When multilingual presence is not pedagogical translanguaging: institutional mediation in a multilingual university in Kosovo

This article examines language use in a formally multilingual university, where multiple languages are present but unevenly legitimized within institutional practice. Responding to concerns about the conceptual overextension of translanguaging in higher education, the study adopts a macro-level sociolinguistic perspective that does not assume translanguaging as a given analytical framework. Through classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with academic staff, the analysis focuses on how lecturers evaluate, enact, and strategically refrain from multilingual language use. Findings reveal that lecturers’ decisions reflect professional reasoning shaped by institutional expectations, assessment regimes, and disciplinary norms. The mere presence of multilingual repertoires does not amount to translanguaging as pedagogy; instead, multilingual practices are selective, cautious, and context-dependent, with restraint and non-use emerging as meaningful outcomes of institutional constraint. The article argues that translanguaging in higher education is best understood as a contingent, institutionally mediated pedagogical practice, and it proposes an analytical framework for analyzing how multilingual pedagogy is governed, and often constrained, by institutional structures of accountability and assessment.