Institutional Language Policy Research Articles

UFPEL’S INTERNATIONALIZATION AT HOME

This paper builds on the concept of Internationalization at Home (IaH) to describe five initiatives implemented at the Universidade Federal de Pelotas (UFPel) from 2021 to 2022. Aligned with UFPel’s Strategic Plan for Internationalization (2018) and the institutional Language Policy (2020), these initiatives were conceived and implemented by the International Office’s Language Policy Team seeking to create an academic environment that promotes international and intercultural understanding. The work offers an analysis of the challenges and outcomes of these initiatives, drawing on both qualitative and quantitative data. The results highlight the impact of these initiatives in terms of improved language skills, enhanced academic literacy, and the integration of languages into curricula.Keywords: Linguistic Policy, Initiatives, Academic Practices

Prieštaringos nuostatos dėl estų kalbos Tartu universitete: vietos ir užsienio akademinių darbuotojų apklausos duomenų analizė

During the last decade, the universities in Estonia have internationalized their staff and student body to such an extent that the language environment in academia has undergone considerable changes. To react to the internationalization and Anglicisation of higher education and protect the use of Estonian in academia, the University of Tartu renewed its language policy in 2020 and commissioned a survey in 2021 to gain a better understanding of the implementation of the policy and its academic staff members’ attitudes towards the policy. This paper is based on the survey results. The survey was conducted by the authors in 2021 and 2022 and examines the attitudes of the local and international academic staff on acquiring Estonian and using it as the working language of the university. The results show a major difference in the attitudes of the local and international staff members. The local staff is in favour of language policies intended to advance the acquisition and use of Estonian in academia, whereas the international staff is generally interested only in acquiring introductory Estonian skills. Their motivation to continue learning Estonian is low since English is used as the common language of communication and work at the university. Based on the results, the authors present recommendations for designing inclusive institutional language policy and flexible forms of learning Estonian.

‘It’s a bit contradictory’: teachers’ stances to (practiced) language policies in German-language ECEC in Italy

ABSTRACT Linguistic minority spaces tend to have a long history of language-ideological struggles that are often fought on the terrain of education, which is further complexified in the light of more recent migration. The northernmost Italian province of South Tyrol is such a space, in which German-language preschools are increasingly attended by children not commonly positioned as ‘German-speaking’, inevitably leading to challenges to the language education policies of these institutions. Drawing on ethnographic research, this paper investigates how teachers in early childhood education and care (ECEC) interpret and position themselves in relation to institutional and practiced language policies in this context. We show that teachers base their interpretations of language policies on a variety of sources, including written and ratified policy texts, the structural organisation of their institution, and their own beliefs and experience. We argue that contradictions embedded in institutional language policies require teachers to professionally navigate the demands placed on them in upholding the monolingualism of their institution, and in educating multilingual children. This paper sheds light on the complexities of (practiced) language policies in multilingual societies characterised by migration, providing insights into the challenges faced by ECEC teachers and highlighting the potential for ethnographic research to inform professional development initiatives.

Emotions as entanglements: unpacking teachers’ emotion management and policy negotiation in English-medium instruction programmes

ABSTRACT There is a dearth of knowledge on the emotional challenges content-area teachers in English-medium instruction (EMI) programmes face, and how they manage their emotions in their efforts to negotiate a top-down language policy. This paper examines the entangled emotional experiences of EMI content-area teachers in Nepal’s school education. In contrast to a psychological approach to teachers’ emotions, this article draws on sociocultural and ideological perspectives on emotions to unpack a connection between emotions, institutional language policies, language ideologies, identity, and teacher agency. The analysis of EMI teachers’ emotional dynamics essentially identifies their emotions as ‘entanglements’, reflecting the interconnectedness of emotions with other variables such as language ideology, identity, and agency in content-and-language-integrated education. The findings of this study showed that teachers’ limited English proficiency led to negative emotions (e.g. anxiety, fear, frustration, and shame), stimulating them to use English-Nepali bilingualism as a creative strategy to manage their emotional challenges and also to exercise their agency in response to their students’ needs. However, their translanguaging strategy – which otherwise might have included the students’ home language, Bhojpuri – was restricted by hegemonic language ideologies. The findings show that multilingual teachers typically do not experience emotions in a vacuum but in response to other social phenomena. The paper supports the argument that teacher emotion management is not an apolitical process but is rather ideologically and discursively constructed and situated.

