Diversity and multilingual challenges in academic settings

Abstract

Higher Education is caught between internationalization on the one hand and the quest for local support by fostering local practices on the other. The clash between uniformity-standardization and localization-specialization manifests itself in every university trying to adopt internationalization strategies. How can universities manage this tension? Is diversity considered beneficial or a barrier to the internationalization process? The aim of this paper is to explore under what conditions a multilingual academic and scientific program helps to create an inclusive environment in academic settings to cope with international mobility and language diversity. The paper will discuss concepts of multilingual education upon which universities can draw. An analysis of multilingual policies will shed light on the ways they shape and create favorable conditions for the construction and transmission of knowledge in an internationalized academic context. The results drawn from the experts’ perspectives on language policy and from the analysis of plurilingual practices in the process of knowledge construction, where hybridity is associated with multimodality, point towards a balance to be found between the use of an English lingua academica and the plurilingual academic and scientific cultures.

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