A critical discourse analysis of language policy documents in the multilingual university context
Creators: name: Villares, Rosana
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2019
Subjects: language policy, critical discourse analysis, spanish higher education, multilingual

description: In the last decades, internationalisation has become one of the main strategic objectives of universities as an indicator of excellence, recognition and international visibility (de Wit et al., 2015; Maringe and Foskett, 2010). European and national policies include a wide range of strategies regarding internationalisation efforts in the form of mobility, international collaboration, and language strategies. One common element to the previous strategies is the presence of English, considered to be the language for international communication in the higher education context (Coleman, 2006; Ferguson, 2010; Hultgren et al., 2014). The purpose of this study is the analysis of the role played by English in internationalisation through the examination of universities’ Language Policy (LP) documents in order to understand how language ecologies in non-Anglophone universities integrate English, the national language and/or local languages. According to Spolsky (2012), language policy consists of three main elements: practices, ideologies, and management. There are multiple studies on practices, ideologies and language attitudes towards multilingualism in higher education and the inclusion of English as an academic language but it is appreciated a lack of critical studies on the role hold by policies and strategic documents that regulate such practices in the national context. Critical Discourse Analysis was used as the methodological approach for this study where 37 institutional LP documents from 29 Spanish universities were examined. The qualitative software used for the inductive coding was Atlas.ti v8, which facilitated the identification and classification of key themes in terms of ideologies, practices, and management; as well as analysing how they are expressed in a textual level. Preliminary findings suggest that some of the main themes found in relation to English are its positioning as the de facto language of internationalisation; the different areas where English is expected to be used, i.e. teaching, research, services and institutional contexts; the presence of language requirements and bilingual education; or the use of English as the language to access specialised knowledge and reach an international audience, among others. The identification of these themes will allow further analysis of mismatches between top-down expectations and bottom-up realities in relation to the design and implementation of institutional policies that could bring closer theory and practice. References Coleman, J.A. (2006). "English-medium teaching in European higher education". Language Teaching, 39, 1-14 de Wit, H., Hunter, F., Howard, L. Egron-Polak, E. (2015). Internationalisation of Higher Education. Brussels: European Union. Ferguson, G.R. (2010). "English in language policy and management". In B. Spolsky (Ed.), Cambridge handbook of language policy (pp. 475-498). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Foskett, N. and Maringe, F. (2010). Globalization and internationalization in Higher Education: theoretical, strategic, and management perspectives. London: Continuum International Publishing. Hultgren, K., Gregersen, F., and Thogersen, J. (2014). “English at Nordic Universities: Ideologies and Practices.” In K. Hultgren, F. Gregersen, and J. Thogersen (Eds.), English in Nordic Universities: Ideologies and Practices (pp. 1–26). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Spolsky, B. (2012). The Cambridge Handbook of Language Policy. New York: CUP.