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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 169

Thematic Session (Papers belonging to this Thematic Session)

Sociolinguistic perspectives on the internationalization of higher education

Authors: Mortensen, Janus; Fabricius, Anne H.
Submitted by: Mortensen, Janus (Roskilde University, Denmark)

Despite the fact that internationalization is a ubiquitous buzzword in European academia, the phenomenon of internationalization and its wide-ranging sociolinguistic consequences are not fully understood at present.

This thematic session will start to explore the sociolinguistic consequences of university internationalization by considering questions like the following:

• How does the present increase in transnational student mobility affect the sociolinguistic milieu of lecture halls and seminar rooms around Europe?

• How do rising demands on academics to publish internationally (which almost invariably means ‘in English’) affect the use of other languages in the production and dissemination of knowledge?

• How does the growing need to attract international students and staff affect the overt and covert language policies of European universities?

• And what happens to the language attitudes and language ideologies of students and staff when they are faced with the linguistic and cultural diversity that follows in the wake of increased internationalization?

As its overarching theoretical aim, the thematic session will seek to explore how sociolinguistic theorizing can benefit from work on the internationalized university as a multilingual and multicultural workplace, learning space and cultural crucible.

As a consequence of increased transnational mobility, universities are rapidly turning into microcosms of the globalizing world, and universities can therefore be utilized as case studies in the exploration of central sociolinguistic areas such as ‘linguistic variation’, ‘language policy’ and ‘language ideology’ outside the traditional confines of relatively homogenous and stable speech communities.

The international university shares its multilingual and multicultural makeup with many contemporary cities in Europe and elsewhere. The internationalized university is thus, apart from being an interesting empirical research site in its own right, also a site that allows for exemplary investigations of some of the linguistic and social processes that are currently (re-)shaping the sociolinguistic landscape of postmodern cities across the globe.

Keywords

internationalization of higher education, sociolinguistics of globalization, language choice, English as a lingua franca, language ideology

References

Björkman, Beyza, ed. 2011. English as a Lingua Franca. Journal of Pragmatics 43(4) [Special Issue on the pragmatics of English as a lingua franca in the international university].

Blommaert, Jan. 2010. The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Coulmas, Florian. 2005. Sociolinguistics. The study of speakers' choices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Haberland, Hartmut and Janus Mortensen, eds. 2012. Language variety, language hierarchy, and language choice in the international university. International Journal of the Sociology of Language [Thematic Issue, forthcoming].

Lillis, Theresa and Mary Jane Curry. 2010. Academic Writing in a Global Context. London: Routledge.

Preisler, Bent, Ida Klitgård and Anne H. Fabricius, eds. 2011. Language and Learning in the International University: From English uniformity to diversity and hybridity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.