Our next LTRF event will be taking place on Thursday the 1st of December. We’re very happy to be joined by the University of West London’s Victoria Magne and Brunel’s Giuliana Ferri. Please find details of the event below.
Date and time: Thursday 1st December 2022, 18:00-19:30.
Location: Room 604, UCL Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AL.
Speakers: Viktoria Magne (School of Human and Social Sciences, University of West London) and Giuliana Ferri (College of Business, Arts and Social Sciences, Brunel University London).
Title: Perceptions of linguistic diversity and multilingual practices in a London post-1992 university
Despite the internationalization of Anglophone universities, language diversity is framed as a problem rather than a resource, leading to deficit discourses and the erasure of multilingual practices within the sector (Preece & Marshall, 2020). That said, the higher education sector in England is not homogenous, with the two-tier system between research-intensive universities and teaching intensive, or post-1992 universities. Much research that explores linguistic diversity and language attitudes is often conducted with higher education international students in research-intensive universities. There is a clear lack of understanding of the language attitudes and experiences of language diversity of this underrepresented group of bi/multilingual ‘home’ or ‘domestic’ students (Preece & Martin, 2009) found primarily in widening participation institutions (Simpson & Cooke, 2009). In this talk, we will share the results of our study that explores undergraduate students’ perceptions of linguistic diversity in a post-1992 university in London through the Bakhtinian notion of heteroglossia. The results point to an emerging sense of resistance to practices of “othering” of multilingual speakers of English and signal a level of empathy that is often absent from language attitude studies conducted in other contexts. The talk will conclude with a call to challenge traditional deficit views of multilingualism and to increase student critical language awareness in a safe, structured environment.