Institutional language policy regarding universities: The contribution of positioning theory

University language policies in Europe are developed by various institutions. At supranational level, the main stakeholders include the Council of Europe and the European Union. This article aims to examine how far positioning theory can help understand the scope of institutional language policy as both these institutions have such themes in common as the Common European Framework of Reference, the European Language Portfolio, lifelong learning and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), among others. Building on the hypothesis that language policy recommendations constitute a specific subgenre, a linguistic analysis of such recommendations shows that the Council of Europe and the European Union use two quite distinct rhetorical approaches, and act according to different narrative stances. The two organisations actually seem to provide two sets of answers to the globalisation of European universities, the Council being humanistic in scope and the Union more free-market orientated. Nonetheless, the perspectives of both these organisations would appear to complement each other as the Union interprets and applies the policy of the Council.