Intercultural communication in an English-medium international university in China: a critical sociolinguistic ethnography

Ph.D. ; This dissertation is a critical sociolinguistic ethnography study of intercultural communication in the increasingly internationalized university context in China with English being used as an academic lingua franca. It draws on forty-four months’ fieldwork in an English-medium Sino-US joint venture transnational university (under the pseudonym of BU) in Southeast China to investigate local Chinese students’ and international students’ language practices and beliefs of language use in communication among people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Employing a transdisciplinary approach integrating the theoretical and methodological traditions from ethnographic sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis, translingualism research and social identity theory, this study aims to map the multifaceted nature of intercultural communication in the international education setting, drawing attention to its connection with and influence on individuals’ life histories (i.e., repertoire development, education experience, language beliefs and identities), real-life communication practices and normativity, university language and internationalization policy and the wider sociopolitical and sociocultural contexts. ; The findings and discussion of this study first suggest three emerging discourses, namely, English-Chinese bilingualism, English domination and embryonic embracement of linguistic diversity, materially or symbolically manifested in the investigated university, impacted and were also impacted by multilingual students’ daily interaction and language development. The study also revealed the emergent practices of multilingual students to contest and negotiate institutionally structured language norms, transform language identities, and (re)construct and co-construct new communicative norms and sociolinguistic spaces that feature diversity, flexibility and polycentricity to fulfill their social and communicative needs. Finally, linking intercultural communication to individuals’ life histories, ...