Presentations

Anthony Liddicoat

Linguistic habitus and contemporary academic practice

This presentation will reflect on the linguistic habitus of academic practice in the context of contemporary internationalised academia. It will argue that there is currently a strong monolingual habitus that is found in many aspects of academic work, especially publishing, international research collaboration, that is based on a misrecognition of monolingualism and efficiency. This monolingual habitus marginalises non-Anglophone academic traditions and epistemologies and presents a very constrained view of knowledge production. The presentation will argue for the importance of a multilingual habitus in all aspects of academic work and discuss an example of a multilingual research collaboration in which rather than adopting a single working language as strongly multilingual language policy was adopted. It will consider what such a way of working can contribute to contemporary academic practice and how such multilingualism can lead to deeper and more reflexive research practice.

 Laurent Gajo & Patchareerat Yanaprasart

 Multilingual and Intercultural Internationalization of and in Higher Education: Principle of Economy vs. Principle of Intercomprehension

The process of internationalization of and within higher education directly addresses the issue of languages and cultures. Although the terms “multilingualism” and “interculturality” are increasingly circulating in the globalized university, it is not clear that they refer to shared representations. In this talk, we will show that, behind the rhetoric of internationalization, two perspectives - monolingual and plurilingual - can be found in contrast. Depending on which perspective is adopted, the principle of economy or the principle of intercomprehension will be favored. These two mechanisms are at work both in the institution's internal operations and practices (teaching, research, administration) and in the links it forges with the outside world (transnational partnerships, alliances, policy governance).

Angelica Galante

Power, Language, and Equity: Reimagining Plurilingualism in Universities

Increasing linguistic and cultural diversity presents opportunities and challenges for the sustainability of multilingualism and plurilingual practices. Canada, for instance, has over 200 languages across the territory, including Indigenous and immigrant languages, but it is officially English-French bilingual. This complex linguistic landscape poses issues of power between languages and creates challenges for language use and academic achievement. Such linguistic diversity is evident in Canadian higher education, where the number of international students has dramatically increased by 182% between 2010 and 2022 (Statistics Canada, 2023). Furthermore, projections between 2011 and 2036 indicate that Canada will have an increase of over 90% in the number of speakers of non-official languages as a mother tongue (from 3,888 to 7,422) compared to only 23% increase of English (23,240 to 28,603) and 9% of French speakers as a mother tongue (7,145 to 7,800) (Statistics Canada, 2017). These changes in multilingual demographics prompt educators and policymakers to seriously reconsider educational policies and practices to provide equitable opportunities for plurilingual users in higher education.

To address these challenges, my research team and I at McGill University’s Plurilingual Lab have been conducting studies on the meaning of language and plurilingualism to users of multiple languages, and preparing language teachers with pedagogical practices to equip them with theoretical knowledge and practical use of plurilingual pedagogies. In my talk, I will discuss the current linguistic situation in Canada and share studies we have conducted with plurilingual users in the city of Montreal (Galante & dela Cruz, 2021), pre-service language teachers in a university in Montreal, Quebec (Galante et al., 2020; Galante & dela Cruz, 2024) and in-service language teachers in a university in Toronto, Ontario (Galante, 2022; Galante et al., 2022). While these cities are unique in their linguistic diversity, Montreal being in the French-speaking province of Quebec and Toronto in the English-majority province of Ontario, they both serve as a foundation for reflection of context-specific plurilingual practices in social interactions, pedagogical practices and teacher training in universities. The talk will end with pedagogical recommendations for language teachers and university policies, particularly on the inclusion of plurilingual policies in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) documents.