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This paper seeks to address the ways in which ideology and literacy practices shape the responses of students to an ongoing initiative at the University of the Western Cape aimed at diversifying options for epistemological access, specifically the language varieties and the modes in which parts of the curriculum for a third year linguistics module are delivered. Students' responses to the materials in English and in two varieties of Afrikaans and isiXhosa (as mediated in writing vs orally) are determined, and used as basis to problematize decisions on language variety and mode in language diversification initiatives in Higher Education in South Africa. The findings of the paper are juxtaposed against particular group interests in the educational use of a language as well as differences in the affordances and impact of different modes of language use. The paper suggests that beyond the euphoria of using languages other than English in South African Higher Education, several issues (such as entrenched language practices, beliefs and language management orientations) require attention if the goals of transformation in this sector are to be attained.

Modelling success in HIV messaging is notoriously difficult in part because of the diversity of disciplines interested in the subject (e.g. public health, psychology, communication, education, sociology, linguistics) and the claims made in each, often on the basis of different coming-to-know processes. For instance, although relevant research in public health and communication emphasizes audience responses to messages but sometimes slights detailed analyses of the texts of these messages, work in applied linguistics tends to engage with texts without, however, framing its claims in the context of theories of behaviour. This study makes a case for attention to both text and behaviour by showing how a corpus linguistics study of texts of HIV messaging can be accommodated within a behavioural framework. An analysis of a corpus of HIV messages from Germany and Nigeria carried out from the standpoint of predictions of a behavioural theory suggests that only two German messages and one Nigerian message (out of the eleven messages in each national corpus) had the mix of features (high threat, high efficacy) predicted by the theory to elicit message acceptance. In view of the implication that the observed nexus between messaging and society does not necessarily translate into better acceptance prospects as defined within the particular behavioural theory, this study may be seen as problematising certain claims in applied linguistics research on HIV, especially recommendations dealing with the need for messaging to reflect local (knowledge) perspectives.

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Teaching in the field of public health needs to employ a global perspective to account for the fact that public health problems and solutions have global determinants and implications as well. International university partnerships can promote such a perspective through the strengthening of cooperation, exchange, and communication between academic institutions across national boundaries. As an example for such an academic network in the field of public health, we introduce the International Public Health Partnership—a collaboration between a university in Germany and universities in India, Turkey, and Nigeria. Formed in 2005, it facilitated the exchange of information, fostered discussion about the transferability of public health concepts, contributed to the structural development of the universities involved, and promoted an intercultural dialog through a combination of local and distance learning activities. Although well accepted by students and staff, different obstacles were encountered; these included limited external funding, scarce own financial, time and personnel resources, and diverging regulations and structures of degree programs at the partnership sites. In the present article, we share several lessons that we learned during our joint collaboration and provide recommendations for other universities that are involved in partnerships with institutions of higher education or are interested to initiate such collaborations.