Cross-Linguistic Influence: Bilingual EMI Lecturers’ English and Chinese Entwined

Abstract

In the previous two Chapters, the pedagogical ideology of the participating lecturers and the subsequent reality of their ‘instruction’ and ‘engagement’ was examined. From a psycholinguistic perception this Chapter focuses on the Chinese lecturers’ L1-influenced English in their teaching. The data indicates that cross-linguistic influence was the cognitive reality for the EMI lecturers and provided a scaffolding role in their teaching. This research suggests that although the EMI lecturers’ L1 and L2 are two genetically distant languages, they were interdependent and formed a stable construct that served as a powerful language resource in their teaching. Theoretically, this Chapter moves beyond a structuralist view of judging language transfer as right or wrong, correct or incorrect, perfect or deficit. It has implemented a post-structuralist interpretation of this phenomenon by proposing ‘explicit’ and ‘implicit’ transfer and acknowledging L1-influenced EMI lecturers’ English as a temporary form of languaging within the translaguaging process.