English as a Lingua Franca in the International University: The Politics of Academic English Language Policy

Increasing numbers of universities worldwide are claiming their ‘internationality’, trying to attract both home and international students to survive in this globalized world. The nature of internationality, however, is often not clearly defined, particularly from the perspective of the most likely lingua franca, English, i.e. ELF (English as a lingua franca), as a medium of communication. In this book, Jenkins directly tackles this very contemporary topic, accompanied with her usual thorough empirical research (Jenkins 2000, 2007), this time employing three research methods: web text analyses, questionnaire administration, and student interviews, the results of which comprise the three main and most extensive chapters in the book (Chapters 5–7). Her objective is to answer the question of what is meant by the term ‘international’, in particular, in higher education (HE) settings from the perspective of ELFA (ELF in academic contexts), her focus being placed on the users of ELFA, particularly in the United Kingdom, but also worldwide (pp. 1–2).