Voices Across the EFL Classroom: Narratives and Perspectives on Multilingualism

Abstract

Aims and Objectives:

Global technologies and demographic trends have impacted English as a foreign language instruction on widespread scale. Despite the abundance of studies on multilingual paradigms in higher education context, research remains rather scant on perspectives that account for the entirety of stakeholders involved in the process. This study analyzes learners’, teachers’, and administrators’ conceptual and pedagogical engagement with diversity and multilingual practice.

Design/Methodology:

Data obtained through semi-structured interviews, field notes, and informal chats indicate that participants perceive multilingualism as an epitome of internationalism and educational quality. Participants maintain, however, that translanguaging pedagogies propagate chaos and hamper the process of learning, which signifies nonembracement of individual-centered bottom-up designs for multilingual approaches.

Findings/Conclusion:

The findings highlight the marked contrast between the participants’ positive perceptions of diversity and their monoglossic orientations and classroom practices.

Originality:

This article offers a distinctive contribution by integrating perspectives from a tripartite participant group, an approach that remains scarce in current scholarly landscape.

Significance/Implications:

The study recommends a reappraisal of institutional language policy structures, advocating for professional development, pedagogical approaches that value student agency as well as student orientation and support programs.

Introduction

Translanguaging, originally conceptualized within Welsh bilingual education, has evolved into a central construct in multilingual pedagogy, extending its reach across diverse educational contexts (García, 2009; García & Wei, 2014). Rather than viewing languages as discrete systems to be kept separate, translanguaging pedagogies promote the strategic and dynamic use of all linguistic resources available to a speaker, enabling richer meaning-making and fostering inclusive learning environments. In multilingual classrooms, translingual pedagogical practice serves multiple functions. Cognitively, it can scaffold comprehension of complex subject matter by allowing learners to access prior knowledge through their dominant language(s) while engaging with new content in the target language (García & Wei, 2014). Affectively, it validates learners’ identities by recognizing the legitimacy of their linguistic and cultural backgrounds, thereby supporting confidence and engagement (Canagarajah, 2011). Socially, it facilitates peer collaboration and meaning negotiation, particularly in diverse classrooms where students share neither a common first language nor equal proficiency in the instructional language (Matsuda, 2014).

Critical scholarship has positioned translanguaging practices as a means of resisting power imbalances in education, providing space for marginalized linguistic identities (Flores, 2013; García & Kleyn, 2016). By legitimizing the linguistic practices of minoritized students, translanguaging disrupts deficit narratives and promotes equity-oriented pedagogy. This is particularly relevant in English-medium higher education settings, where the dominance of English often marginalizes local and heritage languages. Yet, empirical research on translanguaging in such settings remains limited. This gap underscores the significance of investigating how translanguaging manifests in university classrooms, both in terms of student experience and pedagogical/administrative processes. To the best knowledge of the researchers, scholarly inquiry into learners’, teachers’, and school administrators’ management of diversity within a single study framework remains notably limited. In view of the scarcity of research in this domain, a separate look at the trajectories of this tripartite of shareholders might be useful in assessing where we currently stand on management of multilingual paradigms in foreign language classroom.

School Administrators

Research is particularly scarce on school administrators’ perceptions of multilingual instructional practices. Administrators generally acknowledge the potential that translanguaging pedagogies offer for enhancement of inclusivity and comprehension, particularly for learners navigating complex academic content in a second or foreign language (Creese & Blackledge, 2010; García & Wei, 2014). Translanguaging pedagogy emerges as the core emblematic feature of internationalism and educational quality. In studies conducted by Mavioglu (2024), Doiz et al. (2013), Llurda (2007), and Ilhan and Aydin (2015), the great majority of administrative staff are seen to articulate wholehearted support to multilingual instructional approaches, which they describe as vital for improvement of intellectual and human resource quality. In a similar vein, Hancock and Davin’s (2020) research emphasizes that according to administrators, promotion of diversity and multilingual practices contributes significantly to learning efficiency, an observation that echoes Gershenson et al.’s (2017) study findings where participants associate multilingual pedagogy with learning performance.

Study findings also indicate that some administrators see themselves trapped between policy expectations and pedagogical realities, as they struggle to maintain a balance between supporting innovative teaching practices and safeguarding institutional standards and assessment requirements. Studies conducted by Cummins (2007), Hornberger (2009), and Menken and García (2010) emphasize that despite their institutional role which requires adherence to formal language policies, administrators also recognize the importance of granting teachers the flexibility to draw on students’ full linguistic resources when appropriate.

