Ivory Tower or Tower of Babel? The challenge of multilingualism for the globally embedded university

Higher education organizations in countries where English is not the native tongue must function in a multilingual mode, using English as their primary language for scientific exchange and academic publication and relying on the native language for instruction and administration. When operating in a multilingual mode of communication and identity expression, a higher education organization runs the risk of becoming a "tower of Babel";however, by operating solely in single-language mode, it may become an "ivory tower." Investigating Israeli higher education organizations and focusing specifically on their mission statements, we analyzed the built-in tension of this multilingual self-identification through how they introduce themselves in the lingua franca of global academe, namely English, and in the local language, Hebrew. In our analysis, we found: (a) differences between the English- and Hebrew-language mission statements in length, style, and context;(b) differences in thematic emphases and thus in the narration of organizational identity;and (c) that such thematic differences patterned according to the three categories of state-mandated higher education organizations and, to some degree, time. We conclude that multilingualism serves both as an arena for the negotiation of organizational identity and as a state of being for higher education organizations in non-English-speaking countries. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Higher Education (00181560) is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Digital Pakistan in COVID-19: rethinking language use at social media platforms

This study aims at exploring the multilingual practices of users in digital communication. The study utilizes "translanguaging' as a framework to analyze and unravel these multilingual practices based on four stances of translanguaging. The data for the study are gathered through an open-ended questionnaire that seeks detailed views of respondents who are active users of Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, and other social platforms. The study includes participants from diverse sociocultural backgrounds with the ability to have knowledge of more than one language with proficiency. The results correlate with the first two points of model, i.e., translanguaging blurs the boundaries between languages to convey meanings and introduce new concepts but deviates from the last two points. It also throws light on the impact of digital communication on local languages and presents suggestions for the preservation and promotion of local languages in the digital landscape, such as the provision of accurate translations of native languages, digital dictionaries, keyboards, and software. Copyright © 2023 Ahmad, Nawaz, Khan and Bukhari.

Listening Whom, Listening What: Investigating Museum Audio Guides in Translation

This article addresses the role of language and quality translation in museum communication. The production of texts in museums is increasingly demanding as institutions are asked to rethink audience-oriented actions in co-design and diversity. This study is based on data provided by audio guides made available online to engage the public and provide free educational materials, something especially relevant in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis indicates that quality materials are crucial in understanding the exhibits and that accessibility may profit from multilingualism. We argue that tailoring texts can improve translation quality and provide more stimulating materials to diverse audiences.

The Heterogeneity of Language Policies and its Related Health Crisis Communication about COVID-19 in Lesotho and South Africa

On 7 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported a new unknown pneumonia outbreak in China. Over the following weeks, COVID-19 spread to an endemic situation mainly concentrated in the Hubei province, with few isolated cases outside China. The WHO hesitated until 11 March to use the term pandemic, although cases of COVID-19 were reported already in Europe at that time. Sub-Saharan Africa only reported its first cases in mid-February, with some travellers from or returning mainly from Italy, but also Austria, Germany and France. It was only then that the media in South Africa started to report extensively about the COVID-19 outbreak. Various governmental ministries in South Africa or Lesotho informed their populations about COVID-19 and their regulations to control the outbreak of the disease. Although most of the information was in English, a substantial amount of audio and video files were available in several African Languages in South Africa, plus many governmental announcements in Sesotho in Lesotho. Governments and healthcare professionals were aware of the risks of fake news being spread, but they tried to be as transparent as possible with the public. This paper analyses how different countries like Lesotho and South Africa broadcasted COVID-19 in media, official government websites and social media platforms. Cognizance of language usage in media will be looked at as most African countries are multilingual and such life-threatening topics and far-reaching political interventions in all spheres of life should be communicated as inclusively and transparent as possible. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Public administration and interculturality in native peoples of Peru, in times of COVID19. Review article

