National Languages in Multilingual Higher Education Contexts: The case of Luxembourgish

Internationalization and the future of higher education has been the focus of much research the last decades. Global trends, human flows and connectivity have influenced the profile as well as the role of higher education. Openness together with human mobility has turned higher education institutions into multilingual spaces where different languages come in contact (Liyanage, 2018). However, according to Altbach (2016), internationalization of higher education has led to a turn towards English, as the medium of instruction in higher education institutions around the world. At the same time, the extensive use of English in higher education, as the current lingua franca (Liu, 2018), raises questions and concerns regarding the status of national languages and their role in academia. The present poster draws from the example of the university of Luxembourg. The university of Luxembourg is a multilingual university with English, French, German and Luxembourgish as the official languages. The focus of the poster will be on the Luxembourgish language. Luxembourgish became the official national language of Luxembourg in 1984 and is one of the Grand Duchy’s administrative languages, together with French and German. Specifically, the poster explores the use and the role of Luxembourgish at the university of Luxembourg. It includes a brief overview of the various programmes offered by the university with the official languages in each of them, as appear in the curricula. With a focus on bachelor programmes, the poster includes data from interviews with lecturing staff and undergraduate students, regarding trends in language use, the role of Luxembourgish and strategies that could contribute to the national and institutional language strategy at the university of Luxembourg.