The (in)justice of EMI: a critical discourse analysis of two key stakeholders’ views on the Polytechnic University of Milan court case

1 Introduction

By decreeing illegitimate the exclusive adoption of English-medium Instruction (EMI) at universities in 2018, Italy became one of the few countries to formally rule against the spread of English in national higher education. The casus belli was the approval, in 2012, of a Polytechnic University of Milan policy which aimed for exclusive EMI at the master and doctoral level. The policy generated great resistance among the academic staff and a polarized debate joined by academics, politicians, students, and the Accademia della Crusca language society, which reached international news outlets (e.g. University World News, BBC, Universitetsläraren). After 100 professors petitioned at the local administrative court against the policy, the case came to involve the Council of State^[1] and the Constitutional Court.^[2] The rector who had promoted the policy maintained that such an initiative was anchored in the most recent Italian reform of the education system (the 240/2010 law), which, among other things, aimed to promote internationalization. Conversely, the Council of State and Constitutional Court deliberated that, while the use of foreign languages in education represents a useful tool, the complete exclusion of Italian could not be considered in line with the Italian Constitution.

The Polytechnic of Milan case resolved now over five years ago, but language remains a current topic in Italy. In 2022, now Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni advocated for a constitutional reform that explicitly recognized Italian as the national language and for a motion for the exclusive use of Italian in official national documents.^[3] Furthermore, looking specifically at EMI, while positive attitudes are reported in the literature by various stakeholders, these are also accompanied by remarks on the pedagogical and professional complexities that EMI entails (e.g. Zuaro 2022a). Overall, despite having one of the highest numbers of higher education institutions (HEIs) in Europe, as of 2024 Italy scores below average in the percentage of HEIs that actually offer EMI.^[4] Thus, while in the last decades EMI has certainly made inroads in Italy, it remains a somewhat limited phenomenon.

Italy is not the only case of mixed reactions, as EMI often triggers discussions around the defence of the local languages and cultures (e.g. Gabriëls and Wilkinson 2020). On the one end, in its role of lingua franca English facilitates international communication (e.g. Van Parijs 2011); however, English has also been described through a plethora of negative metaphors (see Hultgren [2020] for a summary) to emphasize its potentially threatening role towards non-Anglophone academics and learners, non-Anglo-American epistemologies, and other languages. These discussions often tackle questions of cultural hegemony and social and linguistic injustice seemingly for two main reasons: firstly, that the use of English as the communication tool is frequently not optional, but mandated through overt or covert policies; secondly, that, due to its specific connection to the Anglo-American society and culture, English cannot be considered a ‘neutral’ communication tool (e.g. Kuchah 2018; Zuaro 2022b, forthcoming). Overall, if linguistic justice is understood as the right to express oneself in the language(s) that allow such expression to the fullest (Moreno Cabrera 2006), it may be clear how the dominant use of English in academia, as well as other areas of society, can affect the “parity of participation” (Fraser 2007) and trigger discourses of injustice.

Research on linguistic injustice often maintains a focus on grassroots forms of resistance. In EMI literature, this seems to have led to prioritizing students and lecturers, overlooking other categories of stakeholders. Policy makers, however, can play a crucial role in both resisting and reinforcing mechanisms of injustice. Their perspectives hold potentially unique insight into why and how certain decisions are made in higher education. Therefore, in the present article we target specifically stakeholders who can be considered elite actors (Beach and Pedersen 2019), or individuals with a unique positioning in terms of agency or knowledge in a particular process.

We, thus, return to the case of the 2012 Milan litigation, focusing on one elite participant from each side of the controversy: the rector of the Polytechnic who promoted the EMI-only policy and the lawyer (also a member of the academic staff) who mainly represented the petitioners in court. Via the novel involvement of elite participants, whose voices have not been represented in previous analyses, we aim to shed some light, rather than on the court case’s outcome, on the deeper causes for the ideological clash behind it (cf. Molino and Campagna 2014; Murphy and Zuaro 2021; Pulcini and Campagna 2015; Santulli 2015; Zuaro et al. 2022). To that end, in this paper we investigate which discourses are made relevant by elite participants in the discussion of English in higher education and how these relate to perceptions of social (in)justice. In this way, we aim to clarify how the adoption of EMI can be framed in very different, sometimes seemingly unreconcilable, ways.

