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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 827

Part of Session 169: Sociolinguistic perspectives on the internationalization of HE (Other abstracts in this session)

Teaching in one’s 1st language vs. English as a lingua franca: Linguistic performance and academic authenticity in the international university

Authors: Preisler, Bent
Submitted by: Preisler, Bent (Roskilde University, Denmark)

Today, the bulk of scientific, technological and academic knowledge in the world is (only or also) available in English, which implies that investigations into the internationalization of universities should include a strong (though by no means exclusive) emphasis on the impact of English. The project presented here builds on the fact that the internationalization of universities puts pressure on institutions of Higher Education to use English as the language of instruction instead of or in addition to the local language.  

As a case study the project focuses specifically on Danish university teachers’ spoken discourse and interaction with students in a Danish-language vs. English-language classroom. The focus is on the relationship between linguistic performance and academic authenticity for university teachers teaching courses in both English and Danish, based on recent sociolinguistic concepts such as “persona,” “stylization” and “authenticity” (Bell, Eckert, Coupland, Bucholtz). Some preliminary research questions: To what extent does it affect teachers’ scholarly and educational authenticity – hence their academic authority – that they have to authenticate themselves through language which is restricted by limitations in their own active (and the students’ receptive) language proficiency? What linguistic or pragmatic strategies take effect when the communication loses its anchorage in local (Danish) linguistic and cultural context? Do teachers use positive transfer of resources from the local language/cultural context to make up for potential problems?
The purpose is diagnostic with a view to identifying the “best practice” of university teachers who, without being native speakers of English, are to communicate their academic expertise through English in a multicultural learning environment.

The data for the project are video recordings of teacher-student interaction in a university seminar taught in an English-language version to a linguistically diverse class of students by a teacher whose 1st language is Danish, and – for comparison – the same course component taught in Danish by the same teacher to students from Denmark. Four sets of parallel course components, and two teachers, were recorded, amounting to 24 hours of multi-angle recording enabling the capturing of dialogic sequences. The analysis draws on aspects of interactional sociolinguistics and focuses on particular class activities that are comparable across the recordings.

References:

Bell, Allan 2001. Back in style: Reworking audience design. in Penelope Eckert and John R. Rickford (eds.) Style and Sociolinguistic Variation. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. 139-169.

Bucholtz, Mary 2003. Sociolinguistic nostalgia and the authentication of identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(3), 398-416.

Bucholtz, Mary, and Kira Hall 2005. Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies 7(4-5), 585-614

Coupland, Nikolas 2001. Stylization, Authenticity and TV News Review. Discourse Studies, 3(4), 413-442.

Coupland, Nikolas 2004. Stylised deception. In A. Jaworski, N. Coupland, D. Galasinski eds., Metalanguage: Social and Ideological Perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 249-274

Eckert, Penelope 2000. Linguistic Variation as Social Practice. Oxford: Blackwell