In recent years, more and more calls have been made in the field of English as a lingua franca (ELF) to investigate multilingualism and its natural connection to English as a lingua franca, emphasising that the two phenomena are mutually constitutive. This entry briefly traces the theoretical discussions that have taken place over the past decade in which English as a lingua franca research has progressively drawn from broader frameworks of sociolinguistic inquiry, particularly from a sociolinguistics of mobility and translingual practice. In addition, the entry summarises recent work on this topic that has explicitly engaged with multilingualism in order to see the extent to which calls for further reconceptualisation of English as a lingua franca as multilingualism are taken up by researchers in the field. The entry concludes that a translingual turn in English as a lingua franca studies seems to be slowly consolidating in the field.

This entry provides an overview of the knowledge, uses and attitudes towards English in Estonia. Like in many other countries globally, English has made significant inroads in the country in recent years through a variety of routes, and the language is now present in a range of societal domains and areas. Inevitably, the increased presence of English has brought with it a number of sociolinguistic consequences, both in terms of the growing contexts where English is used, and in terms of the social meanings attached to English. The entry briefly describes the societal functions English has gained in Estonia over the past few years and analyses succinctly the metapragmatic meanings this increased presence of the language has entailed.

This volume investigates the interconnections of language, scholarly publishing, and the knowledge economy in contemporary academia across different European settings. The chapters included revolve around aspects that are related to the knowledge economy cycle, from the individual and systemic conditions that enable knowledge production, to the currently existing channels and frameworks that give shape to and condition its circulation, uptake, and consumption. All the chapters combined provide a coherent and holistic overview of the affordances and limitations that different social actors experience when participating in such cycles, including the different modes of access to resources across geographic contexts and disciplinary traditions. An important contribution of the volume is the multi-layered angle that it incorporates into analysing issues of scholarly publishing in today's academia, placing language as a social practice at the heart of the structuring processes that condition the creation, dissemination, and consumption of knowledge in contemporary societies. Given the centrality of English in these processes, a particular focus on this language runs through the whole volume, but the tensions and intersections with other languages are usefully explored by all authors, with calls for greater sensitivity towards and real acknowledgement of linguistic diversity in the present-day knowledge economy cycle.

This chapter provides an introduction to the present volume. It outlines the interconnections between language, the knowledge economy, and scholarly publishing and argues for transcending a narrow view of English versus other languages in academic publishing. To situate the chapters in this volume, we, the editors, outline the main themes developed in the different chapters as well as what we see as some important points in the framing of the topics under discussion. Over the past decades, higher education policy reforms and evaluation systems have turned scientific scholarly publishing into a market where different actors (both individual and institutional) compete for resources (both material and symbolic) and engage to seek advantage in it. This situation has implications for scholars across all fields and can be approached from different analytical perspectives. Considering the dominant position of English in scientific publishing, as sociolinguists we are intrinsically interested in the interplay between English and other languages in multilingual settings, such as Europe. The volume as a whole and this introduction more modestly suggest a broader approach to examining scholarly publication, bridging structural and individual factors that shape the production, circulation, and consumption of knowledge.

This study aims to contribute to the ongoing scholarly debate about linguistic privilege in academia. The article pushes this debate forward by considering the role of English in the career development of academics in Anglophone universities. More concretely, our study empirically explores the career trajectories of multilingual scholars in Ireland who speak English as an additional language (EAL). Adopting a Bourdieusian lens, the article conceptualises academia as a locus of competitive struggle over authority, recognition, and prestige, in which scholars avail themselves of different kinds of capital, including linguistic capital, and deploy strategies to flourish. Through a qualitative approach, the article examines data from university documents and procedures, from interviews with EAL scholars in different disciplines and at different stages of their career, and from interviews with academics holding senior management positions in three universities in Dublin. We analyse the language-related challenges that EAL scholars encounter and the affordances with which Anglophone universities provide them, as well as the ways in which language impacts on their career progression. The empirical data reveals a complex and nuanced interplay between language and other academic factors. Our findings suggest the need to go beyond simple hierarchies of academic privilege or disadvantage based on a scholar’s first or additional language alone.