Administrators also raise concerns about parental attitudes, noting that resistance from families could stem from misunderstandings about translanguaging’s objectives, or from the perception that extensive use of the home language might slow English acquisition (Canagarajah, 2011). Studies carried out by Menken and Solorza (2014) and Gilmetdinova (2019) also effectively demonstrate how the difficulty of aligning instructional and curricular designs, the status of English as the “true” lingua franca, and the manipulative impact of local/international power structures leave school administrators on the fence when it comes to implementing foreign language policies. Despite these concerns, administrators’ willingness to consider formalizing translanguaging pedagogy within professional development initiatives, provided that such approaches were evidence-based and aligned with broader educational goals (García & Kleyn, 2016), highlights a potential avenue for reconciling top-down policy frameworks with bottom-up classroom practices, ensuring that translanguaging practice is both pedagogically effective and institutionally sustainable.

Teachers’ Perceptions and Practices

The main theme extensively addressed by the relevant literature is the lack of concordance between teachers’ perceptions and management of lingua-cultural diversity in practical domain (Cenoz & Gorter, 2013; De Angelis, 2011; Haukas, 2016; May, 2014; Zhou et al., 2020). The underlying disparity emerges due to such factors as time constraints, lack of relevant teaching material, and monolingual assessment practices that manipulate foreign language teachers’ professional identity and positionality (Kramsch, 2014; Lundberg, 2019; Omidire & Ayob, 2020, among others).

Other major deterrents to multilingual policies include curricular concerns, standard-English-biased assessment criteria, and the absence of “established” multilingual language policies, which lead to a “limbo-like” state by blocking teacher initiatives toward professional adjustment with translanguaging pedagogies (Cameron & Galloway, 2019; Kramsch, 2014; Lundberg, 2019). Against this background, it remains to be seen how the teachers in this study position themselves between prevalent ideologies and opportunities for the creation of professional alignment processes.

Learners’ Stance

An overview of study findings on learners’ perceptions of multilingualism points out to a combination of duality of contradictory tendencies: learners with negative perceptions of multilingualism and learners with positive perceptions of multilingualism (who in turn also fall into two distinct categories as those who support both multilingualism and translanguaging pedagogies, and those who support multilingualism, but not translanguaging practice). One of the most recurring themes in the relevant literature is the impact of traditional teaching approaches, which hamper language-learning processes significantly in many aspects. (Dagenais et al., 2008; Mora-Pablo et al., 2011; Payant, 2015; Thompson & Aslan, 2015). This echoes Phillipson’s (1991) and Ashanti Young’s (2014) observation that standard English is established as the sole instrument of ratifying grammatical/syntactical legitimacy in every domain of power, which confines nonstandard forms and varieties to home/minor social settings. A correlation exists here with Kuteeva’s (2019) observation that tensions between conceptualizations of English and positionings draw from power dynamics and socially situated ideological orientations which operationalize mechanisms of legitimacy on linguistic and ontological grounds. This is manifested in the participants’ perception of standard British English as the most prestigious variety in the context of academic study, their stressed emphasis on correctness in academic writing, and their reluctance toward translanguaging practices. In line with the studies conducted by Dagenais et al. (2008) and Mora-Pablo et al. (2011), the findings of Payant’s (2015) study cite the participants as stating that language mediation helps when it comes to socializing and vocabulary learning, although in-class L1 mediation enhances dependency on learners’ mother tongue by reducing exposure to target language input.

In this regard, the findings of a study conducted by Meyer et al (2015) align well with the findings of Wright and Sung’s (2012) study in demonstrating how competing attitudes of stakeholders in higher education may prevent learners’ multilingual resources from materializing, which confines them into ideologically constructed subject positions. The seeming discrepancy in terms of support given to multilingualism as a concept, but less so for its pedagogical counterpart, is also evident in the findings of García and Menken’s (2015) research, where participants emphasize that academic integration and fairness in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom could not have been maintained without English-only policies. All these, together with the participants’ belief that language is best learned from native speakers through maximal use of target language, clearly show that learners “perceive discrete multilingualism more positively than its integrated version, which also involves translanguaging practice” (Tannenbaum et al., 2020). This confirms the conclusion proposed in studies that the monolingual legacy continues to haunt current language pedagogies, leading to discrepancies between learners’ perceptions on multilingualism and its pedagogical practice in foreign language classrooms (Canagarajah, 2015; García & Lin, 2017; Haukas, 2016; Leung & Valdes, 2019; Matsuda, 2014).

Research Questions

This study addresses the following questions for all three participant groups:

1. What are the participants’ perceptions of cultural and linguistic diversity?

2. How are institutional language norms navigated, challenged, or reshaped through translanguaging practices in EFL instruction?

Methodology and Research Design

This qualitative research employed a case study design to explore, within a Northern Cyprus university, the awareness among administrators, teachers, and learners regarding the multicultural shift in the student population, as well as the degree to which they have adapted their positionality in response to emerging dynamics of diversity. As Yin (2009) notes, a case study facilitates the investigation of phenomena within their real-life context, enabling examination in the environment where they naturally occur. In this study, the case focuses on examining the awareness of cultural and linguistic diversity among teachers, learners, and administrators in foreign language classroom, and assessing how such awareness is reflected in administrative, teaching, and learning practices. The principal aim of this research is not to produce definitive generalizations but to offer an in-depth, contextually embedded account that can serve as a flexible and inclusive basis for future theoretical and empirical work.

