Language Policy in Higher Education

F. Xavier Vila is an associate professor in the Department of Catalan Philology and Director of the University Centre for Sociolinguistics and Communication at the Universitat de Barcelona. He has published widely in the areas of sociolinguistics, demolinguistics and language policy, including Survival and Development of Language Communities: Prospects and Challenges (Multilingual Matters, 2013).Vanessa Bretxa is a researcher in the sociology of language at the University Centre for Sociolinguistics and Communication at the Universitat de Barcelona and a part-time lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at the same university. She is also the co-editor of the academic journal Language, Society and Communication.

• 1. F. Xavier Vila: Language Policy in Higher Education in Medium-sized Language Communities: An Introduction2. Hartmut Haberland and Bent Preisler: The Position of Danish, English and other Languages at Danish Universities in the Context of Danish Society3. Tamah Sherman: The Position of Czech and other Languages at Universities in the Czech Republic: Some Initial Observations4. Sabine Ylönen: The Position of Finnish and Swedish as well as other Languages at Universities in Finland5. Drorit Ram: Challenges for Hebrew in Higher Education and Research Environments6. Anne-Marie Beukes: Challenges for South Africa’s Medium-sized Indigenous Languages in Higher Education and Research Environments7. Eva Pons Parera: The Position of Catalan in Higher Education in Catalonia8. F. Xavier Vila: Medium-sized Languages as Viable Linguæ Academicæ

This book seeks to fill a gap in the study of higher education language policies. It is a well-researched, well-documented, and thoughtful comparative consideration of the challenge of internationalisation for ‘linguae academicae’ other than English. Vila and Bretxa’s edited volume will definitively help decision-makers, language activists and scholars to understand the complexities and to identify the opportunities for universities under the current process of internationalisation, and to reduce the anxieties it sometimes produces.