Linguistic and intercultural landscapes in the European Higher Education

Foreword

Multilingualism and linguistic diversity are one of the pillars of European Union’s strategy. According to the Treaty of the European Union, the EU “[…] shall respect its rich cultural and linguistic diversity and shall ensure that Europe’s cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced” (Article 3, C326 / 17). In addition to the general principle of linguistic diversity mentioned in the founding treaties, the European charter for regional or minority languages, adopted in 1992 and entered into force in 1998, is designed to protect regional and minority languages as European cultural heritage. The idea of studying and teaching languages other than major international languages is also stressed. In the multilingualism strategy adopted in 2005, three main objectives are highlighted: (1) language learning and the promotion of linguistic diversity in society; (2) promotion of the multilingual economy; and (3) access by citizens to European legislation in their own language. In 2008, a further multilingual objective was launched: multilingualism as an asset for Europe and its intercultural dialogue. The key instrument is intended to encourage the removal of language barriers and to implement the learning/teaching model, which consists of strengthening communication in one mother tongue, as well as in two other languages.

In this context, all Higher Education Institutions can play a significant role in language policy in many ways: by setting up international networks, by joint projects relating to the teaching and learning foreign languages, by promoting multilingualism in the language centres. Considering their strategy, several topics may arise concerning various aspects: Higher Education Institutions’ language policy and linguistic situation in their territories, policy related to the language used in research and knowledge dissemination, and policy related to heritage languages and languages taught to students (cf. Herreras 2022 : 20).

Multilingualism is inextricably associated with multiculturalism and interculturality. Thus, intercultural landscapes result from human mobility, migration and displacement, and reflect in policies and practices boosting intercultural sensitivity adopted by various social actors, including higher education institutions. While cross-cultural exchanges may emerge as natural outcomes of cultures in contact, intercultural dialogue and education in diverse social landscapes require explicit policies and actions at all social and educational levels. Tentatively defined in European policy discourse and documents, intercultural dialogue and education have been endorsed by several initiatives of the European Union and the Council of Europe, in close connection with language policy in the European arena. Notable examples of such initiatives include the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue (2008) and the European Parliament resolution of 19 January 2016 on the role of intercultural dialogue, cultural diversity and education in promoting EU fundamental values, which capitalised on the conceptual, policy and practice advancements facilitated by previous actions. Intercultural dialogue and education are seen as pillars for promoting the respect for diversity, tolerance, and ultimately inclusion. Educational policies and practices in this regard are crucial, and this fact is reflected in the high number of European conventions, declarations, policy recommendations, programmes, and projects aimed at intercultural education of children and young people.

Given the role of higher education institutions in upholding intercultural dialogue and education, inextricably interlinked with multilingual education, several matters may be addressed:

• –innovative practices and tools to address cultural diversity and interculturality in Higher Education,
• – the development of intercultural (communication) competence in Higher Education,
• – multilingualism and intercultural education in Higher Education,
• – academic mobility and exchange as tools for promoting intercultural awareness and multilingual education in Higher Education,
• – policies and practices for embedding intercultural education in the academic curricula.

Keeping in mind this general framework, this book comprises eleven articles that deal with one of the previous topics.

Raúl Sánchez Prieto’s contribution discusses the concept of “invisible minority indigenous languages”, referring to languages and language varieties that are hardly present in the public space, and relates them to the university language policies of apparently monolingual universities such as those of Salamanca, Coimbra, Montpellier and Göttingen. It examines the presence of invisible languages in the areas of influence of these universities and proposes the promotion of cultural and linguistic awareness rather than imposing the use of these languages or adopting an activist stance in revitalising them, provided there is no social demand to do so.

Elisabetta Ježek and Costanza Marini present the survey of the linguistic landscape of the two university campuses of the University of Pavia, the Humanities City Campus and the Science and Technology Cravino Campus, where 555 language signs were sampled in the spring of 2023 and analysed using a qualitative-quantitative approach. The goal of the study is to contribute to the research on the linguistic landscapes in higher education settings, interpreted as specific instances of public spaces. These studies are paramount to planning the future language policies of European universities such as the University of Pavia, one of the members of the EC2U Alliance (European Campus of City-Universities) and its Virtual Institute for Quality Education.

Sanja Bošković, Aleksandar Novaković and Selena Stanković propose in their contribution to analyze the status and posture of the Serbian language in the Balkan context at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. To create a clearer picture of the position of Serbian, the authors focus on certain linguistic and sociolinguistic phenomena manifesting within the Serbian language today. To do this, they rely on the theoretical analysis method with the content analysis technique. Their research shows that despite the anti-Cyrillic attitude, the Serbian language survives and does not surrender to the onslaught of falsified historical facts. The Serbian language is compulsory and the most complex subject in Serbian primary and secondary schools. It is studied from the first grade of elementary school to the fourth grade of high school. The most influential Serbian linguists are trying to increase the number of classes in schools with their professional work and commitment to preserve the Serbian language and its centuries-old cultural heritage. In addition, the Declaration on the status of the Serbian language at non-Serbian departments and non-pedagogical faculties was unanimously adopted, which should help in the fight to preserve the Serbian language and the Cyrillic alphabet as the basic identity criteria of the Serbian people.