The EMI content lecturer as a street-level bureaucrat: discretionary actions and coping mechanisms in micro-level language policy-as-produced

ABSTRACT The field of English as a Medium-of-Instruction (EMI) research in tertiary education is undergoing a context-specific turn, focusing attention on how the official medium of instruction interacts with local languages, as well as the multi-faceted interplay between national and/or institutional language policies and classroom practice. This article reports on findings from linguistic ethnographic fieldwork at a Belgian higher education institution: for two semesters, the interactions between a lecturer and his students in an English-medium Industrial Design Engineering course were observed. The lecturer’s micro-level didactic choices are studied through the lens of Lipsky’s Street-Level Bureaucracy. This reveals a systematic pattern of on-the-ground language policy construction which is evidenced in classroom practice. While the findings of this study problematise the pillarized ‘either/or’ language choices that continue to dominate a polarised language policy debate, they equally underline the micro-level agency of the disciplinary EMI instructors in shaping public policy. For EMI-contexts more generally, our analysis suggests the viability and sociolinguistic relevance of an enactment-of-policy-in-interaction perspective which is equally a matter of disciplinary induction. The study of ‘coping mechanisms’ thus becomes an arena for policy development and teacher training.

Translanguaging in higher education: experiences and recommendations of international graduate students from the Global South

ABSTRACT Canada is among the top three receiving countries for international students globally, and the leading sources of international students consist of countries in the Global South. Despite the multilingual reality of universities in Canada, most institutional language policies require only English or French to be used in instruction and assessment. The consequences of these policies include challenges in ensuring inclusive and equitable education. A translanguaging pedagogy has the potential to affirm and leverage the diverse language practices of international students, but it needs to be centered in the lived experiences, language practices, knowledge systems, and goals of a multilingual student body. This paper reports on the experiences and recommendations of international graduate students from the Global South related to pedagogical translanguaging in higher education. Data sources included interviews with 15 graduate students enrolled in the education faculty of a Canadian university. A thematic analysis of the data suggested that students’ translanguaging practices are restricted to informal spaces and ‘secret talk,’ and influenced by their instructors’ varied attitudes and language policies. Students’ recommendations include affirming translanguaging as a right and pedagogical resource for international students, incorporating translanguaging in academic writing, diversifying hiring practices, and providing training for instructors and prospective teachers.

Ideology and policy: exploring barriers to translanguaging between Chinese teachers and learners in a UK university

ABSTRACT Over the past few decades, there has been a sharp increase in the number of international students enrolling in postgraduate courses at UK universities, with students from China making up the single largest national group. At the same time, there has been a gradual increase in Chinese teachers and faculty members, as these same students continue their studies and build a life in UK academia. Ideally, this demographic shift should offer the opportunity for a flourishing multilingual and translingual academic space in UK universities. However, this is often not the case, with English remaining the default and often only option in teacher/student interactions, regardless of the linguistic and cultural background of the interlocutors. In this study, we explore the barriers to translanguaging practices between Chinese students and their Chinese dissertation supervisor. Through observation of supervisory sessions and interviews with students, we found considerable resistance to translanguaging practices involving the use of shared first language whilst in the UK learning environment. This resistance was seen to be driven by native-speakerist and monolinguistic ideologies, lack of institutional language policy, and actions and attitudes of individual students and teachers.

An analysis of lecturers’ beliefs and behaviour towards multilingual curriculum teaching material: a case study of isiZulu and English

ABSTRACT This article reflects on a longitudinal study that sought to assess if the expressed lecturers’ beliefs matched their behaviour towards a teaching material developed on the principles of bi/-multilingual education. A mixed method approach consisting of a review of the earlier reported language attitudes of English lecturers and a comparative document analysis of the developed dual language instruction (DLI) (isiZulu-English) teaching material of 2011, 2014 and 2018 was employed. The study found that the earlier expressed attitudes were positive towards the new teaching approach. However, throughout the years, the 2011 DLI material had been gradually reversed to almost its original monolingual form, in which English was the dominant language. The findings contradict what a group of the remaining lecturers from the 2011 cohort responsible for revision and use of the teaching material earlier expressed as their beliefs towards multilingual education. This shows that English lecturers from the selected institution are not consistent in their support of the Language Policy in Higher Education (2002 & 2020), the Institutional Language Policy and interventions designed to disrupt the status quo in language usage to improve access and excellence in the education of African students.

