Elite bilingual identities in higher education in the Anglophone world: the stratification of linguistic diversity and reproduction of socio-economic inequalities in the multilingual student population

Abstract

ABSTRACTAs universities in the Anglophone world attend to operating on a global stage, linguistic diversity in the sector has intensified. Historically, higher education has adopted language-as-problem orientations to managing linguistic diversity, viewing multilingual repertoires largely as an obstacle. An emerging body of work informed by language-as-resource orientations seeks to counter these deficit views. However, while timely, it risks treating the multilingual student population as a homogeneous group. This paper addresses this issue by developing a finer-grained understanding of student experiences of their multilingual repertoires with two groups of students from different socioeconomic backgrounds: working-class Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) undergraduate students and international postgraduate students from more socially elite families. By examining students’ experiences of their multilingual repertoires in the institution, I demonstrate how universities stratify the linguistic diversity in their midst, arguing that this is resonant with elite-plebeian views of bilingualism. I contend that language-as-resource informed curriculum and pedagogy needs to attend to institutional practices that stratify linguistic diversity to avoid reinforcing a situation in which the multilingualism of students from professional and socially elite groups is reinforced while little is gained when it comes to the multilingualism of working-class BME students.