This chapter aims to discuss the presence and implications of using English Medium Instruction (EMI) in two contexts of the Global South; namely, Malaysia, a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and Brazil in Latin America. In both countries language policy and planning are complex. EMI has been adopted following a recent trend towards the internationalization of the higher education system where English has also become the main language for research and publication. The dominance of Western scientific paradigms, the promotion of English as the language of education, and the dissemination of knowledge through English have led to a neglect of knowledge produced in languages other than English. Furthermore, the adoption of a single language threatens the role of other languages in higher education. This chapter examines this trend in face of the need to protect the national language as well as other languages to guarantee an ecology of knowledges and languages in higher education.

With reference to the ethos of the ‘neoliberal turn’ in education, the chapter critically analyses and interprets English Medium Instruction (EMI) in South Asia as it is promoted exogenously and realised at the grassroots level endogenously. The chapter identifies in what ways EMI creates unequal opportunities for people from different socioeconomic, educational, demographic, and indigenous backgrounds and consequently results in discrimination and social injustice in South Asian contexts. The chapter also shows that EMI policies and practices indicate a strong presence of monolingual biases, ideologies, and negative attitudes towards mother tongues and indigenous languages. In addition, colonialism rearticulated in neoliberal higher education promotes the English language. In the end, the chapter suggests that a more context-driven, rational, synchronised, and holistic approach to EMI is needed to decolonise and liberate EMI policies and establish linguistic equality, language rights, and social justice in South Asia.

This chapter reports on a qualitative study of one higher education teacher at a rural technical university in Kazakhstan, where English Medium Instruction (EMI) presents formidable challenges for educators. Drawing upon Gee's discourse analysis tools and Darvin and Norton's investment model, this study illuminates the interplay between affordances, social positionings, and values within EMI contexts. Critical discourse analysis was used to investigate issues of language, ideology, and power that emerged from one hour-long semi-structured interview with Samal, an experienced sociology professor. Our conversations both highlight and challenge dominant discourses in EMI contexts related to economic mobility, internationalization, and native speaker ideologies. Special attention is given to the interviewer–interviewee relationship as both collaboratively shape the interview's focus and social roles, demonstrating the mutual influence of language use in constructing discourse.

Although English is one of South Africa’s eleven official languages, its hegemony is felt country-wide, especially in the education system, to the extent that none of the other official languages can match it. This chapter discusses some of the factors contributing to the reproduction of the dominance of English through English Medium Instruction (EMI) in South Africa, with the focus on the following: the legacy of apartheid language-in-education policies, especially the Bantu Education Act, which sought to deny Black students access to English and impose Afrikaans as the sole medium of instruction in Black schools; South Africa’s new language policy, which gives official recognition to eleven languages but has escape clauses covertly favoring English in the country’s educational system; and student protest movements, which simultaneously demand the fall of a colonial language (Afrikaans) and the continued rise of another (English) at the expense of the indigenous languages. The chapter discusses these factors in light of theoretical developments in critical linguistic theory and language economics. It explores ways in which the reproduction of the dominance of English through EMI can be approached to ensure that English and South Africa’s other official languages coexist, one not at the expense of but in addition to the others.

The chapter situates the English Medium Instruction (EMI) policy and practices within a private university in part of Kazakhstan to gather the perspectives of the users to examine their orientations towards the use of EMI, the potential they see in the EMI policy, and their perceptions of the widespread expansion of the English language industry in the local market. The study employed qualitative interviews with students, teachers, and administrators. The participants’ perspectives show their entrepreneurial orientations towards English, evident in their repeated discourses of the English language as potential capital and a key to global competitiveness. They also endorse the intense pursuit of EMI policy in Kazakhstan because, as they understand, individual as well as governmental-level investment in English-related language skills make brighter promises and prospects in the current global economy. English is also believed to enhance Kazakhstani citizens’ global competitiveness. In theoretical terms, these orientations are deeply interwoven with the core principles of neoliberalism and neoliberal rationality, characterized by terms such as capital, globalization, global competitiveness, economic advantage, market logic, and private investment.

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.

This chapter is grounded in the storied realities of an EMI programme in a Japanese university where one entire campus was transformed into an English-speaking operation. The accompanying rhetoric reified campus ‘internationalization’ as part of the quest for institutional ‘renewal’. Given the ambitiousness and contentiousness of this undertaking, the EMI programme would eventually become implicated in controversies over the workings of underlying ideologies linked to campus Englishization. In so forcibly compounding Englishization, internationalization, and institutional renewal with EMI, the administration introduced a set of ancillary activities and practices involving advertising and faculty recruitment that bore only peripheral relevance to EMI. While principally irrelevant to EMI, these undertakings were not arbitrary but a part of using EMI to fulfil agendas that went beyond concerns over medium of instruction per se, or for that matter education. In this critique the authors consider these peripheral undertakings to be para-EMI activities and argue that these activities were influenced by prevailing cultural political and socio-economic relations within Japanese society.

English Medium Instruction (EMI) is a burgeoning field of interest for researchers and practitioners; however, to date its sociocultural and political implications have not been widely considered. This book addresses that concern by situating EMI within wider sociopolitical contexts of knowledge and language. It foregrounds the notion of “Critical EMI,” bringing together applied linguists to revisit EMI in higher education from critical sociocultural perspectives. The notion of criticality is conceptualized as an attempt at addressing issues of ideology, policy, identity, social justice, and the politics of English. The chapters explore Critical EMI concerns in diverse settings across five continents, and present insights for the theory, research, policy, and practice of EMI. The book also problematizes the neocolonial spread and dominance of English through EMI. Calling for an explicit and inclusive EMI praxis, it is essential reading for researchers of applied linguistics and English language education, as well as teacher practitioners.

English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) is linked with power and dominance; however, what Critical EMI might look like requires further clarification and illustration. In this chapter we offer one such example of a critical approach to EMI by presenting emerging findings from our project, ELEMENTAL – English as the Language-of-Education Mechanisms in Europe: New Transdisciplinary Approaches in Linguistics. ELEMENTAL borrows tools and concepts from political science to re-theorise the rise of EMI in European higher education (HE) as linked to governance reforms that have sought to deregulate the market and grant higher education institutions (HEIs) greater autonomy. While this so-called steering at a distance mode of governance differs in form and extent across Europe, it typically relies on steering tools such as key performance indicators, competitive funding formulae, institutional profiling, strategic development plans and other means of incentivising HEIs to enhance their performance. Presenting evidence from Turkish HE, we argue that steering at a distance may have played a role in paving the way for EMI or, at the very least, created a climate in which it can emerge and thrive. We conclude by considering the potential of transdisciplinarity as a way forward for a Critical EMI.