Which university language policy for which linguistic and cultural diversity?

Abstract

This contribution offers reflections inspired by various aspects of our respective experiences. These include our long-term participation in the development of plurilingual and intercultural approaches to language learning and teaching over more than three decades, as well as our more recent involvement in a European university alliance and also an interdisciplinary fieldwork. This leads us first to revisit the role of English at university, from the dual perspective of knowledge development and equity and social justice. We then provide a brief historical overview of the origins and evolution of plurilingual approaches in Europe, explaining the choices we have made in our work, before concluding with a discussion of the various implementations and proposals that could result from this work to promote linguistic and cultural diversity in higher education in a concrete way. These reflections are some convincing arguments in favour of the development of language policies based on such experiences and aim to repoliticise the issue of internationalisation in European universities.