Despite the inherently meaningful nature of Chinese names, Chinese international students often adopt an English name, particularly when they pursue education in English-speaking countries. Most empirical research on name anglicisation has examined the psychological impact of name change among ethnolinguistic minorities, as well as their…

This paper contributes to our conceptualization of linguistic identities in English as a lingua franca (ELF) communication by analyzing a group of multilingual international students' narrativized accounts of their ELF communication experiences in an international university in Hong Kong. The findings of the study indicate that despite their…

This mixed-methods study explores whether undergraduates in a multilingual, multicultural university -- and more specifically in a multi-dimensionally internationalised classroom -- manifest transcultural competence when starting university studies. The article precisely focuses on the role of intercultural friendships and personal and family…

This article examines linguaculturally diverse university students' affective translingual practices of using emojis and languages in computer-mediated communication. Research studies have investigated the sociopragmatic uses of emojis from the perspectives of social semiotics, language socialisation, and translingual practices. This study expands…

Social contact has been found to be both a success factor and an outcome of the international student sojourn. This two-stage mixed-methods case study sought to ascertain the role of social contact in the academic adaptation of a sample of international students undertaking taught postgraduate degrees in the United Kingdom. A self-report survey (N…

In the context of the exponential growth of multicultural campuses worldwide and the consequent need for students to engage in intercultural interaction, this article reports on parts of the findings of a study examining the relationships between learners' backgrounds (language and intercultural experiences) and their intercultural views and…

Quantitative research on the linguistic acculturation of sojourners in non-Western and multilingual social contexts remains scarce. Revising the Framework of Acculturation Variables (FAV), we propose a parsimonious model exploring the effect of acculturation conditions (trilingual language usage and perceived discrimination), orientations (social…

The goal of this article is to examine intercultural experiences and the cultural identity reconstruction of Chinese international students in Germany by focusing on their cultural learning, and use of multiple languages including English as a lingua franca (ELF), German and Chinese. Three rounds of individual interviews over 1 year were conducted…

As a regional hub for education, Hong Kong has seen a growing population of international students. In contrast to existing conceptual models in acculturation literature that are typically devoted to studying long-term settlers such as migrants or refugees in English speaking countries, this study develops and tests a fine-grained model for…

Recent research has shown that increasing the number of international students and staff in universities does not necessarily make the campus more "international". Ladegaard and Cheng (2014) found that local and non-local students live completely separate lives on campus and do not work together, let alone socialise, unless forced to do…

The recent increase in the provision of cross- and intercultural education for sojourners has not been matched by commensurate research into its effects on participants. Evaluation, where undertaken at all, has been largely confined to expatriate business contexts and has tended to be undertaken pre-sojourn. Crucially, evaluation has not engaged…

Internationalising higher education (HE) shows tensions between recruiting international students as a means of securing income and meeting their particular educational needs towards practices of caring for their social, psychological, intercultural and educational well-being. This paper briefly outlines the extent of current HE…

Educational sojourns abroad are not only increasingly popular; it is also believed that they have many positive outcomes for students. The transformative potential of a study sojourn abroad has been claimed in linguistic and broader intercultural terms (e.g. Brown [2009] "The Transformative Power of the International Sojourn: An Ethnographic…

According to a recent report, the top skill that employers are looking for in graduates is an ability to work collaboratively with teams of people from a range of backgrounds and countries. So as universities seek to internationalise, an important question is how successful they are in developing this skill. Both research and anecdotal evidence…

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…