The research objective was to analyze the practice of interculturality in Peruvian public administration in contexts of native communities, such as Quechuas, Aymaras, Shipibos, and others, in times of COVID-19. In which the inhabitants of native cultures identify with a State that discriminates against them, they feel abandoned because the health and education services they receive from public and private institutions are only in Spanish due to a lack of knowledge of native languages by care staff. Considering the contributions of Mendez Reyes (2021) and Finol Romero (2021), intercultural contexts demand the practice of decolonial thinking that effectively incorporates the culture, politics, and values of indigenous peoples;likewise, the implementation of quality of service in an open government model. The method used was the systematic review according to the suggested procedures of the PRISMA model. 130 research articles-documents and the selection of 70 articles-documents were consulted based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria of PRISMA method to support the reflective critical analysis of the subject through foundations, comparisons, and contextualizations in different spaces of Peru, framed in a rule of law with institutions that have the purpose of solving the national problem. The results showed that interculturality is endorsed by laws, directives, and municipal ordinances;however, to date the required implementation has not been achieved in the contexts of indigenous peoples. The most relevant conclusion is that the public administration in Peru does not apply the current intercultural regulations in times of COVID-19 and the native population demands public policies that include bilingual services in a multicultural-multilingual Peru.

Can you speak Covid-19? Languages and social inequality in management studies

The Covid-19 crisis makes the study of languages in management even more relevant and timely than before the crisis. In this essay, we discuss the implications of the pandemic for the scholarly agenda of languages in management studies. Our starting point is that Covid-19 represents a major disruption, producing discursive voids that need to be bridged. The meeting of languages opens up a whole new arena for political and ideological struggles over meaning that have so far received limited attention from management scholars. The pandemic and its social and economic reverberations reveal novel research avenues for management scholars studying multilingual setting. In times of crises there is an opportunity for new insight and knowledge to emerge, but crises also make communication gaps and voids of social meaning painfully visible. Covid-19 is foregrounding the consequences of what it means (not) to have access to knowledge, safety, justice, and voice - and lack of access is often aggravated, if not produced, by language barriers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Language policy at an abortion clinic: linguistic capital and agency in treatment decision-making.

This paper investigates an abortion clinic's procedural choices regarding the management of linguistic diversity. It focuses in particular on how language serves as capital for clients' agency in decision-making regarding their abortion treatment. Based on linguistic-ethnographic fieldwork in a Flemish abortion clinic, we analyse the clinic's institutional language policy, which states that clients should be able to speak Dutch, English or French in order to be eligible for a medical abortion-the alternative to a surgical abortion. We show how direct and smooth communication is considered a condition to ensure safety during the medical abortion treatment. We also discuss how, against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the practical reorganisation of the clinic has led to more autonomy and empowerment for some clients, while it reinforced the already existing inequality for others. Finally, we discuss the clinic's struggles with and lack of reflection on language support services. We conclude that the case of the abortion clinic can be considered as one of exclusive inclusion, and suggest that a higher awareness of language support and a critical rethinking of the safety procedure could strengthen this clinic further in its endeavour to help women confronted with an unwanted pregnancy.

Parents' Perceptions of Barriers and Facilitators to Their Children's Multilingual Language Development Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic

