Higher Education in the Global Village: Cultural and Linguistic Practices in the International University

This volume is about higher education in the context of globalization. Universities are rapidly becoming internationalized, and far from being just' a question of the English language replacing local languages as the working language, this process has introduced a whole range of sociolinguistic and cultural issues that universities are now trying to come to grips with. Transnational mobility, communication and exchange  have increased to the point where the students, faculty and staff of many institutions make up an academic microcosm of the world, and choices involving multilingual and multicultural processes and resources have to be made which will aff ect every level and type of academic, social and administrative practice. The aim of the research represented by this anthology is to develop a new theoretical understanding of the internationalization process, in which - inspired by Bourdieu - we see the university as a multilingual and multicultural market place where linguistic and cultural resources form the capital with which power and infl uence are negotiated, and where academic and social practices are choices (‘moves') within a linguistic and political fi eld viewed as a structured space of (often hierarchical) positions.