EMI and the international branch campus: Examining language ideologies, policies, and practices

Transnational higher education (TNHE), often based on export models of Western-based universities and driven by neoliberal market economy agendas, has spread across the globe. One example of TNHE is Qatar's Education City where six prestigious American international branch campuses (IBCs) all administer their degrees through English medium instruction (EMI). While there is a burgeoning amount of research investigating and problematizing issues in EMI higher education institutions, IBCs are a unique EMI setting due to their heavy reliance on importing faculty, staff, curricula and practices from their home campuses. Thus, this study takes an ethnographic case study approach to examine the language planning and policy and linguistic landscape at one IBC in Qatar. Drawing on multiple sources of data, the study reveals both the overt and covert language policies and ideologies of the institution and its various stakeholders, and the extent to which languages other than English are used and accepted.