Les étudiants multilingues, selon le cadre déficitaire des "apprenants de langue seconde," sont désavantagés par rapport â leurs pairs unilingues. Ce cadre ne reconnaît pas les atouts qui accompagnent le développement de la langue â la maison, appelés la richesse culturelle de la communauté ("Community Cultural Wealth": Yosso 2005). Dans cette étude, nous avons posé la question suivante : qu'est-ce que les parents d'enfants multilingues considerent comme des obstacles et des facilitateurs pour soutenir le développement langagier de leurs enfants avant et pendant le COVID-19 ? Six entrevues semi-structurées ont été menées en ligne avec des parents d'enfants ágés de 3 â 5 ans parlant une langue autre que l'anglais â la maison. Ces entrevues ont été enregistrées, transcrites et analysées â l'aide de la méthode qualitative d'analyse de contenu, en utilisant un codage inductif et déductif pour identifier les themes. Nous avons organisé ces themes selon le modele bioécologique de Bronfenbrenner (1979). Les résultats ont révélé que la plupart des obstacles et des facilitateurs au développement multilingue des enfants se situent au niveau du microsysteme de la famille. Les themes étaient liés aux attitudes et aux connaissances, â la maîtrise de l'anglais, â l'exposition, aux ressources et aux expériences des parents. De plus, nous avons constaté que la COVID-19 avait surtout un impact négatif sur l'enfant, le mlcrosystéme et l'exosysteme. Nous discutons de la maniére dont ces obstacles et ces facilitateurs sont liés â la richesse culturelle communautaire. Dans l'avenir, cette étude pourra contribuer â aborder la façon dont les systémes ont marginalisé les familles au sein de nos communautés et â promouvoir les connaissances et le capital culturel qu'offrent ces familles.Alternate :Multilingual students, according to the deficit framework of "English language learners," are at a disadvantage compared to their monolingual peers. This framework fails to recognize the assets that accompany home language development, referred to as Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso 2005). In this study, we asked what do parents of multilingual children identify as barriers and facilitators to supporting their children's language development before and during COVID-19? Six semi-structured interviews were conducted online with parents of children between 3 and 5 years old who spoke a language other than English at home. These interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using the qualitative method of directed content analysis, employing both inductive and deductive coding to identify themes. We organized these themes according to Bronfenbrenner's (1979) Bioecological Model. Results revealed most barriers and facilitators to children's multilingual development are at the microsystem level of the family. The themes were related to attitudes and knowledge, English fluency, exposure, resources, and parents' experiences. Additionally, we found that COVID-19 mostly negatively impacted the child, microsystem, and exosystem. We discuss how these barriers and facilitators are related to the different Capitals of Community Cultural Wealth. Moving forward, this study can contribute to addressing how systems have marginalized families within our community and elevate the knowledge and cultural capital these families offer.

Detection of Cyberbullying Patterns in Low Resource Colloquial Roman Urdu Microtext using Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, and Ensemble Techniques

Social media platforms have become a substratum for people to enunciate their opinions and ideas across the globe. Due to anonymity preservation and freedom of expression, it is possible to humiliate individuals and groups, disregarding social etiquette online, inevitably proliferating and diversifying the incidents of cyberbullying and cyber hate speech. This intimidating problem has recently sought the attention of researchers and scholars worldwide. Still, the current practices to sift the online content and offset the hatred spread do not go far enough. One factor contributing to this is the recent prevalence of regional languages in social media, the dearth of language resources, and flexible detection approaches, specifically for low-resource languages. In this context, most existing studies are oriented towards traditional resource-rich languages and highlight a huge gap in recently embraced resource-poor languages. One such language currently adopted worldwide and more typically by South Asian users for textual communication on social networks is Roman Urdu. It is derived from Urdu and written using a Left-to-Right pattern and Roman scripting. This language elicits numerous computational challenges while performing natural language preprocessing tasks due to its inflections, derivations, lexical variations, and morphological richness. To alleviate this problem, this research proposes a cyberbullying detection approach for analyzing textual data in the Roman Urdu language based on advanced preprocessing methods, voting-based ensemble techniques, and machine learning algorithms. The study has extracted a vast number of features, including statistical features, word N-Grams, combined n-grams, and BOW model with TFIDF weighting in different experimental settings using GridSearchCV and cross-validation techniques. The detection approach has been designed to tackle users' textual input by considering user-specific writing styles on social media in a colloquial and non-standard form. The experimental results show that SVM with embedded hybrid N-gram features produced the highest average accuracy of around 83%. Among the ensemble voting-based techniques, XGboost achieved the optimal accuracy of 79%. Both implicit and explicit Roman Urdu instances were evaluated, and the categorization of severity based on prediction probabilities was performed. Time complexity is also analyzed in terms of execution time, indicating that LR, using different parameters and feature combinations, is the fastest algorithm. The results are promising with respect to standard assessment metrics and indicate the feasibility of the proposed approach in cyberbullying detection for the Roman Urdu language.

