Research Information System
AAAL, Oregon, United States Of America, 18 - 21 March 2023, pp.1-51, (Summary Text)
The omnipresence of English as a medium of instruction (EMI), particularly in non-Anglophone educational contexts, as a form of Englishization (Coleman, 2006) is well documented in the literature (e.g., Macaro et al., 2018). Unlike the rest of the world, for Northern Cyprus, which positions and brands itself as “a university island,” EMI means internationalization in a politically unrecognized state by international law and a form of resistance to in the broader ongoing political isolation and economic sanctions. Departing from this premise, the current study explores official language policies and practices (e.g., policy documents, websites, program structures) of higher education institutions (n=19) in Northern Cyprus. Adopting positioning theory (Kayı-Aydar, 2019) as an analytical lens, the inquiry sheds some important light on the entanglement of orientations, discourses, and ideologies (often contradictory) embedded in the policies and practices and thereby uncovers institutions’ and the local government’s roles and responsibilities in constructing a glocal educational landscape. The preliminary findings indicate that EMI policies and practices serve as building blocks in the commodification of English and higher education as revenue-generating driving forces enacted by private institutions in the local context. It is concluded that the current policies (1) perpetuate monoglossic EMI ideologies as guiding principles in higher education, (2) normalize higher education as a product for sale packaged through English/EMI practices to international “customers,” (3) prioritize economic revenues over the quality of education, and consequently (4) construct a precarious “university island” mission built on exacerbating structural inequalities. It is hoped that the current study focusing on the discursive positioning of EMI policies and practices in an underrepresented context (i.e., Northern Cyprus) will make a meaningful contribution to the growing critically-oriented EMI literature.