With the possibility to enroll in courses in nineteen different languages, the free university of Brussels (ULB)
has opted for a linguistic offer that reflects the city’s highly multilingual character. In the faculty of languages and
literature, students interact in and with multiple languages on a daily basis. In a study which interrogated these students on
their linguistic representations, representations related to prestige were shown to be an important part of the collected
responses. This paper aims to provide an overview of the different manifestations and interpretations of the ‘language of
prestige’ linguistic representation in this sample of participants regarding the languages taught at the faculty. It also explores
various implications that this representation has for language learning, as well as questions raised by the possible
interpretative bias of the researcher trying to observe and study linguistic representations. In addition, this paper written in
English relating research conducted in French addresses the issue of ‘epistemological translation’ and the challenges it
poses.