Linguistic Diversity on the EMI Campus

Insider accounts of the use of English and other languages in universities within Asia, Australasia, and Europe

Jennifer Jenkins, Anna Mauranen, Jennifer Jenkins, Anna Mauranen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429668289
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Linguistic Diversity on the EMI Campus presents an in-depth ethnographic case study of the language policies and practices of universities in nine countries around the world. Each chapter provides a detailed presentation of the findings from that university, considering the presence of linguistic diversity in institutions from Australia, China, Finland, UK, Turkey, Malaysia, Italy, Spain, and Japan. Split into three parts, these nine case studies demonstrate the extent to which international-oriented institutions can learn from each other's practices and improve their language policies. Linguistic Diversity on the EMI Campus is vital reading for students and scholars working in the fields of applied linguistics, multilingualism, and education.

PART I

Continental Europe

2

ELF among multilingual practices in a trilingual university

Anna Mauranen and Ida Mauko

1.Introduction

The University of Helsinki, the context of this study and the workplace of the authors, is the oldest and largest university in Finland, which puts internationalisation high on its agenda and which likes to see itself as a trilingual university, as will be discussed below (section 4.3). English as a lingua franca is recognised in the language policy of the university, in part as a result of the ELF research that has been done at Helsinki. The university hosts two large corpora of academic ELF, one spoken (ELFA) and one written (WrELFA), freely available for researchers (www.helsinki.fi/elfa). The databases have been put to good use in both quantitative and qualitative research concerning the ways in which ELF shapes English in academic contexts (e.g. Mauranen, 2012; Ranta, 2013). Related research has been carried out on the effectiveness of academic ELF lectures and their reception by students (Suviniitty, 2012), language ideologies held by lecturers in ELF situations (Pilkinton-Pihko, 2013), and how language norms emerge in academic ELF interaction (Hynninen, 2016), to give just a few examples. Altogether, these studies among many others at Helsinki and elsewhere (e.g. Björkman, 2013; Mortensen & Fabricius, 2014; Smit, 2010) have helped us understand what academic ELF is like and how it is used, as well as how it relates to world Englishes and learner language (Jenkins, 2015; Laitinen, 2016; Laitinen, Lundberg, Levin, & Lakaw, 2017; Mauranen, 2012). In the present study, we address the issue of multilingual practices from the perspectives of university policies, linguistic landscapes, and student experience.

2.Setting and framework

The general theoretical framework of this study builds on that detailed in the Introduction of this volume, which sets the scene for the entire international project (Linguistic Diversity on the International Campus) that this study is a part of. The setting is the university where we work: the University of Helsinki. It is the oldest and largest as well as the most successful university in Finland and consistently ranks among the top 100 universities in the world. Helsinki is a bilingual, comprehensive university, which covers a very wide variety of disciplines with its 11 faculties, over 35,000 students and nearly 8,000 staff. Even though it is old (founded in 1640), its ambitions are very much geared towards the contemporary world of research and education, with a strong future orientation. The university sets great store on its role as an international university with high global awareness. This has been given top priority in its two most recent strategy papers, including the current one of 2017–2020 (Strategic Plan of the University of Helsinki 2017–2020, www.helsinki.fi.strategia). Moreover, the university published a specific road map (Global Impact: Internationalisation at the University of Helsinki 2017–2020, www.helsinki.fi/globalimpact/en) for internationalisation in 2017, laying down goals for increasing the number of international students and staff, developing international collaboration and exchange at every level from the entire university to individual researchers, teachers, and students, and encouraging mobility outwards from the university as well as towards it.

In this study, our central organising concepts are languaging, multilingualism, and linguistic landscapes, in addition to the overarching framework of ELF. The notion of languaging has many origins, including non-linguists (Maturana, 1978; Maturana & Varela, 1998; Vygotsky, 1980), and early linguist users like Becker (1988, 1995) and Swain (1985). The concept highlights the dynamic nature of language in both interaction and cognition, which is why we adopt it here.