Benjamin Thomas Colo examines in his work the functionality of English, Portuguese, and other academic languages in a non-Anglophone university setting. In particular, this work assesses the perceived linguistic practices of professors in the areas of research, publishing, teaching, and the performance of administrative tasks within the History Department of the University of Coimbra in Portugal. By analyzing quantitative and qualitative data collected by surveys and semi-structured interviews with Portuguese university history professors, this research evaluates contemporary attitudes towards different academic languages as well as the politics of plurilingual practices of a localized academic community. Consequently, this paper investigates the professors’ conceptualizations of their current language practices and their perceptions concerning multiculturalism and plurilingualism in relation to intercultural dialogue. Consequently, this work must address the question of the dominance of English in Portuguese international academic institutions and whether it is seen as diminishing the value of other academic languages. In this way, the current work scrutinizes the common belief that English has created a significant disparity between native and non-native English speakers within the international academic context.

Outi Veivo, Soili Norro and Marjut Johansson focus their research on the Finnish context. In recent decades, language education has undergone many changes in Finnish primary and secondary schools in such a way that it has had an impact on the study of foreign languages. Also, in Finnish higher education, language degree programmes have been the object of various reforms and language policy measures. The objective of this article is to discover whether these changes are reflected in the number of new students entering language specialist education. By analysing the distribution of new students across different language degree programmes, the authors aim to characterize which languages are less and which are more widely studied in the Finnish higher education context. Their aim is also to discover whether the situation has changed over the last twenty years. The results show that the proportion of English language students has grown at the expense of other languages, such as Swedish, German and French. These findings are discussed in the framework of educational and national language policies.

Thomas Schmidtgall examines the dynamics of intercultural and transcultural cooperation within European university alliances. From the perspective of the interdisciplinary research field of intercultural communication and using the “Passau Three-Level Model”, influencing factors as well as hurdles and obstacles in communicative interaction are identified and essential factors of successful cooperation are analyzed in order to finally propose different elements of a cooperation framework for European university alliances.

Clara Keating and Joana Santos present part of a research project on plurilingual and multiliterate repertories of mobile students, simultaneously lived and experienced, materialized in interaction and discourse. A collaborative methodology of in-depth biographical interviews on the lived experience with languages provided the data, co-constructed with four students officially and institutionally labelled as citizens of African states with Portuguese as an official language. The life narratives indicated the dynamics of agency and linguistic citizenship involved in the circulation of these speakers and their repertoires across complex sociolinguistic spaces; they suggested that languages were weaved in polycentric and multilingual distributions of resources that resulted from mobility, both material and immaterial, physical, historical, social and interactional (Blommaert 2010). The analysis also showcased how mobility left traces crossed by the complex entanglement of scales of language policy, with impact on students’ repertoires. Complex entanglements also emerged in the ways in which speakers framed lived experiences, as they drew on discursive rationalizations about what counted as being a legitimate speaker or legitimate language. This detailed ethnographic and discursive analysis of participants’ agencies and local creativities may provide a more dynamic, complex and accurate understanding of how multiple scales of language policy are being played out in the Portuguese higher education context.

Leonardo Cascão and Susana Araújo focus on Ana Rocha de Sousa’s film, Listen (2020). This film focuses on a Portuguese immigrant family in London. The couple’s children are forcibly removed from their home when the family, amid deep financial issues, is confronted with the English social services. This contribution shows how the analysis of a contemporary film can be used as a teaching and learning resource for critical language awareness as well as a means to interrogate the role of interpreters in the increasingly complex contexts of migrant hospitality in Europe. The authors base this approach on the argument that specific means of artistic representations such as film and literature, can alert viewers to social issues and needs, and thus can be valuable tools when debating, researching, and teaching these issues in the context of Higher Education.

Marie Molenaers and Raúl Sánchez Prieto present various pedagogical techniques developed by the Department of Dutch at the University of Salamanca, that enable foreign language learners to gain a comprehensive awareness of the intralinguistic and intracultural reality of Dutch. After a brief familiarisation with the phenomenon of “pluricentric Dutch” and its cultural-historical background, the authors analyse the degree to which the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) integrates sociolinguistic skills into foreign language acquisition. Their educational approach encompasses three distinct modes of operation. The first phase, called “noticing”, provides an introduction to the fundamental aspects of the linguistically varied Dutch reality and the broader historical context. The second phase, “understanding”, is more practical. It enhances the previous stage by drawing comparisons between and within standard and non-standard language varieties through audio-visual exercises. In the third stage, “processing”, a project is launched in which students conduct virtual research at Dutch or Flemish universities, giving them the opportunity and responsibility to engage with linguistic diversity actively and autonomously. Since this innovative “virtual pedagogical journey” encourages in-depth exploration of the diverse social and linguistic aspects of Dutch, it fully meets and exceeds the CEFR standards (Eibensteiner & Förster 2022). Through this teaching method that combines both explicit and implicit instruction, the learners develop their pedagogical, metalinguistic, cognitive, sociolinguistic, and intercultural skills and attitudes, which contribute to their personal growth.