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2 - Conceptualisations of English in an Italian EMI Context

from Part I - Ideologies and Educational Policies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2025

By
Francesca Helm
Edited by
Seyyed-Abdolhamid Mirhosseini  and
Peter I. De Costa
Seyyed-Abdolhamid Mirhosseini
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
Peter I. De Costa
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
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Summary

This chapter reports on ethnographic research carried out in an EMI course in an Italian higher education institution. The chapter starts with a brief overview of the recent, contested growth of EMI in Italy and a critical analysis of national policy documents to unveil the ideological underpinnings of EMI in this sociocultural context. This is followed by the presentation and discussion of findings of ethnographic research carried out over three years in a course designed to promote critical language awareness in an EMI context. The study looks at how students’ ideologies of language interact with those identified at the macro and meso levels, first of all by exploring the language portraits and biographies of a class of students at the beginning of their English-Taught Programme. This is followed by a more in-depth analysis of the portraits and biographies of three students who were interviewed one year later. This provides a longitudinal dimension to the research and insights into the changing nature of language ideologies and also linguistic repertoires.

Keywords

English Medium Instructionlanguage portraitlinguistic repertoirelanguage ideologiesinternationalisation
Type
Chapter
Information
Critical English Medium Instruction in Higher Education , pp. 19 - 36
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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