2 Literature review

While it is hardly controversial to claim an inter-dependent relationship between language and society, the nature of such dependency is still the object of debate. For example, on the one hand, there is significant evidence of connections between language and various types of social injustices: minorities can face oppression on the basis of their use of language (e.g. Dovchin 2020; May 2012) and, in education, language can represent an instrument of social division and inequality in learning (e.g. Kamwendo et al. 2014; Kuchah 2018). On the other hand, it has been argued that language is often not the cause of social inequality, but rather a symbol or catalyst of other social anxieties (Hultgren 2019, 2020; drawing on Cameron 2012), thus representing “an epiphenomenon of a problem that is fundamentally non-linguistic” (Mufwene 2014: 921).

Nevertheless, whether by triggering specific discriminations, or by becoming a function of other social injustices, in academia “language is a key resource that rests at the centre of social inequalities” (Soler 2021: 165). English, for example, can unjustly be framed as a proxy for competence, belittling the knowledge and skills of the non-Anglophones. Thus, individuals who are less proficient in English may see their professionalism, competence or education questioned (e.g. Haidar 2019; Zuaro Forthcoming) and even proficient professionals may internalize nativist ideologies and struggle to recognize themselves as experts (e.g. Nygaard 2019). Similarly, education offered in English may inherently be regarded as qualitatively better (e.g. Lanvers 2021) and Anglophone research communities as more worth addressing (e.g. Harbord 2017). As one result of this mechanism, English can be framed discursively as overpowering other languages by virtue of its prestige, generating much academic reflection around language endangerment and its causes (e.g. Hultgren 2020, 2021; Lanvers 2021). Furthermore, because not all communities have equal access to English learning and, through it, to prosperous education or employment (Ricento 2015), English can also be associated to discourses of gatekeeping. In academia, career progression is often tied to publication in high-ranking journals that only accept manuscripts in English (Harbord 2017; Soler 2020). As a result, “many scholars that come from [non-Anglo-American] sociolinguistic, cultural, and geographical positions will continue to face bigger challenges in order to join their discourse communities of reference and to be seen as legitimate participants in them” (Soler 2021: 166).

Such discussions are generated by the particular position of English as a global communication tool. Despite the paradigmatic shifts in linguistics away from monolithic views of English and towards English as a lingua franca (ELF) or World Englishes (WE), an understanding of ‘English’ as the Anglophone native standard survives, even in diverse and international academic settings (e.g. Jenkins and Mauranen 2019). This is perhaps because, while conceptualizations like ELF move the focus to the actual communicative needs and dynamics among speakers (Smit 2010), potentially positioning all speakers on more level ground, they have been argued to not completely erase the privileges enjoyed by those perceived as speakers of the ‘native standard variety’ (De Schutter 2018; Jenkins 2007; Van Parijs 2011). It is then possible that the empirical experience of linguistic challenges and injustices, combined with limited access to the specialized sociolinguistic discussion, may continue to reinforce polarized and stereotypical views of language and its role in international communication.

Overall, English, in its most monolithic view, is likely conflated with quality and authority as a result of the global influence of the Anglo-American economy and culture (see e.g. the connection between the global spread of English and the global spread of capital identified by O’Regan [2021]). Thus, English is often associated with discourses of progress, prosperity and utility, that can even assume a “relationship between English proficiency and economic development of a country” (Kuchah 2018: 41). With education being significantly affected by the economic neoliberal turn (Tavares 2022), the use of certain languages can itself be legitimized by criteria established in the global economic sphere (Holborow 2015), rather than in the education one. This process, too, reinforces the position of English as the perceived language of science, to a point where policies at universities can invoke the adoption of English without necessarily having to explain why (e.g. Zuaro et al. 2022). Furthermore, even when the promotion of English is declaredly motivated by language learning aims, or justified by the communicational function of English as lingua franca, in reality it can still subtend economic and political goals (Hultgren 2021).

The connections between the spread of English and social injustice complicate the contemporary phenomenon of the English-mediated internationalization. Recent research suggests that, at least in certain contexts, local discussions around internationalization may rely on the discursive superstructures of globalization and national security (Eder 2020). Both globalization and national security are concerned with national development, but the first mobilizes (and legitimizes) neoliberal ideologies of inevitable reality, whilst the second is based on the idea of nation as a “regime of truth” (Eder 2020, drawing on Ball 2015). Regimes of truth “offer the terms that make self-recognition possible” (Butler 2008: 22, in Ball 2015). Nations (here intended as the governmental, legal, and traditional context of a community), thus, fulfil this role by defining which discourses are accepted as legitimate within their society. When it comes to legitimizing higher education policies, globalization and national security can become dichotomous: the first will motivate certain choices by noting that globalization is the reality of the world, whereas the latter will establish the rightness or wrongness of such choices against the specific context of the national identity. Thus, when it comes to assessing the legitimacy of EMI in local higher education, the national regime of truth has a clear potential to clash with the inevitable reality of globalization.