To capture the complexity of multilingual practices within the institution, the study employed multiple data sources—including semi-structured interviews, field notes, and informal conversations—allowing for triangulation and deeper contextual understanding. This methodological flexibility aligns with Creswell’s (2013) emphasis on open, exploratory qualitative inquiry, as well as with Yin’s (2009) argument that case studies benefit from multiple forms of evidence. Within this framework, the chosen qualitative design integrates a range of data sources—field notes, interviews, and informal conversations—within a case study approach, to enable a deeper exploration of participants’ perceptions, meaning-making processes, and lived experiences, which are central to understanding multilingualism, translanguaging, and linguistic sustainability within higher education.

Semi-structured interviews were recorded digitally and later transcribed verbatim, a process that also helped the researcher to become deeply familiar with the data. After transcription, both transcripts and audio files were imported into NVivo software. The coded data were then reviewed to identify broader themes. To enhance the study’s credibility and achieve robust data triangulation, member checking was carried out by sharing identified themes and corresponding excerpts with participants for validation. Data-collection procedures implemented in the study allowed for the observation of phenomena in their authentic environment, supported by multiple forms of evidence, thereby providing richer insights into the complex issues under discussion. This study does not aim to confirm a predetermined theory but instead seeks to develop an in-depth understanding of participants’ conceptual and practical engagement with diversity in a specific context. Such a design demands flexibility and openness to emerging insights, making qualitative research particularly well suited to the nature and objectives of this investigation. A purposive sampling strategy was employed, consistent with Creswell’s (2013) recommendation that qualitative researchers intentionally select participants capable of providing rich, relevant, and detailed insights. Participants included teachers, learners, and administrators, each selected based on criteria aligned with their institutional roles and direct engagement with the multilingual realities of the university.

Participants

Teachers

The teacher group consisted of six EFL instructors, each with 25 years of experience in their current positions. They were selected because they met the criterion of extensive professional experience as they have served in their current professional context for 25 years. In this sense, their long-term institutional engagement provided historically informed, pedagogically grounded perspectives on multilingualism, monolingual instructional policies, and translanguaging practices. They are of Turkish Cypriot origin, aged between 45 and 52 years, and hold an MA in English Language Teaching. They teach General English and English for Specific Purposes courses to first- and second-year students enrolled in English Medium Programs. During the time of the study, the participants were teaching three to four classes, formed of about 25–30 students who met twice in four 50-minute lessons per week.

Learners

The learner sample comprised 40 first-year EFL students (22 female, 18 male), aged 18–20 years, representing diverse national and linguistic backgrounds. A purposive proportional sampling approach was used to ensure that learners’ demographic composition reflected the broader international student body entering the university. This aligns with Creswell’s (2013) guidance on selecting information-rich, contextually relevant participants. First-year students were selected because they encounter institutional language policies at a formative stage of their academic trajectories, during which their understandings of university expectations and language norms are still emerging. Their perspectives are therefore especially valuable for examining how multilingual realities and translanguaging practices are experienced at the start of higher education.

Administrators

The administrative participants included a director and two assistant directors, all Turkish Cypriot citizens. They were selected because they were serving in administrative roles at the time of the study, holding responsibility for policy implementation and institutional language planning. The number of administrative participants was limited to three, as the three participants constituted the entire higher administrative body of the division at the time of the study. Participating administrators had 24–30 years of experience as teachers and approximately 8 years of experience in administrative duty, offering critical macro-level insights into managerial, ideological, and sustainability-oriented dimensions of language policy. Two of the participants hold a PhD in Educational Sciences, and one is a PhD candidate in English Language Teaching.

Detailed demographic information for each participant group is provided in Appendix.

Data Collection

Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, supported by field notes and informal conversations. In alignment with Creswell (2013), semi-structured interviews provided a consistent structure across participant groups while allowing flexibility for elaboration and depth. Invitations were sent to participants via institutional email, and interviews were scheduled at times convenient for the participants. Teacher and administrator interviews were conducted face to face, each lasting 50–60 minutes. Learner interviews were conducted online. Each interview lasted 40–50 minutes.

A semi-structured interview guide was developed to investigate participants’ conceptual and pedagogical engagement with diversity and multilingual practice, which was informed by the study’s aims and relevant literature, consolidating consistency across participant groups, as well as maintaining flexibility for in-depth exploration. Sample questions included: “What are your views on translanguaging practices in language learning/teaching?”, “How do institutional expectations influence your teaching practices?”, and so on. Follow-up prompts were used to elicit further clarification and explanation, facilitating the gathering of rich qualitative data in accordance with the study’s framework.