Public intellectual life is an area of inquiry that has not received a great deal of attention within the field of sociolinguistics. This article investigates the performative dimension of public intellectual engagement in the area of language and gender and, more specifically, how epistemic authority about gender-neutral language is constructed in public intellectual contributions in Catalonia, Spain. Adopting Arendt’s notion of truth claim and the Foucauldian concepts of regimes of truth and epistemic sovereignty, we empirically examine the mechanisms of reception and validation of the public engagements of one highly visible linguistic scholar. Our study shows the ways in which this intellectual figure strives to be recognised as having exclusive scientific authority about language. We argue that pursuing the allegedly impartial standpoint of epistemic authority about gender and language inevitably advances the interests of specific political actors and large media corporations of a conservative strand that fervently oppose gender-neutral language. 

L’àmbit intel·lectual públic és un terreny que fins ara ha estat relativament poc investigat des d’una perspectiva sociolingüística. Aquest article indaga en la dimensió performativa d’aquest àmbit en el context d’un debat sobre llengua i gènere i, més concretament, analitza com es construeix l’autoritat epistèmica sobre el llenguatge neutre en les aportacions intel·lectuals públiques a Catalunya. Adoptem la noció d’afirmació de la veritat d’Arendt i els conceptes foucaultians de règims de veritat i sobirania epistèmica per examinar empíricament els mecanismes de recepció i validació de les intervencions públiques d’una experta lingüista amb molta visibilitat pública. El nostre estudi mostra com aquesta figura intel·lectual s’esforça per ser reconeguda com a autoritat científica exclusiva en relació amb la llengua. Argumentem que buscar un punt de vista presumptament imparcial d’autoritat epistèmica sobre llengua i gènere promou inevitablement els interessos d’actors polítics concrets i de grans corporacions mediàtiques d’una línia conservadora que s’oposen fervorosament al llenguatge neutre.

This article analyses some of the linguistic tensions derived from international academic mobility in English-medium instruction multilingual university contexts, focusing on local and international academic staff’s interests from a linguistic justice viewpoint. Firstly, we develop a normative argument to explore whether international academic mobility and increased use of English can become a source of linguistic domination for local staff, or if suggested countermeasures, such as requiring international scholars to learn the local language, might lead to linguistic discrimination against the latter group. Secondly, via a qualitative analysis of survey data, we ask local and international scholars at the University of Tartu about their views on the language policy regime at the university. Protective language policies that encourage locals to use Estonian more and require internationals to learn some Estonian could help enhance linguistic justice, according to local staff. However, international scholars may perceive such requests as discriminatory. Linguistic domination and discrimination play a key role in the clashing interests of stakeholders, creating tension. The study highlights the complexity of the dilemmas faced by many university officials today in their attempt to balance institutional goals with on-the-ground realities.

This article looks at English-medium instruction (EMI) contexts in higher education from a linguistic justice perspective and offers a theoretical argument to discuss the potential for EMI to be defended as a positive and valuable phenomenon, beyond economic and competitive arguments. In the final keynote panel at the 2022 ICLHE conference, Philippe Van Parijs pondered how EMI teachers might be seen: either as killers, traitors, sellers, saviours, upgraders, or liberators. After providing characterisations for each of these labels, Van Parijs suggested that EMI teachers should be better conceived of as civilisers, not in a missionary sense of civilising the barbarian, but in the Aristotelian meaning of civic virtue, of citizens being part of public life, actively involved in discussion of public affairs. This seems to imply a specific view of English, one that almost naturally equates the language to democratic progress and consensus. In the article, I challenge this assumption and suggest that for English to be a democratising agent and EMI truly a gate-opener to higher education, emphasis needs to be placed on listening subject positions and regimes of uptake as key aspects of democratic deliberation and key elements to overcome prejudiced views of accents and voices.

The aim of the present study is to investigate the conceptions and beliefs of Iranian medical faculty members and their experiences in academic publishing in English. There has been a recent and heated controversy over the weight or even the very reality of such biases in the literature of publication research. To contribute to the debate from an empirical perspective, we approached 40 publishing Iranian faculty members (aged from 30 to 62) and elicited their narrated experience as writers/authors dealing with the perceived inequalities in scientific publication in English. Through thematic analysis, four categories were identified as the loci of interaction between the participants’ self as micro academic agents and the macro agents in the academic community: 1) plagiarism and unauthenticity; 2) editing and inferiority; 3) journals’ criteria and submission; and 4) reliance on students and seniority. In addition, semantic analysis of the adjectives used in the participants’ narrated experience revealed self-image profiles that show how the faculty members perceive their authorial self in connection to the perceived structural and linguistic injustice in academic publishing. The findings suggest that linguistic (discursive) and structural (non-discursive) injustices in academic publishing are closely intertwined and must be investigated as such.