The Polytechnic of Milan controversy seems an expression of such a clash. In the rest of this paper, we analyse this case in terms of the dominant discourses on either side of the debate, as represented by the elite participants of the rector and the lawyer. Our aim is to clarify why the proposed switch to EMI was considered by some the best way to fulfil the mission of the university and safeguard access to quality education, and by others an unnecessary instrument of injustice and exclusion.

3 Methodology

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is characterized by a view of language and society as inextricably intertwined, by a focus on power relations, and by a critical approach to methodology, whereby different methods can be adopted to offer a critique of social phenomena (Fairclough et al. 2011). Thus, while CDA encompasses a variety of theoretical and methodological models, “what unites them is a shared interest in the semiotic dimensions of power, injustice, and political-economic, social or cultural change in society” (Wodak 2012: 627). In CDA, discourses are seen as representing knowledge about a particular topic at a particular point in time, thus providing access to the meaning of certain social practices. Typical Foucauldian approaches frame this relationship as mutually constitutive: discourse constructs the object itself, thus allowing or limiting the possibilities to understand it (Foucault 1972). Such approaches, however, can imply a rejection of realism and a discursive determinism that may be difficult to reconcile with CDA’s aspiration to challenge dominant discourses. Other positions, while still considering discourses a key embodiment of transitive knowledge, attribute less autonomous powers to them. Critical realism (Bhaskar 1998), for example, develops a transcendental argument whereby it is necessary to not only unravel the discursive fabric, but also investigate how it interacts with social structures and causal mechanisms (Joseph and Roberts 2004). This type of approach offers an alternative to discourse-reductionism, while still viewing discourse as an access point to the subjectivities of particular social contexts. The critical component remains an important focus, in that “these constructive subjectivities [can] entail an epistemological distortion about the intransitive ordering of society which works in the interests of a specific social group” (Joseph and Roberts 2004: 4). In the present paper, our use of CDA is theoretically informed by the critical realist position.

The adoption of CDA is not devoid of complexities. For example, through an extensive analysis of Education literature, Rogers et al. (2005) identified some weaknesses in CDA research, such as: lack of a clearly described linguistic framework; limited focus to how power is reproduced rather than resisted; lack of development from reflection to reflexivity. CDA has naturally continued to develop since then; nonetheless, Rogers et al.’s recommendations remain valuable for current research and (in combination with Mullet [2018] and Machin and Mayr [2023]) have informed our analytical procedures. Our case study is indeed one of resistance, originating from a bottom-up initiative; however, we deliberately focus on both sides of the debate, to encompass reproduction of power as well. Additionally, the co-authorship between researchers from different personal and professional backgrounds is meant to achieve meaningful reflexivity, through the strengthening of rigour and authenticity (Alvesson and Sköldberg 2000). Regarding the lack of theoretical coherence between the identification of linguistic resources and their connection to social practices, which Rogers et al. judge the “weakest link” (Rogers et al. 2005: 386) in the studies examined, our analysis proceeded to connect methodologically and conceptually the participants’ linguistic features to broadly circulating discourses that connect English and (in)justice. This was achieved through the deployment of Van Leeuwen’s (2007) legitimation framework, as described next.

4 Results

The analysis revealed that both participants framed their conduct primarily as a means to further the interests of the students, the institution, and the nation. They also highlighted how this had come at a personal cost (e.g. “the government, the newspapers, and partially many colleagues too, they attacked us in such a manner […]. They told us we were reactionaries, that we were – essentially – fascists” #1, lawyer; “[I was] accused of insulting the Constitution, genocide of the Italian language…” 2#, rector).^[7] Despite these commonalities, these actors’ attitudes often appeared to be diametrically opposed: the same practice was evaluated in opposite ways, against the same purpose. In the next sections, we offer an overview of the dominant discourses identified in the interviews, showcasing how they are used to (de)legitimize the drastic adoption of English in Italian HE, presenting it as an act of (in)justice.