Developing an institutional language policy in the complex scenario of internationalization

Over the last 20 years since the Bologna Agreement the role of language in Higher Education has gained recognition as an integral part of the teaching/learning process, and an essential element of the process of internationalization. The rapid shift towards internationalization has had a pronounced effect on academic life, procedure, and personnel. In this process, it has often become the role of Language Centres to organize the language aspect, and to a more limited extent, to advise on language.This short paper looks at the involvement of the University of Padova Language Centre (CLA) in the process of internationalization, and in particular the promotion of a language policy. A project developed to promote language and teaching methodology courses for academic staff required to teach in English, and the findings of research based on this project, led to recognition of the need to draft a language policy which encompasses the wide-ranging issues relevant to successful internationalization.

Language, hospitality, and internationalisation: exploring university life with the ethical and political acts of university administrators

ABSTRACT Drawing on the ethico-political framework of hospitality, this paper investigates the communicative practices of three administrative support staff as they attempt to manage the twin challenges of working in adherence to state and institutional language policies while communicating ethically in an internationalising workplace. Academic administrative staff rarely feature in studies on internationalisation yet are crucial to understanding the complex day-to-day realities of contemporary university life. Empirically, this study reports on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, including observations, interviews, and email records. The data demonstrate language work being carried out on an ethical basis, before the consideration of any particular languages, beyond the participants’ political obligations, and in excess of institutional support. The current national and institutional responses to the multilingual realities of Swedish university life, I argue, are failing to do justice to and facilitate the ethically grounded, bottom-up language policy-making as practised by this study’s participants. This paper thus promises to open up debate on hospitality within language policy and planning for internationalising Higher Education, and, in its re-evaluation of the ethical and political dimensions of hospitality, it emphasises the framework’s critical potential within sociolinguistic research, more generally.

Language Guerrillas: Signing Multilingualism into Action

This article opens an analytical window into the creation of multilingual guerrilla translations by participants in a preservice language teacher program at a public university in the United States. As an intervention responding to the prevalence of English monolingual signage on this highly diverse university campus, the college students invited a public audience into a joint critical interrogation of implicit institutional language policies, as their signage offered a necessarily incomplete and intentionally makeshift alternative to the official English displays. Inspired by the three-phase model of critical pedagogy, this grassroots endeavor embraced Freire’s notion of transformative praxis defined by the symbiotic relation of action and reflection. A closer examination of the scaffolding, which guided the planning and implementation, lends insight into activity design with the potential to nurture an activist aptitude among students. Comments from participants suggest that the conceptual stepping stones towards students’ collective critical engagement had a positive influence on their perception of language (teacher) advocacy and activism.

Tutors’ beliefs about language and roles: practice as language policy in EMI contexts

ABSTRACT It has been well established that for all students, but particularly second language (L2) English speaking students, academic English speaking skills are key to developing specialist terminology and disciplinary content in an English as a medium of instruction (EMI) context. However, what is less clear in many contexts is the institutional language policy necessary to guide and support both L2 English speaking students and disciplinary tutors. In this paper, we focus on disciplinary tutors’ beliefs of language and their roles with respect to language support to surface implicit and covert language policies. We argue that in the absence of explicit policy, showcasing the range of tutor perspectives and practice around language support can provide a way forward in explicating good practice and highlighting an approach in which all stakeholders take responsibility for supporting students’ academic speaking skills in an EMI context.

