Abstract
International students studying at Australian universities are largely represented in the media as problematic speakers of English, in part due to the dominance of the monolingual mindset as an approach to language. This paper focuses instead on international students’ multilingualism and examines the multimodal media representation of them as multilingual speakers. This study presents a thematic language ideological analysis of an episode of an Australian current affairs television program, Four Corners, and social media discussion of the episode and explores the way language ideologies work in the context. It shows that multilingual practices and speakers are stigmatized through the textual and multimodal representation of languages other than English (LOTE). Findings show that the multilingualism of international students and competencies available through LOTE are largely rendered invisible and students are constructed through a ‘double deficit’ view. They are thus not seen as multilingual speakers but deficient English speakers and this deficiency indexes other deficits. Where LOTE becomes visible, it is represented as a problem. The results also show that the social media discussions further amplify the language ideologies of the episode. The implications are considered for media representation and for universities to shift the focus to English language as a medium of instruction only and end ‘language blindness’ for improved social inclusion.
References
ABC. n.d Four corners: About us. Available at: https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/about-us/.Search in Google Scholar
Abelmann, Nancy & Jiyeon Kang. 2013. A fraught exchange? U.S. media on Chinese international undergraduates and the American university. Journal of Studies in International Education 18(4). 382–397. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315313479852.Search in Google Scholar
Anderson, Tim. 2020. News media representations of international and refugee postsecondary students. The Journal of Higher Education 91(1). 58–83. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2019.1587977.Search in Google Scholar
Australian Government DET. 2018a. International student data. Available at: https://internationaleducation.gov.au/research/International-Student-Data/Pages/default.aspx (accessed 20 March).Search in Google Scholar
Australian Government DET. 2018b. Research snapshot: Export income to Australia from international education activity in 2017.Search in Google Scholar
Baik, Chi, Ryan Naylor & Sophie Arkoudis. 2015. The first year experience in Australian universities: Findings from two decades, 1994–2014. Melbourne: Melbourne CSHE, The University of Melbourne.Search in Google Scholar
Baker, Sally & Caroline Lenette. 2019. Higher English entry standards for international students won’t necessarily translate to success. The Conversation, 25 January 2019.Search in Google Scholar
Barker, David. 2004. Encouraging students to take their language learning outside the classroom. JALT Hokkaido Journal 8. 79–86.Search in Google Scholar
Bednarek, Monika & Helen Caple. 2012. News discourse. London: Continuum International Publishing.Search in Google Scholar
Benson, Jeanie. 2006. Commodification of Asian international students in radio media discourse. New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 8(1). 96–109.Search in Google Scholar
Besser, Linton & Peter Cronau. 2015. Degrees of deception. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Last Modified 1 May 2016. Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2015/04/20/4217741.htm-transcript.Search in Google Scholar
Birrell, Bob. 2006. Implications of low English standards among overseas students at Australian universities. People and Place 14(4). 53–64. https://doi.org/10.4225/03/590befaf39faf.Search in Google Scholar
Blackledge, Adrian & Angela Creese. 2010. Multilingualism. London: Continuum.Search in Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 1999. The debate is open. In Blommaert, Jan (ed.), Language, power ans social process [LSPS]: Language ideological debates, 1–38. De Gruyter Mouton, Berlin: New York.10.1515/9783110808049Search in Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan, Lies Creve & Evita Willaert. 2006. On being declared illiterate: Language-ideological disqualification in Dutch classes for immigrants in Belgium. Language and Communication 26(1). 34–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2005.03.004.Search in Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Language and symbolic power. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Breazu, Petre & David Machin. 2018. A critical multimodal analysis of the Romanian press coverage of camp evictions and deportations of the Roma migrants from France. Discourse & Communication 12(4). 339–356. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481318757774.Search in Google Scholar
Bretag, Tracey. 2007. The emperor’s new clothes: Yes, there is a link between English language competence and academic standards. People and Place 15(1). 13–21. https://doi.org/10.4225/03/590bfc97d6bbb.Search in Google Scholar
Burke, Rachel. 2001. Western names in the classroom: An issue for the ESL profession. TESOL in Context 11(1). 21–23.Search in Google Scholar
Chang, Grace Chu-Lin. 2011. Behind a name. Language on the move. Accessed 17 May 2019.Search in Google Scholar
Chang, Grace Chu-Lin. 2015. Language learning, academic achievement and overseas experience: A sociolinguistic study of Taiwanese students in Australian higher education PhD, Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University.Search in Google Scholar
Clyne, Michael. 2004. Trapped in a monolingual mindset. Principal Matters 59. 18–20.Search in Google Scholar
Clyne, Michael. 2005. Australia’s language potential. Sydney: UNSW Press.Search in Google Scholar
Clyne, Michael. 2008. The monolingual mindset as an impediment to the development of plurilingual potential in Australia. Sociolinguistic Studies 2(3). 347–365.10.1558/sols.v2i3.347Search in Google Scholar
