The Experience of International Students at a Catalan University Lídia Gallego Balsà
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Nom/Logotip de la Universitat on s’ha llegit la tesi Language policy and internationalisation: The experience of international students at a Catalan university Lídia Gallego Balsà Dipòsit Legal: L.852-2014 http://hdl.handle.net/10803/146283 Language policy and internationalisation: the experience of internal students at a Catalan university està subjecte a una llicència de Reconeixement-NoComercial- SenseObraDerivada 3.0 No adaptada de Creative Commons (c) 2014, Lídia Gallego Balsà LANGUAGE POLICY AND INTERNATIONALISATION: THE EXPERIENCE OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS AT A CATALAN UNIVERSITY by Lídia Gallego Balsà Directed by Dr. Josep Maria Cots Department of English and Linguistics Universitat de Lleida May 2014 ABSTRACT The internationalisation of higher education (HE) has generated an increase in cross-cultural communication among students, academic and administrative staff. In such public universities as the University of Lleida (UdL), in the bilingual territory of Catalonia, the introduction of multilingual policies is a highly sensitive issue. Through its language and internationalisation policies, the UdL aims to reconcile the new multilingual reality and the demand for lingua francas, such as Spanish or English, with the efforts to revitalise the Catalan language, thereby contributing to reversing the language shift towards Spanish, the majority language. This process is not free from tensions and ambiguities, which this thesis seeks to investigate. The data were ethnographically collected during the academic year 2010-2011 at the UdL. The participants were incoming international mobility students, their language instructors and content-subject lecturers, and the administrative staff responsible for their welfare at the university. The analysis was undertaken from a discourse analytical perspective using the notion of ‘stance’ (Du Bois, 2007; Jaffe, 2009) as the main analytical notion and it explores how students and staff position themselves towards the distribution of linguistic resources (1) to construct the identity of the university and (2) to develop competence in Catalan. The analysis reveals that the UdL constructs itself as a monolingual institution in a bilingual context by ascribing great symbolic value to Catalan in the local community and encouraging students to affiliate with it. Given this stance, the international students articulate feelings of disappointment as they see their original expectations of learning Spanish, a language of much greater economic power in the global world, are compromised. The students, together with some voices from the teaching and administrative staff, challenge the institutional stance and claim for a more flexible system that enables them to affiliate with the campaign to revitalise Catalan and at the same time benefit from knowing and using Spanish and English as languages for intercultural communication. The study suggests that practices such as ‘translanguaging’ (Li and Zhu, 2013; Blackledge and Creese, 2010; García, 2009) may be more sustainable in a university located in a bilingual territory that aims to reconcile its responsibility to contribute to the revitalisation of Catalan with its aspiration to compete in the global educational market. i A la meva família. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS En primer lloc, m’agradaria expressar la meva màxima gratitud a en Josep Maria Cots, el meu director de tesi, per haver-me donat l’oportunitat de dur a terme aquesta recerca i haver-me donat tot el seu suport durant aquests més de tres anys. En segon lloc, vull expressar el meu agraïment a tots els membres del Cercle de Lingüística Aplicada (CLA), els quals m’han ofert un espai ideal de treball al costat de grans professionals. Sens dubte, també moltes gràcies al Xavi Morros pel seu suport tècnic i el seu sentit de l’humor capaç d’il·luminar el dia més fosc. Last but not least, el meu agraïment és també per a tot el Departament d’Anglès i Lingüística, molt especialment als companys BErs, pel seu suport en docència, sobretot en l’últim tram de la redacció de la tesi i, com no, a l’Olga Rovira; gran part del nostre èxit és gràcies a la seva eficiència. I would like to express my gratitude to the two research groups that hosted me in 2012. From the CALPIU research group, I would like to thank especially Bent Preisler, Harmut Haberland, Janus Mortensen and Spencer Hazel. At the MOSAIC research centre, I am especially grateful to Angela Creese and Adrian Blackledge for their supervision and their doctoral researchers, Kamran Khan and Peter Brannick. Tinc la sort de tenir la família que tinc; cap a ells va la meva eterna gratitud. En especial, agraeixo als meus pares la seva abnegació i el fet d’haver-me inculcat el valor del treball, i a la meva germana, la Laura, el seu suport incondicional (NSQM!). També al Marcel –WBC!