The EMI content lecturer as a street-level bureaucrat: discretionary actions and coping mechanisms in micro-level language policy-asproduced

Abstract

The field of English as a Medium-of-Instruction (EMI) research in tertiary education is undergoing a context-specific turn, focusing attention on how the official medium of instruction interacts with local languages, as well as the multi-faceted interplay between national and/or institutional language policies and classroom practice. This article reports on findings from linguistic ethnographic fieldwork at a Belgian higher education institution: for two semesters, the interactions between a lecturer and his students in an English-medium Industrial Design Engineering course were observed. The lecturer’s micro-level didactic choices are studied through the lens of Lipsky’s Street-Level Bureaucracy. This reveals a systematic pattern of on-the-ground language policy construction which is evidenced in classroom practice. While the findings of this study problematise the pillarized ‘either/or’ language choices that continue to dominate a polarised language policy debate, they equally underline the micro-level agency of the disciplinary EMI instructors in shaping public policy. For EMI-contexts more generally, our analysis suggests the viability and sociolinguistic relevance of an enactment-of-policy-in-interaction perspective which is equally a matter of disciplinary induction. The study of ‘coping mechanisms’ thus becomes an arena for policy development and teacher training.