All interviews were audio-recorded with participants’ consent and transcribed verbatim, a process that facilitated deep immersion in the data. Following transcription, both transcripts and audio files were imported into NVivo software for systematic coding and organization. Field notes documented contextual observations and researcher reflections, enriching the dataset and enabling methodological triangulation across multiple forms of evidence. Data-protection procedures followed institutional ethical guidelines. Audio recordings, transcripts, and related files were stored on a password-protected device accessible only to the researcher. Identifying information was removed during transcription, and participants were assigned pseudonyms to ensure confidentiality and anonymity. All data were handled in accordance with GDPR requirements.

Data Analysis

Data analysis followed Creswell’s (2013) multi-level qualitative analytic framework, moving from detailed coding toward increasingly abstract interpretation. An inductive analytic approach guided the entire process, allowing themes to emerge organically from the data rather than imposing predetermined categories. The initial phase involved open coding, conducted line by line across interview transcripts and field notes. Codes identified participants’ beliefs, concerns, and practices related to multilingualism, translanguaging, and institutional expectations. This reflects Creswell’s (2013) emphasis on segmenting qualitative data to identify meaningful patterns.

The second coding cycle involved focused coding, where initial codes were refined, merged, and reorganized into broader conceptual categories. Codes relating to monoglossic ideologies, pedagogical constraints, professional growth rhetoric, and multilingual identity were grouped into higher-order clusters. Themes were developed inductively, consistent with Creswell’s (2013) and Yin’s (2009) emphasis on iterative engagement with the data. Conceptually aligned codes were synthesized into major themes capturing cross-cutting patterns in participant perspectives. To enhance credibility, member checking was conducted: Identified themes and supporting excerpts were shared with participants for verification. To further enhance the trustworthiness of the analysis, intercoder checking was conducted through independent cross-validation of codes with a second researcher, with full agreement reached on the final coding scheme. Participants confirmed the accuracy of the interpretations, and no changes were required after cross-checking. Themes were further evaluated for coherence, depth, and grounding in the raw data and triangulated across participant groups to ensure analytic rigor.

Ethical approval was obtained from the Eastern Mediterranean University Ethics Committee (BAYEK) with the reference no. ETKOO-2021-0187, prior to data collection. All participants were informed that they had the right to withdraw from the study at any point they wished to, and the right to refuse to answer any particular question(s) without any repercussions, by simply telling the researchers that they would no longer like to take part in the study. In addition, the participants were informed that the findings of the study would be shared with them after the study was completed. All participants provided written informed consent, and pseudonyms were used to ensure confidentiality. All the procedures implemented in the study were in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. As for the criteria for selection of research context, the university where the study was carried out hosts a truly diverse student population (around 18,000) from over 100 different countries, each with their own cultures, viewpoints, and languages, which formed an ideal setting for study purposes. Practicality was another advantage for the researchers. Being a member of staff facilitated access to resources and participants, as well as providing various input streams for data triangulation.

Major Findings and Discussion

The major findings of the study are presented from each stakeholder’s perspective, as well as in terms of how and where these different perspectives intersect with each other.

Perspective 1: Learners

The analysis of accumulating data clearly demonstrates that the majority of learners consider multilingualism a significant institutional trademark of internationally acknowledged educational quality standards. For the participants, the framework of diversity in their imminent context presents new identity positionalities for inclusion through the concept of world citizenship—which is operationalized through English functioning as a lingua franca. Information gathered in the study clearly reveals learners’ awareness of global trends developing in the modern world and how this positively reflects on the prestige of educational institutions, including their own. This is evident in their “willingly made choice to suffer important sacrifices, both emotional and financial,” for studying in a university where all diversity is homogenized into “a just and equal sameness” through an overarching supra-national identity.

Studying at . . . (student says the university’s name) brings emotional and financial problem on me and my family. But studying in a multicultural university means you become world citizen, know people and get a good diploma. So, it is worth every problem (Student 23).

Learners’ zealous advocacy of multilingualism as the landmark of reconciliation and equity and their emphasis on the contextual nature of identity options clearly display their perception of identity as multiple and fluid rather than as pre-established and prefixed, as revealed by some earlier studies (Barkhuizen, 2016; Sung, 2019). This is in line with the poststructuralist stance that views identity as a never-ending process of reflection which navigates between normalizing discourses of social/contextual structures and micro-spaces of resistance (Foucault, 1983; Rojo, 2015). Poststructuralism emphasizes transgression of binaries and the uncategorical nature of resistance against power, which is not owned as a commodity by any institution or individual (Holck et al., 2016; Rabinov, 1984). Learners’ transgression of ideologically tailored boundary zones (García & Lin, 2017) and their pursuit of refuge in new subject positions that promise a move away from prediscursive ontological positions demonstrate their perception of the dynamic nature of identity, as well as their desire for poststructuralist negotiation of future-oriented identity positions.

