Adopting social process tracing in applied linguistics: Lessons from an English-medium Instruction policy case study

Despite English-medium instruction (EMI) being one of the fastest growing phenomena in global higher education, there is still little clarity about what triggers universities to implement it. This is partially due to a lack of tools in EMI research for the investigation of causal relationships. This paper showcases how a rigorous adoption of social process tracing (SPT) can prove an effective tool to investigate causality in areas of applied linguistics that focus on decision-making around language, such as EMI language policy. We utilize the Polytechnic of Milan court case as a case study to show (1) how SPT can be adopted by applied linguists in practice and (2) how, by foregrounding causality, it can unveil new relevant findings. In breaking down the steps of SPT implementation, we discuss some key tenets of the process tracing method and some potential challenges of its adoption by applied linguists. Results indicate that SPT has significant potential to support applied linguists in pushing research about real-life language policy decisions in novel directions.