Discourses of ‘internationalisation’: a multimodal critical discourse analysis of university marketing webpages

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on an investigation of a Higher Education institution’s webpages for prospective students. The study is used to illuminate how different conceptions of internationalisation are, or are not, represented to home and international students in university marketing. Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is used to investigate the webpages’ discursive strategies through detailed analysis of linguistic features and images. The research explores how discourses frame or sideline conceptions of internationalisation, and it shows that in this case the dominant discourse of internationalisation is a narrow and exclusionary one. The paper concludes that in the webpages of this non-elite university a broader version of internationalisation is being marginalised in a neoliberal climate perhaps because it cannot be quantified, does not fit the individual consumer model, and so is squeezed out under the pressures of other discourses.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher Education
• discourse
• internationalisation
• international students
• universities
• critical discourse analysis

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Professor Ann-Marie Bathmaker for her critical guidance and helpful suggestions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jenny Lewin-Jones

Jenny Lewin-Jones is an associate lecturer in English Language and Sociology at the University of Worcester. She is also undertaking a Doctorate in Education at the University of Birmingham.