Lingua e Politica, Politics of Language

Over the past years, the academic and teaching interests of Universities around the world have been shifting towards “internationalization”. This is reflected in the various criteria used to measure university merit including the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) and the Shanghai Jiaotong ratings (Kirkpatrick 2011: 3). Thus, the concept of internationalization has become a core part of Italian university life, politics and reality, all within a very short time, and the speed of the process of internationalization has led to some disorientation and misunderstanding, and has also caught many unawares. Concurrent with internationalization has been a rethinking of teaching and testing practices, and the development of English Medium Instruction (hereafter EMI) whereby subjects, and entire degree courses are taught in English. From the point of view of higher education (hereafter HE) in Italy, the success of Italian universities in a competitive and globalized world seems to lie in internationalization, and the adoption of EMI is seen as the key to that success. this paper reviews and reflects on the process of internationalization, and the practices which are involved, with the aim of exploring some of the problematics which have arisen in the movement towards internationalization in higher education institutions (hereafter HEI), many of which remain unresolved due to the speed of this process. Some of the more theoretical questions surrounding Internationalization and EMI are also discussed.