In terms of cultural identification patterns, learners are understood to have adopted an integrative approach in their conception of global citizenship as a superordinate identity which reconciles their different cultural identities (Amiot & Jaspal, 2014). Reconciliation happens both conceptually and in practice. Learners not only perceive multiculturalism as the hallmark of internationalism and educational quality; they also feel that their superordinate identity as global citizens makes them an integral part of the totality of cultural groups at the university while they navigate across cultures, “frame switching” across identities and negotiating their alignment in all its ramifications. In terms of linguistic diversity, our findings point out to a lack of concordance between learners’ perceptions and actual classroom practice. The experience of identity integration where learners simultaneously engage in each one of their cultural identities fails to resonate with their perception and engagement with diversity in linguistic terms. Despite learners’ reiterated reference to linguistic diversity as an epitome of internationalization and equity, their stand toward linguistic diversity in foreign language classroom demonstrates a compartmentalized, rather than an integrative approach.

The best way to learn English is to use it. To speak a lot. That is why all Turkish Cypriots learn English in 3 months in London (Student 5).

Use it or lose it! It is exactly the same with language learning. If you do not use a language actively, you will never improve your skills, vocabulary, and grammar knowledge (Student 16).

Within this framework, then, learners ranking languages in terms of power and functionality (Tannenbaum et al., 2020); their confinement of mother languages to home/nonacademic settings (Phillipson, 1991; Young, 2014); their emphasis on usage of “correct English” (Kramsch & Whiteside, 2007); and their perception of L1 use as a threat to academic/social integration (Auerbach, 1993; Littlewood & Yu, 2011; Shvidko, 2017; Wei, 2013) all give us a reason to make the following conclusions:

1. Poststructuralist critique is not fully mature and operational among participant learners in terms of translanguaging practices (Canagarajah, 2015; García & Lin, 2017; Haukas, 2016; Leung & Valdes, 2019; Matsuda, 2014).

2. Learners’ beliefs are dominated by monolingual ideologies that prioritize knowledge of forms over communicative efficiency and emphasize the use of standard English in foreign language classroom (Nuske, 2018).

3. Learners do not perceive their existing linguistic capital as a valuable learning asset and feel uncomfortable bringing in this aspect of their identity into the school domain (Auerbach, 1993; Bourdieu, 1991; Darvin & Norton, 2015).

4. Learners regard languages as compartmentalized entities and see translanguaging as a threat to language-learning processes (Cenoz & Gorter, 2013).

Perspective 2: Teachers

The findings of the study demonstrate teachers’ high awareness of the multidimensional reverberations of cultural diversity in educational settings, and how these should be anticipated and dealt with on individual and institutional levels. The participants’ awareness is endorsed, at least on conceptual level, by their willingness for embracement of dialogic engagement opportunities, such as their desire to partake in professional development courses, and their openness to re-aligning their resources in attitudinal and pedagogical realms, which should be acknowledged as an important asset in institutional sense as well.

Learning about the education systems of countries from which we accept students is very important for understanding and serving our students’ needs. I, for my part, have plans to research Iran’s education system, as we have many students from Iran in our university (Teacher 4).

Different students have different needs and personalities. Students from Middle East countries, for example, academically perform better if they establish a strong rapport with their instructor. It is important to consider this kind of socio-relational dynamics in class (Teacher 1).

Nevertheless, the congruity between teachers’ perceptions and classroom practice in terms of reception of cultural diversity fails to resonate through their perceptions and actual classroom reactions in the domain of linguistic diversity. As a matter of fact, this micro-level discordance manifests itself, at macro level, in the divide in perceptions toward multilingual pedagogies between those who support the mobilization of learners’ entire linguistic resources and those who take a rather cautionary attitude toward translanguaging pedagogies.

In this sense, the greatest concern teachers voiced, as per their cautionary approach toward translanguaging, can be understood to derive from prevalent language policies that have come to glorify the underpinnings of (standard)English-only policies as the only accurate model in language education. This is implicit in their evaluation of translanguaging practice as “something to avoid at all costs,” as such policies might cause students to “feel excluded, even humiliated” and “over-reliant on mother language.”

Non-English use in class generates discomfort, disorder and discrimination among students. It also deprives students of the opportunity to use the target language, which is indispensable for enhancing students’ proficiency in English (Teacher 6).

In this connection, harmony and equity in class can be promoted through sheer faithfulness to English-only policy, and proficiency in English, “which approximates as closely as possible to that of native speakers” (Widdowson, 1994), is only possible through “adherence to standard forms and maximal practice in target language.”