‘I am sorry, but I have to speak Korean’: stancetaking through apology in public speech at an ‘English only’ Korean university

ABSTRACT This paper explores the ways in which apology functions as a stance act at public speech events. Rather than focusing on speakers’ intentions, in this study I pay attention to indexical meanings associated with apologies in a specific context. The study primarily analyses apology sequences that involve code-switching, which were drawn from ethnographic data gathered in a Korean university where English has been adopted as its official language (EOL). Data analysis shows that the use of apology allows speakers to take a stance towards their language choice and the institutional language policy. Both apology and speakers’ metalinguistic articulations prior to code-switching reflect and reinforce the two language ideologies: (1) the language policy is intended to serve for international members of the university, and (2), Korean can be used when needed. A closer look at the way in which apology is used in specific contexts suggests that speakers’ main purpose of apology is self-presentation in a public event. Apology functions to index speaker’s defiance of an institution’s language policy while avoiding their responsibility for the action. The sociolinguistic concept of stance allows us to better understand speakers’ positioning with respect to norms and expectations informed by institutional language policy.

Evolution of university internationalisation strategies and language policies: challenges and opportunities for language centres

Abstract In this paper, we explore how language centres can and need to seize the initiative in matters of internationalisation, language policy and supporting a multilingual and multicultural institutional environment. We identify and explore a number of challenges and opportunities, using the situation in the United Kingdom as our example, demonstrating how language centres can evidence their existing contribution to a wider interpretation of internationalisation than is often found within university international strategies. In that context, we explore the skillset of the ‘global graduate’ to which language centres can contribute extensively. We demonstrate how language centres can contribute to the achievement of research excellence in an international higher education environment and the dimensions of institutional language policies within the context of a global university. Finally, we share the AULC manifesto for the role of language centres within global universities and propose that CercleS might elaborate a similar manifesto to raise the profile of language centres at the heart of higher education internationalisation.

Institutional Language Policy and ESL Teachers’ L2 Writing Assessment Practices

Les pratiques d’évaluation monopolisent une part importante du temps des enseignants d’ALS et ont des répercussions considérables sur l’engagement et l’apprentissage des élèves. Ces pratiques sont aussi, à leur tour, fortement influencées par la conception qu’ont les enseignants de l’écrit en L2 et le contexte politique dans lequel ils travaillent. Bien que plusieurs chercheurs se soient intéressés aux pratiques d’évaluation utilisées en classe par les enseignants d’ALS, peu de recherches ont été consacrées à la relation entre la politique linguistique institutionnelle et la conception qu’ont les enseignants de l’écrit en L2, d’une part, et à la façon dont cette relation influe sur les pratiques d’évaluation de l’écrit en L2. La présente étude porte plus précisément sur trois enseignants d’un même programme de formation collégiale en ALS et l’éventail des méthodes auxquelles ils ont recours pour concrétiser l’application de la politique éducative. Le contexte politique dans lequel œuvrent les enseignants et leurs antécédents personnels ont créé une relation complexe tout en définissant la façon dont ils ont élaboré, utilisé et interprété les évaluations ayant pour but l’appréciation et le soutien des progrès de leurs étudiants dans l’écrit. Des analyses de cas transversales montrent que les enseignants ont souvent concrétisé l’application de la politique éducative par des moyens fort différentes, en interprétant cette politique, en se l’appropriant et en la matérialisant différemment selon les interactions entre leurs convictions affichées quant à l’évaluation de l’écrit en L2, les politiques institutionnelles et leur construction personnelle à titre d’agents éthiques œuvrant dans ce contexte.

CODE-SWITCHING AND CODE-MIXING PRACTICES IN ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES (ESP) COURSES

This study focuses on the practices of the ESP (English for Spesific Purposes) lecturer and students toward code-switching and code-mixing (CS/CM) in the class activity. The study used descriptive qualitative method in the research. In collecting the data, the researcher shared some questionnaires and did interviews and observation. It provides the clear findings of the actual implementation of the institutional language policy on the medium of instruction in the classroom. CS/CM in both Indonesian and English languages emerged as the lecturer’s code choice in the classroom instruction. Such language practice seems not to only have undermined the role of English as the stipulated medium of instruction, but also underestimated the speech behaviour of bilinguals. It causes the conflict between the language policy and the actual use of English and Indonesian in the classroom.