2022 Donald H. Graves Writing Award: My Inner Voice

Valdez discusses teaching in a pandemic and how she constantly comes back to her students by finding inspiration in her family and their past. As a teacher, her favorite part of the day is when she get to tell students how amazing they are. She loves teaching writing and getting to notice the brilliant and writerly moves that her young writers make. Her students are bilingual, and it is amazing to watch them navigate their multilingualism and embrace it. While others might feel shame for not completely knowing another language, they are becoming their full selves each day in her classroom because they know they are works in progress. It is so wonderful to watch and encourage.

Expanding Multilingual Learning as a Pathway to Equity during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Geographical Analysis of a WHO Online Course in 45 Languages

Real-time learning in health emergencies is a critical mechanism to provide frontline health workers, responders, decision-makers and the public with access to the latest knowledge to save lives, reduce disease transmission and protect the vulnerable. The World Health Organization (WHO) established the OpenWHO.org learning platform to meet this need. Courses are free, self-paced, accessible in low-bandwidth and offline formats, and available in national and local languages. Multilingual production was prioritized and expanded to meet the learning needs of the COVID-19 pandemic. Enrolment data from the introductory COVID-19 course, which has more than 1 million enrolments across 45 language versions, were examined according to language and geographical reach to assess how multilingual availability contributes to equity in learning. The analysis found that most language versions had uptake clustered in key countries where native speakers are concentrated, while use of some translations was more broadly dispersed. In nearly ¾ of the available language versions of the course, more than ⅓ of enrolments were found in the top country of use. The findings suggest that multilingual courses served as entryways for learners who may not have otherwise been able to participate, even as enrolment numbers likely underestimate the impact. A production policy that prioritizes translation of open online courses into diverse languages contributes to equity in access to public health knowledge at the global and country levels during health emergencies.

Linguistic landscaping in medical settings: English as a de facto language in Jordanian medical spaces

The field of linguistic landscape (LL) is concerned with monolingual and bi/-multilingual patterns and practices enacted on ‘public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings' (Landry & Bourhis, 1997: 25). Since the publication of Landry and Bourhis' (1997) research study, much more attention has been paid towards LL research, especially after the appearance of a Linguistic Landscape special issue of the International Journal of Multilingualism 3(1) (2006) (reproduced as the book Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism [Gorter, 2006]). There has also been increased discussion of specific locations, such as multilingualism in Tokyo (Backhaus, 2007), English in the neighbourhoods of Johor Bahru City in Malaysia (McKiernan, 2019), and Jawi, an endangered orthography in the Malaysian LL (Coluzzi, 2020).

The Use of Interpreters in Health Centers: A Mixed-Methods Analysis

Health centers serve millions of patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) through highly variable language services programs that reflect patient language preferences, the availability of bilingual staff, and very limited sources of third-party funding for interpreters. We conducted a mixed-methods study to understand interpreter services delivery in federally qualified health centers during 2009–2019. Using the Uniform Data System database, we conducted a quantitative analysis to determine characteristics of centers with and without interpreters, defined as staff whose time is devoted to translation and/or interpreter services. We also analyzed Medicaid-relevant policies' association with health centers' interpreter use. The qualitative component used a sample of 28 health centers to identify interpreter services models. We found that the use of interpreters, as measured by the ratio of interpreter full-time equivalents per patients with LEP, decreased between 2009 and 2019. We did not find statistically significant relationships between interpreter staffing and number of patients with LEP served, or in our examination of Medicaid-relevant policies. Our qualitative analysis uncovered homegrown models with varying program characteristics. Key themes included the critical role of bilingual staff, inconsistent interpreter training, and the reasonably smooth transition to virtual interpretation during COVID-19.