Cummins, Jim. 2000. Language, power and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire. edited by Ebsco Publishing. Clevedon, England, Buffalo, N.Y.: Multilingual Matters.10.21832/9781853596773Search in Google Scholar
Davies, Bethan, Tommaso M. Milani & Will Turner. 2012. Multilingual nation online? possibilities and constraints on the BBC voices website. In Sheena Gardner & Marilyn Martin-Jones (eds.), Multilingualism, discourse and etrhnography, 197–231. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Devos, Anita. 2003. Academic standards, internationalisation, and the discursive construction of “the international student”. Higher Education Research & Development 22(2). 155–166. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360304107.Search in Google Scholar
Ellis, Elizabeth. 2006. Monolingualism: The unmarked case. Sociolinguistic Studies 7(2). https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v7i2.173.Search in Google Scholar
Ellis, Elizabeth, Ingrid Gogolin & Michael Clyne. 2010. The Janus face of monolingualism: A comparison of German and Australian language education policies. Current Issues in Language Planning 11(4). 439–460. https://doi.org/10.1080/14664208.2010.550544.Search in Google Scholar
Formentelli, Maicol. 2009. Address strategies in a British academic setting. Pragmatics 19(2). 179–196. https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.19.2.02for.Search in Google Scholar
Formentelli, Maicol & John Hajek. 2016. Address practices in academic interactions in a pluricentric language: Australian English, American English, and British English. Pragmatics 26(4). 631–652. https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.26.4.05for.Search in Google Scholar
García, Ofelia. 2009. Bilingual education in the twenty first century: A global perspective. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley, Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar
Gorfinkel, Lauren & Qian Gong. 2019. Perspectives on multilingualism in mainstream university learning and teaching: Case studies from Sydney and Perth. In Alice Chik, Phil Benson & Robyn Moloney (eds.), Multilingual sydney, 153–165. Taylor and Francis.10.4324/9781351215541-13Search in Google Scholar
Haviland, John B. 2003. Ideologies of language: Some reflections on language and U.S. law. American Anthropologist 105(4). 764–774. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2003.105.4.764.Search in Google Scholar
Heller, Monica. 2003. Globalization, the new economy, and the commodification of language and identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(4). 473–492. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2003.00238.x.Search in Google Scholar
Heugh, Kathleen, Xuan Li & Ying Song. 2017. Multilingualism and translanguaging in the teaching of and through English: Rethinking linguistic boundaries in an Australian university. In Ben Fenton-Smith, Pamela Humphreys & Ian Walkinshaw (eds.), English medium instruction in higher education in Asia-Pacific: From policy to pedagogy, 259–279. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.10.1007/978-3-319-51976-0_14Search in Google Scholar
Holliday, Adrian. 2006. Native-speakerism. ELT Journal: English Language Teaching Journal 60(4). 385–387. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccl030.Search in Google Scholar
Horner, Kristine. 2013. Media representations of multilingual Luxembourg. In Helen Kelly-Holmes & Tommaso M. Milani (eds.), Thematising multilingualism in the media, 23–42. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.10.1075/bct.49.02horSearch in Google Scholar
Horner, Kristine & Jean-Jacques Weber. 2017. Introducing multilingualism: A social approach. London: Routledge.10.4324/9781315276892Search in Google Scholar
Huang, Zheping. 2017. After being James, Peter, and William, I decided to stick with my Chinese name. Quartz. Available at: https://qz.com/908929/after-being-james-peter-and-william-i-decided-to-stick-with-my-chinese-name/.Search in Google Scholar
Hyland, Ken. 2004. Learning autonomously: Contextualising out-of-class English language learning. Language Awareness 13(3). 189–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658410408667094.Search in Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T & Susan Gal. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities, and identities, 35–84. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.Search in Google Scholar
Kaur, Harmeet. 2019. A Duke professor warned Chinese students to speak English. CNN.Search in Google Scholar
Krippendorff, Klaus. 2013. Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology, 3rd edn. Los Angeles, London: SAGE.Search in Google Scholar
Lee, Jenny & Charles Rice. 2007. Welcome to America? International student perceptions of discrimination. The International Journal of Higher Education and Educational Planning 53(3). 381–409. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-005-4508-3.Search in Google Scholar
Leki, Ilona. 2001. “A narrow thinking system”: Nonnative-English-speaking students in group projects across the curriculum. TESOL Quarterly 35(1). 39–67. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587859.Search in Google Scholar
Levine, Glenn S. 2013. The case for a multilingual approach to language classroom communication. Language and Linguistics Compass 7(8). 423–436. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12036.Search in Google Scholar
Lightbown, Patsy & Nina Spada 2013. How languages are learned, 4th edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Meadows, Bryan. 2014. Examining the role of nationalism in folk theories of language: The case of language complaints in multilingual settings. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 24(3). 337–356. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijal.12025.Search in Google Scholar
Moore, Emilee. 2016. Conceptualising multilingual higher education in policies, pedagogical designs and classroom practices. Language, Culture and Curriculum 29(1). 22–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2016.1132652.Search in Google Scholar
Nakane, Ikuko. 2007. Silence in intercultural communication: Perceptions and performance. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.10.1075/pbns.166Search in Google Scholar