The university as a terrain for hidden language conflicts? German, English and the silence beyond them

Abstract In this paper, language policy (LP) at the University of Salzburg (Austria), a mid-size seemingly monolingual university, serves as an example to analyse (potential) language conflicts at the institutional level considering the roles played by German, English and ‘immigrant’ languages at the university. Language management, beliefs, and (reported) language use by different stakeholders in higher education (administrators, academic and administrative staff and students) are contrasted, also taking into consideration different linguistic backgrounds (German as L1, German as L2 and German as a foreign language). This offers an overall perspective on institutional LP that is still group sensitive, one that reveals two different hidden language conflicts: the non-addressed conflict between the two most important and visible languages at the university by far, German and English, as well as the neglected and negated conflict between German and the hidden “immigrant” languages. A consistent ‘internationalisation at home’ strategy would address these hidden conflicts and show backwash effects on ideas of language use in education as well as in society in general.

Young children as actors of institutional language policies and practices in day care centres

AbstractAs children’s agency in influencing institutional language practices is often not carefully reflected in early childhood education curricula, the objective of this paper is to offer meaningful insights about how institutional language policies are both reproduced and transformed by children’s everyday use of language. For this purpose, we will combine conceptual resources from social theory, sociolinguistics and childhood studies in order to analyse children’s linguistic behaviour by applying a structure-agency perspective as a relational approach. Drawing on data from ethnographic field research within institutional day care centres in Luxembourg, our findings demonstrate that the status of children as actors in institutional language practices is strongly connected to institutional policies as a structural condition. However, this does not mean that children just enact these language policies, because they are actors of both maintaining, underminingandalternating them. In this respect, especially the translanguaging of children and caregivers plays a crucial role in the Luxembourgish context as it allows to build a bridge between the official institutional language policy and the individual linguistic repertoires. Considering the goal of establishing a plurilingual environment in early childhood education which now is paramount to the educational language policy of the Luxembourgish government, this article suggests that translanguaging practices should be considered as one of the key starting points to create a plurilingual ecology in and through everyday practice in the day care centres.

Classroom socialisation: repair and correction in Japanese as a heritage language

ABSTRACT This paper explores the classroom socialisation of a mundane institutional language policy regarding the use of the target language: Japanese. Based on audiovisual recordings in a Japanese as a heritage language (JHL) classroom, it analyses episodes when teachers initiated repair on children’s novel English loanwords (i.e. English-based words pronounced in Japanese but not widely accepted and used), in ways that treated them (or sometimes the social actions performed through them) as problematic. Through a multimodal analysis of other-initiated repair turns and the sequences in which they were lodged, it examines how students responded, and whether and how teachers engaged in correction. In aiming to bridge research on classroom discourse using conversation analysis (CA) and language socialisation, the paper argues how repair and correction are practices for conveying the school language policy to ‘speak only in Japanese’. It also argues that these practices have the potential for socialising students beyond the classroom, to membership into (an imagined) Japanese society where monitoring one’s language use as a bilingual Japanese-English speaker may be important because the excessive use of English loanwords can become an object of others’ negative attitudes and evaluations.

Cantonese learning, investments, and identities: Mainland Chinese university students' experiences during cross-border studies in Hong Kong

Abstract This paper investigates a group of mainland Chinese university students' experiences of learning Cantonese during their cross-border studies in Hong Kong, with respect to their investments in Cantonese-mediated practices and their identity negotiations. Findings showed that their language investments appeared to be fraught with challenges, struggles and ambivalences. It was found that the participants not only encountered difficulties in converting their capital into affordances to gain meaningful interactional opportunities, but also struggled to establish legitimacy as speakers of Cantonese and gain acceptance as in-group members of the local community through their attempts to engage in Cantonese-mediated interactions. Findings also revealed that the anti-mainlandisation discourse prevalent in the local community, the institutional language policies, and the standard language ideology held by the participants themselves negatively impacted on their sustained investments in Cantonese-mediated practices. Taken together, the analysis points to the complex interplay of identity, capital and ideology in shaping mainland Chinese university students' investments in Cantonese-mediated practices during their cross-border studies in Hong Kong. The study also calls for more attention to the students' whole linguistic repertoire and the local multilingual language ecology for more nuanced understandings of their learning of Cantonese in the multilingual context.