Internationalising Training Programmes in Higher Education: Language Issue, From politics to Didactics

Internationalisation has become a policy priority for higher education institutions. However, these international collaborations, in a situation where the Anglo-American predominates (at least in the Western world), pose problems of linguistic policy and didactics of the languages. The most obvious are those of the language(s) used in the trainings and by the teachers themselves. The choice of languages taught has a strong impact on the nature of the knowledge transmitted, in a knowledge market whose stakes are not only cognitive. As for foreign language education, it has to be taken into account that the appropriation of a language is not reduced to that of its forms, because language practices are cultural practices, as linguistic anthropology has shown since at least Hymes.