We have called this cluster of research projects Languaging and higher education in bilingual contexts; and you might be wondering: is ‘languaging’ a real word?  How is it different from ‘language’?  Although language is often viewed as a ‘thing’, which sits in dictionaries, in grammar books or in the heads of native speakers, the term ‘languaging’ has been used in recent years to get us to look again at language as a process – as a way of achieving goals, of taking action, of relating to the world around us. This notion of language as action has roots in de Saussure’s (1915) idea of “parole”, or Chomsky’s (1965) “performance”, but it brings to the forefront the importance of how language is used in daily life, together with other means, in the “process of making meaning and shaping knowledge and experience” (Swain, 2006, p. 98).

When students graduate, we want them to become successful, happy, effective, employable engineers, graphic artists, medical advisors, etc; and this involves putting their expertise into practice, learning from others and working together to achieve goals – each of which involves a variety of language skills that needs to be developed. Language and communication are known to mediate trust in working situations, for example (Sin, 2011), and to play a key part in career progression (Aburous, 2016).  The focus of one study in this cluster (Aburous & Nickerson) is to identify which skills (including language skills) are most needed by senior auditors and accountants working in the UAE, with a view to preparing students for their career.

Languaging is also important in higher education itself, because learning and teaching both involve a lot of language.  Textbook writers, professors and students all ‘language’ as they grapple with subject material, understand their own place in the academic world, or try to persuade others of the validity of their viewpoint.  This languaging may be written (Palfreyman & van der Walt, 2017), verbal or even internal, as when a student puzzles over an exam question, or a lecturer over where to start in answering a question from a student. Ongoing studies in this cluster involve understanding dialog between teachers and students (Heron [Engin] & Palfreyman) or between students (Palfreyman & Al-Bataineh); as well as developing materials to help students use language in particular ways (Medvedeva).

This research cluster focuses on languaging and higher education in bilingual contexts.  In the modern world (and indeed throughout history), mobility of faculty, of ideas and of students mean that most HE contexts are bilingual (or multilingual) in some way, and this adds another dimension to the idea of languaging.  When people language, they draw on words, structures and meanings to achieve their goals, and this often involves drawing on more than one language (e.g. their first language as well as English), more than one variety (e.g. colloquial as well as formal) or more than one frame of reference (e.g. professional as well as academic). The term translanguaging has been used (e.g. Garcia & Li, 2013) to refer to this purposeful, complex and ubiquitous way of communicating with diverse linguistic resources; and some of the projects in this cluster (e.g. Zoghbor et al.) focus on pedagogies which try to synergize contributions of students’ different languages in the development of content knowledge.

In later posts in this blog, researchers will present ideas and findings which expand upon some of the themes above in particular contexts, building up a rich picture of the role of language(s) in diverse areas of higher education.