Disciplinary differences in the use of English in higher education: reflections on recent language policy developments

English-Medium Instruction in European Higher Education

“…Drawing on Wignell (2007) and Martin (2011), social sciences can be seen as knowledge hybrids in Bernstein's classification, often attempting to emulate the integrative hierarchical knowledge structures of the From stimulated recall to disciplinary literacy natural sciences, whilst simultaneously acknowledging the potential multiplicity of relevant perspectives for understanding any given phenomenon. Here, Kuteeva and Airey (2014) find that disciplines with more hierarchical knowledge structures, such as natural sciences and medicine, have strong preferences for English language use, whilst disciplines with more horizontal knowledge structures such as the humanities display preferences for local languages. This finding clearly has consequences for university language policies.…”

“…However, a few respondents viewed intercultural English use more pragmatically, with one commenting, "[t]he students must often first learn that it isn't about speaking perfect Oxford English, but that they must be able to express themselves appropriately in a common non-native-language with someone from Poland, Finland, Italy, China, Portugal, etc". Interestingly, there was a frequent perception that a foreign language would be more appropriate in another subject, with respondents from the social sciences saying that their field is too theoretically complex but that English would be appropriate in the natural sciences or engineering; while instructors of technical subjects said that their material was too difficult in German let alone a foreign language, but that a foreign language would be appropriate for a "softer" field (see also the discussion of disciplinary differences in Kuteeva and Airey 2014).…”

“…For example, being disciplinarily literate in society will usually entail the use of one or more local languages, whilst disciplinary literacy in the academy will usually (although not always) require some amount of English. Thus, by framing learning in terms of disciplinary literacy I argue that it becomes relatively easy to appreciate and understand the disciplinary differences in attitudes languages found by Kuteeva and Airey (2014).…”

“…At classroom level, it is well known that English will often be chosen as a lingua franca if there is at least one person present who does not have the local national language as their first (Gnutzmann, Jakisch, and Rabe forthcoming;Mortensen 2014;Björkman 2013), which has been referred to as the "guest decides principle" (Gregersen 2012). In between these levels, there are intermediate levels at which decisions are made, for instance, faculties and departments may make other decisions than their institution (Kuteeva and Airey 2014) and groups of students may make other decisions than their teacher (Söderlundh 2012;Ljosland 2010). It is worth noting that drivers of Englishization may or may not be explicitly recognized as such.…”

14. English-medium instruction in European higher education: Review and future research

“…ELF speakers are generally believed to have a more utilitarian perspective on English than people who identify as learners of English, which can have an effect not only on attitudes towards English but, as a result, also on the language use of students in an ELF environment such as EMI in the international university. One particular area of interest might be comparing students in the natural sciences with students from the arts of social sciences, based on the observation by Kuteeva & Airey (2014), that natural scientists have more utilitarian attitudes to the use of English as a lingua franca than scholars from other academic disciplines. We might therefore expect natural scientists to be front-runners in a process towards less native-oriented norms of English in EMI.…”