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Article published In: Journal of English-Medium Instruction
Vol. 4:1 (2025) ► pp.16–43

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“So, you’re speaking Dutch?”

An interdisciplinary analysis of language policy negotiation in the EMI classroom

ORCiD logo with link | Ghent University | University of the Western Cape
Published online: 6 February 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jemi.23024.des
Abstract
Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public service. Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar notion of street-level bureaucracy can be used as a novel approach to studying the multilingual practice dimensions of English-medium instruction (EMI) classroom interaction. Existing work has demonstrated how Lipsky’s framework allows us to carefully consider on-the-ground language policy construction by EMI content lecturers, painting a picture of the lecturer as a lens through which institutional language policy is reflected or — at times — refracted in situated classroom practice. This requires an interactional perspective sensitive to the management of frame and participant alignment. In this article, I investigate how negotiation of language policy is brought about interactionally in the EMI classroom. The dataset contains 23 classroom recordings which capture the interactions between six lecturers and their students in two EMI engineering programs at a Belgian university. The data are analyzed interactionally through a combination of Lipsky’s model and frame analysis. This interdisciplinary approach brings into focus the interactional dynamics and distribution of negotiation sequences. In this way, this article contributes to our understanding of the agentive role of the EMI content lecturer while simultaneously valorizing context-sensitive translanguaging in the globalized linguistic-educational practice of English-medium instruction.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Background: Understanding lecturer agency in the EMI classroom
  • Language policy negotiation and (re-)production: Towards an interdisciplinary approach
    • Street-level bureaucracy in the EMI classroom
    • Interactional analysis: A Lipskian or a Goffmanian perspective?
  • Methodology
    • Data collection sites
    • Participants: Lecturers and students
    • Data collection: Linguistic ethnographic fieldwork
    • Data selection procedures
    • Data treatment and analysis
    • Overview of language policy negotiation
  • Results: Negotiating language policy in lecturer-student interaction
    • Excerpt 1: IDL2 observation two
    • Excerpt 2: BSL2 observation B1
    • Excerpt 3: IDL1 observation B3
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Ethical clearance
  • Availability of data and materials
  • Declarations
  • Notes
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
References (60)
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