Significantly, another factor that underlies teachers’ abstinence from venturing into multilingual horizons is the “destabilizing impact” (Kramsch, 2014; Lundberg, 2019) this would launch on conventional practices in language education. The fundamental reason underneath the participants’ antiengagement policies, manifested in such statements as “but that would mean changing everything else altogether” and “this would plunge the whole classroom into utter chaos” echoes study findings by, inter alia, Cameron and Galloway (2019) and Lundberg (2019), who also demonstrated that restrictive language policies, curricular concerns, standard-English-biased assessment mechanisms, and the lack of “established” multilingual policies effectively curb teachers’ enthusiasm for multilingual pedagogies.

This comes as a whole package. You can’t individually just adopt this or that teaching approach here. For one thing, most courses have multiple groups. For another, there are institutional rules and policies. Furthermore, changing one thing about a course means changing everything else including assessment and course materials as well (Teacher 5).

From a poststructuralist stance, we understand, as has been pointed out by Canagarajah (2015) and Pennycook (2008), that monolingual ideologies continue to pervade language policies and teacher identity-formation processes. Poststructuralist thought acknowledges the restraining power of dominant ideologies but also envisages the possibility of reflexivity and engagement in practice of freedom (Foucault, 1983) against a system of thought where all meaning is defined through ideologically constructed binary oppositions (Derrida, 1986). Such undertaking necessitates the practice of engagement with ethical self-formation (Foucault, 1983), the contemplation of alternative identity positions within prevalent discourses (Miller et al., 2017), the negotiation of teachers’ habitus toward identity construction (Varghese et al., 2016), and the disentanglement of emotional capital, in conscious resistance to prevalent ideologies, local feeling rules, and constraining processes of normalization (Bourdieu, 1986; Foucault, 1983; Gkonou & Miller, 2021; Kramsch, 2014; Zembylas, 2014).

Viewed in this light, we as the researchers of this study can surmise that the second group of our study participants, who represent a broad cross-section of the teaching force in the study context, possesses the necessary experience and qualifications to demonstrate awareness of, as well as to call into question, the norms in the field that manipulate their professional attitudes and acts. Nevertheless, we understand that the teachers in this study seem to lack the necessary belief that a bilingual’s meaning-making process is not bounded by separate named languages. Put in other words, the poststructuralist critique and engagement processes toward the creation of alternative practices in the professional realm has not been fully operational among participating teachers due mainly to symbolically legitimized policies that continue to guide their behaviors (Navarro, 2006).

Perspective 3: Administrators

The data analysis indicates that teaching and learning practices within the administrators’ professional environment reflect familiar patterns of establishing hierarchies among languages (Weber & Horner, 2013) and linking the concept of internationalism with English-medium instruction (Soler & Gallego-Balsà, 2019). Although diversity is framed as a hallmark of international recognition and high-quality education, participants’ portrayal of English “as the most valuable linguistic capital in academic contexts” suggests that their professional orientations remain shaped by monolingual preferences. In this way, the celebrated ideals of diversity and multiculturalism—regarded as the foremost institutional asset for attracting an international student body—ultimately converge into what could be seen as an ideological construct that, paradoxically, reinforces monolingual English-only policies. In other words, while multiculturalism is positioned as “an equitable and all-inclusive principle,” the operational reality in language-management policies leans toward diminishing differences and excluding the lived histories of minority students from the institutional narrative (Soler & Gallego-Balsà, 2019).

The concepts of multilingualism and diversity have been associated with the concepts of equity, peace and co-existence of cultures and languages. As a matter of fact, diversity works quite in the opposite way socio-linguistically, solidifying the status of English as the only instrument of communication and the greatest facilitator of globalization (Administrator 1).

Such a perspective overlooks, and thereby fails to integrate, the potential contributions of learners’ linguistic resources into the design and delivery of instructional materials and activities. The result is a dual process: the exclusion of learner identities from educational planning and the simultaneous advancement of monolingual English-only norms, the perpetuation of structuralist binary discourses that marginalize and disempower students, and the maintenance of linguistic uniformity under the rhetoric of diversity, equity, and global engagement (Mavioglu, 2024).

From this vantage point, it can be argued that the administrators in this study conceptualize global citizenship as a superordinate identity framework in which learners’ cultural identities are acknowledged and celebrated under a unified global umbrella (Amiot & Jaspal, 2014; Colombo, 2015). However, their inclination to rank languages according to perceived prestige, to privilege English as the lingua franca (Tannenbaum et al., 2020), and to frame the use of other languages as a potential source of disruption to social harmony (Shvidko, 2017; Wei, 2013) indicates a compartmentalized, rather than an integrative approach to linguistic diversity.

Current global trends have turned the world, as they say, into a small village. Increasing diversity, accessibility and contact calls for unification and cohesion, instead of separation and chaos. English is the only language that can sustain the continuity of this diverse global tapestry (Administrator 2).

