The internationalisation of higher education in linguistic educationscapes in Thailand

ABSTRACT

This study examined multilingualism from the perspective of the internationalisation of higher education (IHE) in Thailand in the field of linguistic educationscapes (LEs) on campuses. The extent of the multilingualism on the signage on the campuses of public universities (PUUs) and private universities (PRUs) in Thailand was compared to reveal the discrepancies from the IHE perspective. Moreover, semi-structured interviews with 197 campus visitors with different roles were conducted to identify the situations and the problems with the signage pertaining to the IHE on the campuses. Based on the triad of space framework, the PRUs were found to have more signage demonstrating linguistic diversity than did the PUUs. In addition, the PRUs used English as the preferred code more often than did the PUUs. The PUUs focused on the academy on the signage, while the PRUs focused on the different activities. Furthermore, the viewpoints of the campus visitors reflected three main issues. The awareness of visitors to the Thai campuses must be improved to achieve the IHE on the campuses; moreover, both the Thai and the English languages should be used for the same emerging function, and English should be used for the details on the signage on the campuses.

KEYWORDS:

• Linguistic educationscapes
• internationalisation of higher education
• multilingualism
• triad of space
• Thailand

SUBJECT CLASSIFICATION CODES:

• social science
• sociolinguistics

Disclosure statement

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