The interconnection between globalization and multilingualism in the evolution of European societies has become an undeniable fact. On the one hand, there seems to be a greater need for lingua francas that can facilitate understanding among individuals from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds and, ultimately, allow them to increase their chances of geographical and socio-economic mobility. On the other hand, in a world that tends to be perceived as increasingly homogeneous, speakers of minority languages may see their identities threatened by the dominance of those lingua francas and stand up for the right to use their languages. This tension is especially felt in the university context. This article discusses some of the tensions and ambiguities related to the management of multilingualism which may arise in bilingual universities in the process of designing and implementing internationalization policies. The study focuses on three universities which are located in the European bilingual regions of Catalonia ( University of Lleida), the Basque Country ( University of the Basque Country) and Wales (Cardiff University) respectively. The article gives an overview of (i) the sociolinguistic situation of each university and (ii) the main elements of their internationalization policy with an emphasis on its impact on language policy.
This paper analyses how two multicompetent speakers engage with protocolling, i.e. verbalising their thoughts, while writing in two languages different from their first. The study explores how procedure-and language-related episodes of awareness affect both the writing process itself and the written product. The research draws on current issues about explicit and implicit knowledge as well as on controlled and automatic processing. It also considers different layers of language awareness to explain the data available. The analysis attempts to integrate the data extracted from think-aloud (TA) protocols with (1) the final written products assessed by independent raters, (2) stimulated recall sessions held immediately after the TA sessions, and (3) the results of a language placement test. The data reveal that verbalisation of writing processes (used as a way of accessing writers' awareness) does not relate qualitatively to the writers' output. They also show that both procedure-and language-related episodes are more frequent in the L2 than in the foreign language.
The process of internationalisation of higher education can be seen as fluctuating between two main discourses: economic competition and academic internationalisation (Bolsman & Miller 2008). Within the former type of discourse, internationalisation is constructed as a means to generate income, in competition with other institutions, through the provision of research and teaching services of a high quality to as many 'clients' as possible. From the point of view of academic internationalism, internationalisation is represented as a joint enterprise by institutions from different countries for the advancement of human knowledge and intercultural understanding. In this paper we aim to explore the views of the teaching staff of two bilingual universities in Spain in connection with the process of internationalisation of their institution, placing a special emphasis on its impact on language policy. The sample for this study was made up of 173 university teaching staff who completed a questionnaire in which they were asked to express their views on issues such as internationalisation at higher education institutions, academic mobility and their attitudes towards multilingualism. The participants belonged to two officially bilingual universities in Spain, namely the University of Lleida (UdL) and the University of the Basque Country (UBC). Variables such as the sociolinguistic context, gender, mother tongue and age were considered when scrutinising the participants' answers with a view to drawing a picture of internationalisation which included opinions on academic mobility and multilingualism from the teaching staff's perspective.
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