Kramsch (2014) notes that monolingual modernity is characterized by normative assumptions about the nation-state, the codification of language through dictionaries and grammatical rules, the valorization of native speaker proficiency, and the treatment of languages as separate, self-contained systems. Viewed in this light, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the administrators display a structuralist, monolingual stance by resisting the adoption of translanguaging pedagogies (Canagarajah, 2015; Leung & Valdes, 2019) and by discouraging the mobilization of both students’ and teachers’ full linguistic repertoires as educational assets (Auerbach, 1993). Nevertheless, the data also reveal moments of willingness to reconstruct difference, particularly through the adaptation of teaching materials to better reflect multilingual realities. Examples include incorporating culturally diverse topics, names of individuals, references to different countries, and varied pronunciation models into classroom activities. Similarly, administrators expressed approval of modifications to writing assessment rubrics so that “they measure not only grammatical accuracy but also aspects such as task fulfillment and text organization.”

It is true that a learner’s writing skills are not made up of grammatical accuracy, spelling and punctuation alone. Equally important is other assessment components such as organizing skills and task fulfilment, which have been added to our new writing criteria (Administrator 3).

Yet, such poststructuralist engagement appears constrained and short-lived, often overshadowed by a strong sense of obligation to institutional policies and standardized norms. This illustrates how power is sustained through normalized, seemingly common-sense practices that are rarely questioned (Auerbach, 1993). The paradox of internationalization emerges clearly here: The more culturally and linguistically diverse the university becomes, the greater the likelihood that all stakeholders—students, teachers, and administrators—will rely on a single lingua franca, the language with the highest market value in symbolic and convertible capital (Bourdieu, 1991; Kuteeva, 2019). Against this backdrop, the findings suggest that the administrators in this study are not only aware of some of the monolingual norms that influence their professional dispositions but also, in certain instances, capable of partially stepping outside these constraints. However, the processes of poststructuralist critique and engagement—especially those aimed at integrating learners’ identities and linguistic resources into everyday classroom practice—remain incomplete. They are curtailed by dominant discourses that continue to shape, and at times predetermine, administrators’ actions, even when these influences are not consciously acknowledged (Mavioglu, 2024).

Conclusion

This study has attempted to lay down a poststructuralist groundwork that can initiate further elaboration and hypothesizing on teachers’, learners’, and administrators’ perceptions and pedagogical positioning against dramatically increasing diversity in higher education context. Analysis of gathered data reveals closely converging tendencies among participants on three major themes: education in multicultural settings, translanguaging practices, and World Englishes, which are discussed below.

Education in a Multicultural Setting

Across all participant groups, there is a strong tendency to equate multiculturalism with internationalism, considered as a hallmark of prestige and academic excellence in higher education. For most participants, the clearest indicator of such internationalism is an unwavering commitment to English-only instruction. As Bourdieu (1991) argues, monolithic policies justify forms of cultural exclusion by framing them as necessary for fostering harmony in diversity. In this case, such policies not only limit opportunities for social transformation but also restrict access to valued cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1991). The most visible expression of this is the pairing of a monolingual habitus with an English-medium policy—rooted in the mistaken belief that a university’s international status is inherently tied to English-medium education (Soler & Gallego-Balsà, 2019; Weber & Horner, 2013).

Participants frequently described English as “the global currency with the highest returns” and “the key to internationalization, employment, and success,” reinforcing the view that English proficiency is both a pathway to identity construction (Kuteeva, 2019; Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985) and an instrument for accessing symbolic and material resources that empower social actors (Rojo, 2015). In this sense, English is a gateway to all forms of international engagement (Jenkins, 2015; Sung, 2019), intercultural citizenship, and knowledge exchange (Fang & Baker, 2022; Ou & Gu, 2020). Thus, even though diversity is positioned as the entry point to educational quality and inclusive learning, our analysis shows that both diversity and internationalism become operationalized primarily through the use of English as a lingua franca.

In practice, the participants’ embrace of English as the most valuable asset in the academic “market” also signals support for language-management policies that marginalize difference and omit minority students’ narratives from dominant discourse (Soler & Gallego-Balsà, 2019). While diversity is championed rhetorically, the exclusion of students’ linguistic and cultural resources from classroom practices effectively uphold monolingual English-only norms under the banner of equity, inclusion, and internationalism (Gaertner et al., 2016).

The only notable exceptions emerge in teachers’ and administrators’ positive reaction to modification of instructional materials and writing assessment criteria that acknowledge classroom diversity—for example, incorporating a wider range of topics, names, and contexts and valuing task fulfillment and organization alongside grammatical accuracy. However, such openness tends to be short-lived and overshadowed by the concern for adherence to institutional policies.