Family and community engagement in Hawai'i through a decolonial lens

Using an Indigenous research and multi-case study design, this study examined the family and community engagement experiences and practices at three Hawai'i public schools. Because of the limitations and consequences associated with conventional engagement models with diverse families and communities, Culturally Sustaining Indigenous Family Engagement and Equitable Community-School Collaborations frameworks were employed to bring a decolonial lens to family engagement practices in diverse, Indigenous places. Data collection included interviews with 33 principals, teachers, other school staff, parents, and community members, and relevant family engagement documents including the State's School Quality Survey data, school academic plans, and family engagement assessment reports. Findings suggest that schools did their best to engage families and communities, especially during the COVID pandemic. Schools addressed similar barriers to engagement such as time, technology, and communication, but had difficulty engaging multilingual families. Engagement strategies and practices mostly aligned with conventional family engagement models, but individual practices and ideas began to approach aspects of Indigenous engagement and Equitable Community-School Collaborations. Results suggest that schools shifting from structural, school-based approaches and activities to relationship building could benefit multilingual families and others that do not regularly engage on school campuses. Building upon individual-level awareness and actions aligned with equitable engagement to develop systemic planning and practice can facilitate this shift. Centering the needs and cultural perspectives of nondominant families in family engagement practice could also help schools increase their decolonial potential along a continuum moving towards anti-oppressive systems. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

The Necessity of Forming Multilingual Competencies in the Educational Process Digitalization

The pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus affected all spheres of society and had a significant impact on the education system, forcing an urgent transition to distance learning formats. As practice has shown, distance learning forms are especially difficult when working in a foreign language environment. The present article aims to highlight critically important to discuss multilingualism in combination with online learning the process of an emergency transition to remote work and distance learning through the eyes of teachers working in multilingual student classrooms and a multilingual educational environment where students are both taught in Russian as a foreign language and in English, which is not native to them. An empirical study using the authors' questionnaire, in which representatives of the "cadre core” took part, showed the professional and psychological readiness of teachers for the transition, on the one hand, and a number of problems associated with the level of administrative support, a decrease in the quality of education and technical problems of the transition, on the other. However, it should be emphasized that, despite some clear advantages of distance working format in a multilingual environment, the assessment of the organization of the transition and its effects should be the subject of close attention, because online learning promotes the development of multilingual skills and competencies and increases the requirements for teaching and strengthens the role of the teacher as their guide. Distance learning formats should be developed in a comprehensive manner, from technical and organizational aspects to content and distance learning technologies. The results of this work are part of a large-scale study aimed at implementing a multilingual approach to learning in new historical conditions caused by global transformations of the existing global world order. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Multilingual students' arguments in early algebra: Writing, refining, and revising through conferencing

This qualitative study sought to understand middle school students' developing mathematical arguments in a linguistically and culturally supportive classroom that featured mathematical writing and oral conferencing. Writing tasks and conferencing focused on developing the core algebraic practice of justifying by emphasizing audience and revision. Inequitable learning opportunities in mathematics education continue to precipitate academic failure and under-achievement among underrepresented and minoritized (URM) students. Classrooms that make use of mathematical writing and discussions and focus on student reasoning can enhance learning opportunities for URM students (Moschkovich, 2013). This study examined how the arguments of middle school students changed in a classroom where mathematical writing and conferences, conducted during remote instruction caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic, provided opportunities for reflection and potential revision. The study was guided by the following questions: 1. When asked to do mathematical writing and supported with conferencing in a remote context, what kinds of arguments did students make? 2. How did the mathematical arguments of individuals change over the course of a unit of instruction on generating, selecting, and justifying claims? 3. In what ways did students revise their mathematical arguments during conferencing? Examination of student work revealed the ways that their efforts to justify changed. Upon examination of the Convince Forms, I found that students expanded arguments from describing procedures to making arguments and using examples in mathematically sound ways, and from making no claims to selecting claims and even generating claims of their own. After examination of the mathematical conferences, I found that students expanded their efforts to justify, employing additional proof schemes (Healy & Hoyles, 1998), and revised conjecture-testing procedures (i.e., exemplifying) and meanings for formal words. The findings highlight how students who are multilingual, low-achieving, or designated as special education engage in mathematical argument with support. Moreover, this study illustrates how mathematical argument can be conceptualized as a constellation of approaches that include refining how different parts of an argument can be used in dialectic with the others, i.e., how the use of examples, the further generalization of claims, and further exploration of how to justify can support each other. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

From garbage to COVID-19: theorizing 'Multilingual Commanding Urgency' in the linguistic landscape