- i a en Floyd M. Mayweather, “hard work and dedication”. Entre els amics i amigues, gràcies amb molt d’afecte a l’Anna Schlingmann –danke für dich durch das letztes Jahr mit Geduld wappnen—, a la Iolanda Real i la Sheila Vinós per la seva amistat i paciència i a les meves Teresines Olga, Pili i Núria, totes elles dones d’empenta i gran esperit aventurer que segueixen un sistema presidit pel lema “si pot fer-ho aquella, jo també!”. Moltes gràcies a la Goretti Marco pel seu ajut tècnic en les últimes setmanes i a totes les altres Brisbies: l’Eva Madinabeitia (i futura família), la Lídia Marquès i la María Colell. A l’Enrica Plastina perchè grazie a lei ho capito quando ho trovato l’altro latto della línia d’ombra.També m’agradaria agrair a la María Fernández Ferreiro i la Laura Espelt el fet d’haver compartit amb mi la seva experiència i els seus punts de vista com a estudiants de doctorat. جزاك ,A l’Amina i la seva família iii Finalment, voldria agrair a tots els participants, professors, alumnes i membres del PAS de la Universitat de Lleida per la seva generositat a l’hora de deixar-me entrar en les seves vides acadèmiques i professionals i transmetre’m la seva experiència. Aquesta tesi no pretén fer una crítica a la seva manera de fer o pensar, sinó contribuir a que el multilingüisme de la Universitat de Lleida, com a universitat internacional, es pugui utilitzar per al màxim benefici dels seus membres i de les mateixes llengües. Espero haver reflectit les experiències dels participants d’una manera justa i em faig càrrec de qualsevol error que aparegui en aquesta tesi. This thesis would not have been possible without the doctoral scholarship which I was awarded in 2011 by the Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca, Generalitat de Catalunya (ref. 2011FI_B 00458). The research has also directly or indirectly benefited from the following research grants: (1) Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, ref. FFI2008- 00585/FILO; (2) Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, ref. FFI2012-35834; (3) Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca, Generalitat de Catalunya, ref. 2009 PBR 00060. Finally, this thesis has received a grant for linguistic revision from the Language Institute at the University of Lleida (2014 call). iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ..................................................................................... 1 Part I. Literature review Chapter 1. Language and national identity ..................................................... 10 1.1. The construction of national identity ............................................................. 11 1.1.1. The construction of nations and national identity ........................... 11 1.1.2. The crisis of the nation-state .......................................................... 15 1.1.3. Glocalisation, cosmopolitanism and ‘world spaces’ ........................ 18 1.2. Language as a symbol of national identity ..................................................... 22 1.2.1. One language, one nation ............................................................... 23 1.2.2. Multilingualism and the construction of national identity: the case of Europe ............................................. 26 1.2.3. Challenges to language and national identity .................................. 28 1.3. Language and national identity in Catalonia ............................................ 33 1.3.1. The evolution of Catalan national identity .................................... 33 1.3.2. Language and national identity in Catalonia .................................. 36 Chapter 2. Language-in-education policies ...................................................... 48 2.1. Language policy ........................................................................................... 48 2.2. Models of bilingual and multilingual education ............................................ 55 2.2.1. Traditional models of bilingual education ...................................... 56 2.2.2. Heteroglossic and monoglossic varieties of language-in-education policies ....................................................... 58 2.2.3. Immersion education: sink or swim ................................................ 61 2.2.4. The linguistic distance factor .......................................................... 63 2.3. Language-in-education policies at the international university ..................... 67 2.3.1. The spread of English in international universities ......................... 68 2.3.2. Multilingual universities in bilingual contexts ................................. 70 v 2.4. Perspectives on multiple language use ......................................................... 76 Chapter 3. Language learning in study