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Plurilingual Students in EMI: Perceptions of Educational Democracy and Linguistic Justice

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Abstract

This chapter investigates plurilingual students’ perceptions in English-medium instruction (EMI) programmes. It reports a study into the language perceptions of plurilingual students (n = 140) from different bachelor’s degree programmes at a Dutch university which is officially bilingual. The quantitative questionnaire (valid response 105) probed the students’ perceptions of educational democracy and linguistic justice, according to gender, plurilingualism and their degree programme. Little research has been done into how students perceive issues related to these two constructs. The research results reveal scarcely no effect of plurilingualism, but there are some significant gender and degree programme effects. The discussion suggests that not only may the university and the degree programmes be neglecting the students’ linguistic repertoires, but that plurilingual students may also be discounting their own plurilingual competences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Robert Wilkinson

  2. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    René Gabriëls

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  1. Robert Wilkinson
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  2. René Gabriëls
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Maria Kuteeva

  2. Department of English, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Kathrin Kaufhold

  3. Department of Languages, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Niina Hynninen

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Wilkinson, R., Gabriëls, R. (2020). Plurilingual Students in EMI: Perceptions of Educational Democracy and Linguistic Justice. In: Kuteeva, M., Kaufhold, K., Hynninen, N. (eds) Language Perceptions and Practices in Multilingual Universities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38755-6_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38755-6_9

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-38754-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-38755-6

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