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…

This study explored a contemporary period of Japanese higher education policy planning that adopted internationalisation of higher education as a metanarrative for sociocultural change in Japan. These wider societal pressures have over a period of time contributed to increasing institutional resistance to top-down policy initiatives. Further,…

This qualitative ethnographic study investigates students' agency of a language policy in a Colombian public university. Participants were 85 undergraduate students, and data collection involved document analysis, non-participatory observation, a questionnaire, and a portfolio. Three categories emerged from the analysis: acceptance, rejection, and…

This article compares the immersion-education systems in Brittany and Wales. The number of Welsh speakers is growing thanks to its well-developed immersion-education system. Brittany has a much less well-developed system and the number of Breton speakers is falling dramatically. Urgent action is needed if Breton is to survive. Using an approach…

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,…

As global neoliberalism continues to take root, States aim to produce linguistically-skilled human capital to gain an advantage within highly-competitive market conditions. With this relationship in view, English language proficiency constitutes a 'rational' educational pathway for national and personal-level success within an outwardly…

Research on English Medium Instruction (EMI) in Higher Education (HE) has tended to have a technicist orientation, examining for example how it is implemented and the challenges it has encountered. Much less critical attention has been given to the rationales that language policy makers and other stakeholders offer for introducing EMI - the…

Many universities in non-English speaking countries have been adopting English as a medium of instruction to internationalize their education. We set out to compare the language policies of a Finnish and a Japanese university using the lens of language ideology -- a set of normative beliefs about the social dimension of language. Data were…

Corsican is a Romance language that belongs to the Italo-Romance group. Corsican has been recognised since 1974 as a regional language in France by the Ministry of National Education. The language is officially recognised by the French Constitution as belonging to the heritage of France. Over the past 25 years, several laws, decrees, regulations,…

The past few decades have witnessed an exponential growth in English-medium instruction (EMI) programs across the globe where English is used as a vehicle for subject matter delivery. Studies examining EMI issues have been conducted in various contexts, especially in European and Asian countries, but little has been documented regarding how EMI is…

Deploying what we term 'Englishization policy distraction' in the internationalization of higher education as both a theoretical and analytical concept, this paper frames and examines how the epistemic violence of internationalization of the HE is bypassed and invisibilized through Englishization policy and English medium education in Saudi…

Despite the considerable amount of work which has been conducted into teachers' needs for professional development (PD) in mainstream education, this topic has been received little attention in the field of English language teaching (ELT). This paper presents findings from a phenomenological study investigating the perceived needs for PD of…

English-medium instruction (EMI) is on the rise around the world due to globalization, internationalization and neoliberal ideologies which equate English with social capital, prestige, and success in the labour market. While many EMI policies aim to equip students with English as a 'lingua academia', produce 'neoliberal subjects' and compete in…

In this paper, we explore how language centres can and need to seize the initiative in matters of internationalisation, language policy and supporting a multilingual and multicultural institutional environment. We identify and explore a number of challenges and opportunities, using the situation in the United Kingdom as our example, demonstrating…

This paper investigates the positions of state policymakers in Latvia on Latvian, English, and Russian in higher education. By using argumentation analysis, the study explores policymakers' statements in two public debates: on the use of Russian as a medium of instruction (May 2018-June 2020) and on the use of English as a language of doctoral…