As part of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a series of large-scale projects have been launched in the Arab Gulf due to its geopolitically strategic position. We examine the influence of Chinese as a third player, in addition to Arabic and English, in a UAE university educationscape together with Emirati students' attitudes towards its…

Catalonia is an interesting site for language ideology research for several reasons. It is a multilingual and multicultural territory, where both Catalan and Spanish enjoy the status of co-official language. Adding to this, over the course of the last two decades there has been a growing movement that has called for the independence of Catalonia…

This paper proposes a concept of "campus vitality" of languages: the ability of a language to maintain its prestige, visibility and continuity on university campuses. A seven-factor framework is developed for on-the-ground investigation of the relevant languages in a given campus context. These indexical factors are the number,…

The many permutations of spoken English have called for an interrogation into the notions of 'standard English' and 'native accents'. Despite their problematic nature, these terms remain commonly used, and familiarity with 'standard', inner-circle varieties of English is typical among L2 English speakers, differences in education and language…

This article offers a narrative of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, from the prism of the duality of language as a co-modality (with people, protest, policy and practices) for constituting the institution in whole or in part and as a reflection of its co-modalities. For its framing, the narrative eclectically draws on language…

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) has long been considered a global policy in language education. It has been borrowed and adopted by different polities across the world. However, it is still not clear why the CEFR, intended for European usage, has become a ubiquitous tool for overhauling the quality of teaching and…

The role of linguists in Lithuanian society is quite different from that in western countries. It is still broadly assumed that they not only describe the language use and codify the norms of standard variety, but that they also possess the status of moral authorities having access to the mysteries of language. In the tradition of Lithuanian…

This study explores language ideologies of English at a Korean university where English has been adopted as an official language. This study draws on ethnographic data in order to understand how speakers respond to and experience the institutional language policy. The findings show that language ideologies in this university represent the…

Linguistic landscape (LL) research seeks to account for the visible displays of multilingualism on public signage. While surveys of signage in the LL produce quantitative descriptions of language contact in a given area, such analyses shed little light on people's interpretations of multilingual signs. Moreover, even within more qualitative…

This article analyses language policies in higher education (HE) in Finland, Estonia, and Latvia, as well as the European Union (EU). We take a multilayered approach to language policies in order to illuminate the intertwined nature of local, national, and international language policies in HE. We are particularly interested in the construction of…

Following Spolsky's definition of language policy, this introductory paper offers a brief reflection on the three main lines of research that are represented in this special issue regarding the relationship between internationalisation and language policies in higher education: management and planning, practices, and beliefs. In the first part, we…

This paper looks at current grassroots efforts to revitalise Yucatec Maya, an indigenous language of Mexico, in social media and more specifically on Facebook. In contrast to the limitations of institutional language promotion, the inclusion of Maya on Facebook shows the possibilities that social networks offer not only for actual use of…

The People's Republic of China (PRC) has often been considered a monolithic, monolingual state but, in fact, it is linguistically and culturally diverse. Despite the size, there is still a lack of sociolinguistic studies on the Han Chinese in the PRC. Therefore, this study focuses on the language attitudes of Cantonese-speaking students in…

This paper studies the situated meaning given to a so-called "welcome" service for international students at a Catalan university. The official business of the service is to offer support with bureaucratic procedures and information about available services, including those for learning Catalan. However, the complex range of overlapping…

This article reviews part of the progress of the first year of the Isan Culture Maintenance and Revitalisation Programme (ICMRP), a four-year 540,000 euro series of pilot studies co-funded by the European Union and based in Thailand. The ICMRP is based in four semi-autonomous municipalities in Khon Kaen Province, viz. Ban Phai, Chum Phae, Khon…