teaching and research, b) internal educational initiatives ("teach-ins"), c) policy work, and d) outreach work such as collaborations with stakeholders. These four groups of activities will help the Language Campus to grow as a community, build connections among its members, learn together and contribute to current debates as a known active player in the field.