Towards epistemic and linguistic justice in universities: Exploring the Australian university linguascene from student perspectives

Abstract

This paper addresses linguistic and epistemic justice by exploring multilingual practices in tertiary contexts in an English‐dominant linguistic ecology. The paper argues that the university linguistic space (linguascene) governs language choices toward English monolingualism, and this has implications for epistemic justice in multilingual universities. While the top‐down policy of institutional monolingualism serves as the backdrop to the research, the paper is focused on individual voices and student perspectives. The study collected semi‐structured interviews from 14 tertiary students studying in Australia to interrogate their dispositions of the affordances that university spaces provide for multilingual practices. The findings of this study expose monolingual ideologies where English is seen as the legitimate norm and students do not engage with other languages through translanguaging practices. The study also reveals that students’ language norms are driven by ideologies of linguistic entrepreneurship directed at the priority of English. Students expressed doubts about the practicality of embracing multilingualism, therefore, perpetuating existing monolingual practices. The paper points to ideological barriers in the development of multilingual practices and calls for developing critical language awareness in students and academics to ensure that they become more aware of the benefits and the epistemic justice aspects of multilingual practices during their academic studies.