Ollerhead, Sue. 2018. Teaching across semiotic modes with multilingual learners: Translanguaging in an Australian classroom. Language and Education. 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2018.1516780.Search in Google Scholar
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. 2018. Education at a glance. Available at: http://www.oecd.org/education/education-at-a-glance/ (accessed 4 July 2019).Search in Google Scholar
Otsuji, Emi & Alastair Pennycook. 2018. The translingual advantage: Metrolingual student repertoires. In Julie Choi & Sue Ollerhead (eds.), Plurilingualism in teaching and learning: Complexities across contexts, 71–88. Milton: Routledge.10.4324/9781315392462-5Search in Google Scholar
Paltridge, Toby, Susan Mayson & Jan Schapper. 2014. Welcome and exclusion: An analysis of the Australian newspaper’s coverage of international students. Higher Education 68(1). 103–116. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-013-9689-6.Search in Google Scholar
Pavlenko, Aneta. 2006. We have room for but one language here: Language and national identity in the US at the turn of the twentieth century. Multilingua – Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 21(2–3). 163–169. https://doi.org/10.1515/mult.2002.008.Search in Google Scholar
Piller, Ingrid. 2001. “Who, if anyone, is a native speaker?” Anglistik. Mitteilungen des Verbandes Deutscher Anglisten 12(2). 109–121.Search in Google Scholar
Piller, Ingrid. 2014. Linguistic diversity and social inclusion in Australia. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 37(3). 190–197.10.1075/aral.37.3.001ediSearch in Google Scholar
Piller, Ingrid. 2016. Linguistic diversity and social justice: An introduction to applied sociolinguistics edited by Linguistics Oxford Scholarship Online. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199937240.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Piller, Ingrid. 2017. Intercultural communication: a critical introduction, 2nd edn. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.10.1515/9781474412926Search in Google Scholar
Piller, Ingrid & Livia Gerber. 2018. Family language policy between the bilingual advantage and the monolingual mindset. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2018.1503227.Search in Google Scholar
Richards, Jack C. 2015. The changing face of language learning: Learning beyond the classroom. RELC Journal 46(1). 5–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688214561621.Search in Google Scholar
Robertson, Shanthi. 2011. Cash cows, backdoor migrants, or activist citizens? International students, citizenship, and rights in Australia. Ethnic and Racial Studies 34(12). 2192–2211. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2011.558590.Search in Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1979. Language structure and linguistic ideology. In Paul R. Clyne, William F. Hanks & Carol L. Hofbauer (eds.), The elements: A parasession on linguistic units and levels, 193–248. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.Search in Google Scholar
Tollefson, James W. & Amy B. M. Tsui. 2004. Medium of instruction policies: Which agenda? Whose agenda? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.10.4324/9781410609328Search in Google Scholar
van Der Walt, Christa. 2013. Multilingual higher education: Beyond English medium orientations. Multilingual Matters.10.21832/9781847699206Search in Google Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo. 1996. The representation of social actors. In Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard & Malcolm Couthard (eds.), Texts and practices: Readings in critical discourse analysis. London, New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo & Ruth Wodak. 1999. Legitimizing immigration control: A discourse-historical analysis. Discourse Studies 1(1). 83–118. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445699001001005.Search in Google Scholar
Weber, Jean-Jacques & Kristine Horner. 2013. Multilingual universities and the monolingual mindset. In Daniel Tröhler, Ingrid de Saint-Geotges & Jean-Jacques Weber (eds.), Multilingualsim and multimodality: Current challenges for educational studies, 101–116. Rotterdam: Sense Piblishers.10.1007/978-94-6209-266-2_6Search in Google Scholar
Worthington, Elise. 2019. Cash cows. In Four Corners. ABC.Search in Google Scholar
Yan, Lu & Shaohua Pei. 2018. “Home away from home”? How international students handle difficult and negative experiences in American higher education. Journal of International Students 8(1). 453–472. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1134338.Search in Google Scholar
Zeegers, Margaret & Deirdre Barron. 2008. Discourses of deficit in higher degree research supervisory pedagogies for international students. Pedagogies: An International Journal 3(2). 69–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/15544800801929393.Search in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Value of communication, value of language: Nahuatl speakers and public health services in Sierra Norte de Puebla
- Laboring to communicate: Use of migrant languages in COVID-19 awareness campaign in Qatar
- Not a white girl and speaking English with slang: Negotiating Hmong American identities in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
- ‘Double deficit’ and exclusion: Mediated language ideologies and international students’ multilingualism
- Linguistic diversity and the court system in Dualist Hungary
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Value of communication, value of language: Nahuatl speakers and public health services in Sierra Norte de Puebla
- Laboring to communicate: Use of migrant languages in COVID-19 awareness campaign in Qatar
- Not a white girl and speaking English with slang: Negotiating Hmong American identities in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
- ‘Double deficit’ and exclusion: Mediated language ideologies and international students’ multilingualism
- Linguistic diversity and the court system in Dualist Hungary