International universities and implications of internationalisation for minority languages: views from university students in Catalonia and Wales

Abstract

European higher education institutions are in general highly committed to internationalization, seeing it as providing ways into the global education market, as an indicator of academic excellence, and for generating income. In multilingual settings, minority languages are not always given adequate consideration in this process and may be a source of tension and ambiguities in the local communities and universities. We report part of a study of international and home students at universities in two bilingual contexts: the University of Lleida (Catalonia) and Cardiff University (Wales). They were asked about their understanding of what an 'international university' is, and also how they saw the implications of internationalisation in the universities for the respective minority languages. Results show some differentiation amongst the student groups. For example, in the case of the first item, the Lleida home students associated international universities with opportunities for travel, exchange, and employment advantages far more than the other groups. And in the case of the second, international students at Lleida showed greater negativity and opposition towards the minority language than other groups. Findings highlight the difficulties in reconciling the vitality of minority languages with the forces and priorities of internationalisation.

Erasmus student mobility and the construction of European citizenship

“…In this particular study, we aimed to focus on the latter aspect and thus explored, through a survey and focus group discussions, students' engagement with the notions of European identity and citizenship. In recent years, research in the context of internationalization of higher education has already examined the language attitudes of students, teaching and administrative staff in the context of Catalonia (see, for instance, Garrett and Gallego-Balsà, 2014;Lasagabaster et al 2013;Llurda et al, 2013Llurda et al, , 2014. However, none of them has yet explored the evolution of these attitudes or how the notion of European identity evolves after a stay abroad.…”

Studying in a ‘multilingual university’ at home or abroad

“…This greater mention of disadvantages at UdL (compared to CU) may be due to the difficulties and tensions regarding Catalan that international students report (e.g. Garrett & Gallego-Balsà, 2014), and to low competence in English in the case of the local students (Cots, 2013), which they might see as a barrier to studying at a multilingual university. The greater proportion of disadvantages mentioned by the UBC home students may be in large part attributable to their concerns about the consequences in terms of domain loss for the Basque language, as we will discuss below.…”

The Englishisation of higher education in Catalonia: a critical sociolinguistic ethnographic approach to the students’ perspectives

“…(Oriol,male,20,Girona, The CLDsE students who mobilise similar discourses believe that giving English a prominent status quo in society is incongruous with protecting and promoting a minority language. As has been attested among some students in other Catalan universities (Garrett & Gallego Balsà, 2014), there were a few CLDsE students in class who adopted a defensive 'bunker attitude' (Baker, 1992, p. 136) towards English, conceiving of it as a 'predator language' (Cots, 2013, p. 112); that is, as a challenge for the normalised vitality of minority languages. This is exemplified by Laura (Excerpt 13), who generally talks about 'language loss', and by Judit (Excerpt 14), who calls English a 'threat' endangering the 'purity' of other (unnamed) languages, once again exposing prescriptivist monoglossic views on linguistic codes.…”

“…In this article, I try to contribute to these two intertwined lines of research by adding an informant-oriented, critical sociolinguistic ethnographic perspective (Duchêne, Moyer, & Roberts, 2013) to the multidisciplinary work that has been conducted on the attitudes on English as a lingua franca mobilised by students in different Catalan university settings (see, e.g., Cots et al, 2013;Cots et al, 2014;Garrett & Gallego Balsà, 2014;Garrett et al, 2012;Huguet, 2007;Llurda et al, In Press;Rosselló i Peralta & Boix-Fuster, 2006 The data gathered in order to answer these questions come from multiple sources, including:…”