In the present context, a more recent development of languaging, namely translanguaging is relevant in accounting for the practices that an international university calls for. Garcia and Li (2014) define it as “the dynamic process whereby multilingual language users mediate complex social and cognitive activities through strategic employment of multiple semiotic resources to act, to know and to be” (p. 7), thus stressing its multilingual aspects. A related term and concept is polylanguaging, stating that rather than languages, “[s]speakers use features [which] may be ascribed to specific languages (or specific categories which are called languages)” (Jørgensen, 2008, p. 165). While there have been other similar conceptualisations (Canagarajah, 2007; Pennycook, 2017), we see the plethora of concepts in these models and arguments as basically well covered by languaging, which can then be further contextually specified as the need arises. Thus, we adopt the term cross-languaging for students’ self-reporting on their perceptions of different languages being drawn on. When talking about what speakers do or report doing as they go about their daily communication activities, we use the term languaging practices.

One of the characteristics of ELF languaging practices relates to obviating misunderstandings despite the sometimes highly diverse language backgrounds of conversationalists. Such practices have been identified in a few previous studies through discourse and/or corpus analysis (e.g. Cogo & Dewey, 2012; Mauranen, 2006) as well as conversation analysis (e.g. Kaur, 2010; Pietikäinen, 2017). These studies have directly analysed users’ spoken ELF, whereas here we tackle similar questions by inviting speakers to talk about their language use.

3.Data and methods

In order to come to grips with the university as a linguistic environment, we adopted a three-pronged approach to its manifestations: (1) how the university frames its relation to languages in its language policy; (2) how these principles are manifest digitally on its website and in its physical spaces; and (3) how international students perceive the language environment and its affordances. The data that we analysed is thus the following:

1.The University Language Policy.

2.Use of different languages on public and internal university websites.

3.Linguistic landscapes on one of its campuses.

4.International students’ metalinguistic representations of their own language use.

The principal research methods were discourse analytical and content analytical, with some ethnographic influence. Specifically, they comprised an analysis of the university’s Language Policy document, observational notes of websites and linguistic landscapes, and semi-structured interviews with discourse analysis tapping the metalinguistic representations of languaging by international students.

The currently valid University Language Policy dates from 2014 (see section 4.2) and was analysed in terms of its content. Data from university websites was collected during summer 2015, and they consisted of observations about the main university website, together with the faculties of Arts and Science. The faculties’ intranet pages were also scrutinised.

Linguistic landscapes were explored in spaces frequented by students from anywhere in the university (the Main Library, the Language Centre, the Main Building entrance hall, and the student cafeteria in the Main Building). In addition, one academic department with a clear subject focus (Art History) was taken on board. This selection thus represents the anonymous and formal along with the more individual and informal. The exploration drew on photographs taken in environments where writing was visible. Any languages that were visible were taken note of. Pictures, together with fieldnotes, were taken in February 2016.

The interviews were conducted with international students self-selected at the university’s “Welcome Fair” in September 2015 and January 2016. At both fairs, our team¹ set up a desk inviting students to sign up and “share their experience as an international student at the University”. In order to represent both the fields of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), as well as Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine (STEM), we targeted students from the faculties of Social Sciences, Law, and Science. During the autumn we interviewed 14 students, with an additional six in the spring, making the final SSH-to-STEM ratio 12:7. The distribution of interview participants from EU and non-EU countries was fairly even at 11:9, with five of the total 20 participants self-identifying as native English speakers.² Most participants were on a semester- or year-long exchange, and two had started full-time Master’s degree studies.

Each of the students participated in two semi-structured interviews: the first within the two initial weeks of the semester, and the second approximately one-and-a-half to two months later. Both interviews included questions on the students’ linguistic and cultural background, choice of courses, accommodation, social interaction (in and out of class), day-to-day use of language(s), etc., with the second interview focusing on any changes that may have occurred since the first interview (see Appendix 1 for full list of questions). What proved especially interesting were students’ comments about how they utilise their multilingual repertoires and various languaging practices while talking to peers. All interviews were audio-recorded and subsequently partially transcribed. As the analysis focused on uncovering recurring themes and topics in the interviews rather than o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction
• PART I Continental Europe
• PART II East and Southeast Asia
• PART III The Anglophone world
• Conclusion
• Index