“Ivory Tower” or “Tower of Babylon”? The Impact of Multilingualism on Israeli Higher Education Organizations, 2000-2018

• In Event: 4451 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 18: Higher Education: Diversity and Institutional Context

Abstract

Higher education organizations (HEOs) are, by ethos and tradition, global actors that are reliant on the use of the epochal lingua franca – Latin in Middle Ages, German in the 19th century, and currently English – for communication and exchange of ideas and thus also for membership in the field. Currently, HEOs in countries where English is not the native tongue must adapt to, and operate in, a multilingual mode: turning to their international constituencies of colleagues, international students, academic publications and funding agencies in English, while maintaining the native language for instruction and administration. Investigating Israeli HEOs and focusing specifically on their identity narratives, we follow the built-in tension of their multilingual self-identification between how they introduce themselves in the lingua franca of global academe, namely English, and in the local language of Hebrew. Our research is guided by the question: How is the multilingual mode of Israeli HEOs reflected in their identity narratives? To answer this question, we compare English- and Hebrew-language mission statements of Israeli HEOs in the years 2000-2018. Our findings lead us to engage with discussions of institutional translation (critiquing the binary distinction between literal and metaphorical translations), multilingualism (critiquing the focus on plurality of languages and offering a definition that emphasizes institutional complexity), and glocal imagination (suggesting that language-specific identity posturing is based on imagined audiences). Overall, these findings speak to how HEOs perform their organizational identity in reaction to the challenge of global multilingualism.

Authors

• Ravit Mizrahi-Shtelman, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Gili S. Drori, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem