Edulingualism: linguistic repertoires, academic tasks and student agency in an English-dominant university

ABSTRACT

This article reports on a study that examined how a group of plurilingual students use their linguistic repertoires to achieve a number of purposes such as performing identity, learning and socialising, and negotiating with structure in an English-dominant university. In order to capture the dynamic relationship between language-as-resource, academic tasks and agency in this particular context, the article proposes ‘edulingualism’ as a conceptual and analytic lens. To this end, the article examines multiple data sets (narratives, reflective accounts, recorded interactions and texts) that show how, by mobilising their multilingual resources, these students achieve their purposes and take ownership of their learning experiences within a monolingual learning space.

KEYWORDS:

• Edulingualism
• linguistic repertoires
• identity
• learning and socialising
• agency

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the students who agreed to take part in this study; without their participation this article would have not been possible. I am also thankful to Steve Marshall, Sian Preece and Terry Lamb for their very generous comments on early versions of this article. All remaining shortcomings are my own responsibility though.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Only students who had consented to participate had their interactions recorded.

2 Names of participants are pseudonyms used to protect their identity and anonymity.

3 Transcription conventions are provided in Appendix 1, and translation of languages other than English is given in brackets.