Across the globe signage which conveys directives regarding appropriate behavior in public, such as 'Do Not Enter' signs, is made multilingual in ways that other signage is not. This paper examines two examples of multilingualism in directive signs within Seoul, South Korea in order to theorize what gives rise to multilingualism in directive signage while other signage remains monolingual. Examination of Vietnamese and Arabic on signs prohibiting the illegal disposal of household garbage on side streets in Seoul, and English, Chinese, and Japanese on mask-required due to COVID-19 signs within the Seoul subway system allows for a robust analysis of what shapes the inclusion of additional languages on directive signage. We posit the construction of a differently speaking other who is seen as likely to disobey stated regulations alongside the desire by authorities to minimize the effort required to respond to rule breaking results in a multilingual commanding urgency that shapes multilingualism in directive signage. The concept of multilingual commanding urgency emphasizes the role enforcement practices have in shaping multilingualism, an important development in understanding this form of signage. Multilingual commanding urgency is especially relevant as it shapes signage deployed in emergency contexts such as the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston.

A journey through languages: A systematic literature review on the multilingual experience in counselling and psychotherapy with children and adolescents

The purpose of this research was to address the gap in the existing literature on the multilingual aspect of language in psychotherapy with children and adolescents. This research aimed at interpreting possible meanings for clients of being multilingual in the therapeutic process as well as reflect on the influence of clients' multilingualism in the therapeutic relationship. The researcher used a systematic literature review (PRISMA guidelines, 2009) to select articles based on empirical qualitative/mixed studies with participants up to 25 years old or adults referring to childhood/adolescence. The researcher used thematic synthesis (Thomas & Harden, 2008) to extract, analyse and interpret data. The rigour of this study was enhanced by the use of auto‐ethnography as a source of evidence (McLeod, 2015). The auto‐etnography documents self‐reflections on personal experience of being multilingual contributing to deeper contextualised knowledge. The findings confirm previous research on the existence of a link between multilingualism and "identity" (Costa, 2020, p. 5). This research suggests that the meaning a client gives to bilingualism can be co‐constructed within an attuned therapeutic relationship. In this co‐construction journey, there is a significant opportunity for children and young people in finding their way through languages, hence reaching emancipation and affirmation in the world. The main limitation of this research relates to the fact that there are not many studies with children/young people. This led the researcher to also include studies based on a mixed sample and with adults referring to childhood/adolescence, which might have influenced the interpretation of findings. [ FROM AUTHOR]

Well-Rounded Graduates -- What Languages Can Do

The School of Languages and Applied Linguistics at the Open University (OU) radically re-designed its modern languages curriculum in 2014, launching its first suite of new modules in 2017. The institution as a whole has since also developed a new employability framework. Our paper describes the principles underpinning the design of the new curriculum, demonstrates how it is being implemented, and focuses on an initiative that involved our Associate Lecturers (ALs) in defining a 'well-rounded graduate' and reflecting on plurilingualism and their roles as language teachers in a distance-teaching institution. Presenting our Teaching Excellence project, its processes, and findings in this paper will allow colleagues who teach modern languages to replicate or adapt parts of our approach in their own settings, exemplifying to the wider world how language skills can become an inherent element of the well-rounded graduate in the 21st century. [For the complete volume, "Languages at Work, Competent Multilinguals and the Pedagogical Challenges of COVID-19," see ED612070.]

Exploring the Pandemic through Language Learning and Multicultural Studies

This piece offers a reflection on how language learning and multicultural studies during the pandemic have highlighted the potential to help communities draw parallels with, and face wider issues concerning, minorities within a challenged society. Through storytelling, a novel approach to teaching and learning helps students find their voice and become active agents of change. A review of teaching and learning methods may bring about improvements both in academia and individual circumstances to help bridge the gap between loneliness and the need to be part of a wider social community. This article reiterates the importance of language learning, cultural understanding, and identity as useful employability skills for the new global graduates to support, rebuild, and unite communities especially in challenging times. [For the complete volume, "Languages at Work, Competent Multilinguals and the Pedagogical Challenges of COVID-19," see ED612070.]