5 Discussion and conclusions

In the present paper we analysed two elite actors’ perspectives around the 2012 Polytechnic of Milan litigation, to shed some light on their framing of EMI in Italian higher education. In particular, our goal was to unveil how each participant framed English in relation to discourses of (in)justice, (de)legitimizing specific linguistic and cultural power relations. Results from the analysis suggest, despite a similar commitment to the public good, a diametrically opposed attitude towards the strong adoption of English, with little overlap. The lawyer references discourses of language loss and cultural hegemony, that negatively impact parity of participation and freedom of choice, as well as the community’s ability to understand the importance of such issues. The rector, on the other hand, draws from discourses of opportunity, progress and inevitable reality, which primarily position English as a necessary tool to develop potential and achieve strategic goals.

English is discussed by both participants as a lingua franca; however, the recognition of such role doesn’t necessarily translate into an increased sense of participation and ownership of the tool. Talk of the central role occupied by English can be almost apologetic (#3, #4), when not outright critical (#8) and wary (#20). In many ways, English continues here to represent an extension of the Anglo-American influence (#18), with the main difference between the perspectives of the two participants being to what extent this is perceived as unjust or, conversely, potentially advantageous (#32). The relevance and power of English is discussed not primarily in relation to its widespread use as a lingua franca, but rather in relation to the economic power and influence of the countries that use (or rather ‘own’) it. Beyond English, the same logic seems to be applied to other languages associated with nations that are influential enough not to need English as much (#28), that are therefore discussed as more justified in sticking to the use of their own language. Importantly, these dominant actors (be them nations, or the universities therein located) are perceived to possess a certain degree of intrinsic legitimacy and credibility. Their coming together in the adoption of particular behaviours legitimizes the behaviours themselves, setting them as examples that need undergo less scrutiny (#24, #25, #26). The deployment of what have here been labelled “strength-in-numbers” discourses may suggest uncertainty around how to navigate particular challenges of contemporary HE. On the basis of such discourses, a scenario of isomorphic tendencies (DiMaggio and Powell 1983) could be hypothesized, whereby in times of uncertainty, universities may model their decisions after those of other institutions. This could be fruitfully investigated further in future research.

It seems important to note that, despite their at times very different opinions, both participants motivate their stances on the basis of the wellbeing of the institution and the students. While this could be argued to be something of a posture, it does fall in line not only with the extent of their personal commitment to the cause, but also with the cultural backdrop of the country (see Zuaro 2022b), in which matters of education are viewed as of high relevance for all citizens. Considering their comparable commitment to education, and even, to a point, similar understanding of the interactions between language and power (as discussed above), how can these actors have come to such unreconcilable evaluations of the proposed EMI policy at their institution? The answer may be found in the different frame of reference adopted by these individuals.

With only a few exceptions, the rector mainly operates within the horizon of the institution and the talented students that gravitate around it. To a problem of access to quality education vis-à-vis class inequality, the rector identifies a neoliberal solution of opportunity, merit, and competition. English is presented as the gateway to such solution, by virtue of its discursive framing as an inherently beneficial tool of progress. Conversely, the lawyer mainly contextualizes her positions in the broader frame of the identity and social complexities and inequalities of the nation. The drastic promotion of English in education is seen, in this key, as a mismatched, unnecessary, and even misleading measure. Arguably, then, the primary reason why these actors cannot agree on whether EMI is a legitimate and just solution to the challenges faced by their institution (and by national higher education in general) is because they do not share a similar understanding of what such challenges consist of.

This conflict may represent a particular fracture in Italian education and society, similar to what is described elsewhere by Eder (2020): the pull for an increasingly English-medium globalized education could be clashing rather drastically with the Italian traditional understanding of what education is and should accomplish. In the particular case of the Polytechnic, on the one hand, the unmitigated promotion of English points to more globalized and utilitarian views of education; on the other hand, the critical involvement of the national authorities suggests a rejection of such discourses by the national regime of truth. This could perhaps suggest a need for Italian higher education as an institution to re-examine and re-establish its principles and objectives. More broadly, in regards to the implementation of EMI in HE, one way forward may be through a more pervasive and widespread redefinition of the nature and purposes of English as a lingua franca in education, as well as through the redefinition of more equitable incentives and evaluations of its use. This may help universities navigate the complexities of international research and education with more refined tools against injustice.

Overall, our results confirm that debates around language and its role in HE can hardly be limited to strictly linguistic matters. The present study on the court case of the Polytechnic of Milan suggests that focusing on policy makers’ compliance or subversion of the national regime of truth can help isolate specific nodes of social conflict. We conclude that future research on opposition to EMI may benefit from including, next to examples of grassroots resistance, also a focus on why and how discourses that reproduce power are adopted by elite actors, such as policy and decision makers. This could help identify broader preoccupations tied to social inequality in higher education, beyond the more well-known concerns of language protectionism.