Translanguaging Practice

Monolingual ideologies inevitably resurface in pedagogical orientations and approaches, most visibly through binary oppositions and hierarchical power relations. These manifest in treating languages as discrete, compartmentalized entities, prioritizing monolingualism over multilingualism, and viewing the linguistic repertoires of minoritized students as shortcomings rather than assets. Such a logocentric worldview fails to recognize lived realities and culturally embedded linguistic resources, thereby closing off the space for identity expression and negotiation. Consequently, promoting English-only education while excluding other languages from the classroom effectively results in a detachment from context, communicative code, and community ties (Canagarajah, 2015).

Within this framework, translanguaging pedagogies emerge as a deliberate attempt to level the playing field by focusing on “practice—that is, what people can do with their linguistic and semiotic repertoires—rather than on isolated competences in named languages” (Paulsrud & Rosen, cited in Straszer & Kroik, 2021). This approach transforms communication into an adaptive, improvisational process in which meaning is not fixed but jointly constructed as individuals draw upon and blend their linguistic resources across different contact zones. In doing so, translanguaging pedagogies offer considerable potential for questioning, reassessing, and redefining the link between linguistic and ontological legitimacy. Realizing this potential in EFL classrooms, however, requires teachers and administrators who actively treat diversity as a pedagogical resource, as well as learners who carve out their own spaces of resistance (Pennycook, 2017) to ensure their voices are heard in instructional settings.

In the context of this study, data analysis reveals a consistent consensus among participants that allowing non-English languages to “infiltrate” the classroom would undermine learners’ progress in English, foster dependency on home languages, and create an atmosphere of inequality or exclusion. The uniformity of views across data sources provides strong grounds for concluding that participants perceive languages as bounded units and the presence of linguistic “impurity” in EFL spaces as a cause for confusion, bias, and inefficient learning. For them, translanguaging practice is incompatible with the principles of internationalism and global standards in foreign language education because using non-English languages in class runs counter to fairness and equality. Teachers also expressed concern about insufficient instructional materials aligned with multilingual approaches, pointing out that they are responsible for upholding international assessment criteria and ensuring fairness by maintaining uniform resources, opportunities, and the same language in classroom interactions. Administrators articulated their reasoning differently but echoed the same core view: that success in language learning correlates directly with exposure to the target language, which is the sole acceptable medium of instruction in international universities.

Taken together, these perspectives suggest that all three participant groups in this research view multilingualism as a form of institutional capital that embodies internationally recognized benchmarks of educational quality. At the same time, participants see diversity in their immediate institutional context as a unifying force, offering opportunities for inclusive identity formation through the ideal of global citizenship—though paradoxically realized via the exclusive use of English as a lingua franca. Their conceptualization of identity as independent from context, ethnicity, and gender aligns with poststructuralist understandings of identity as an ongoing process of navigating dominant discourses and small-scale spaces of emancipation (Barkhuizen, 2016; Foucault, 1983; Holck et al., 2016; Rabinov, 1984; Rojo, 2015). Yet, when it comes to linguistic diversity, a noticeable disconnect emerges between belief and classroom enactment. In other words, participants’ commitment to equity and inclusion under a global citizenship framework (Gaertner et al., 2016) fails to extend to language policy, where their practices display a compartmentalized rather than integrated stance. This is evident in their hierarchical ranking of languages by power and function (Tannenbaum et al., 2020), their relegation of L1 use to private domains (Phillipson, 1991; Young, 2014), and their view of L1 use as a barrier to academic and social integration (Auerbach, 1993; Littlewood & Yu, 2011; Shvidko, 2017; Wei, 2013). Ultimately, their steadfast endorsement of monolingual, communication-focused policies, resistance to translanguaging practice, and limited engagement with poststructuralist critique demonstrate that their professed support for linguistic diversity has yet to translate into practice. The findings suggest that poststructuralist critique around translanguaging remains underdeveloped in this context (Canagarajah, 2011; García & Lin, 2017; Haukas, 2016; Leung & Valdes, 2019; Matsuda, 2014), with participants largely avoiding efforts to leverage such approaches for increased agency within prevailing institutional structures.

Standard English vs. Communicative Efficiency

While participants in the study generally demonstrated support for communicative language strategies, many still regarded strict adherence to grammatical accuracy as a core element of communicative efficiency. For most learners, mastery of grammar, precise vocabulary selection, and accurate pronunciation are perceived as the hallmark of “real” proficiency, considered essential for successful communication. In addition to viewing English as the definitive global language with the highest market value, these learners also differentiated between “original English” and its varieties, dismissing the latter as lacking prestige or practical use beyond local contexts. This perception was echoed in teachers’ remarks, with particular emphasis on the fact that international assessment systems tend to certify only one standardized form of English—the so-called “original English.” An additional concern voiced by teachers was that removing one element from the established structure—“a stick from the heart of the pile”—could undermine long-standing norms in the profession and destabilize the entire framework (Cameron & Galloway, 2019; Lundberg, 2019; Pauwels, 2014).

From a poststructuralist perspective, language identification is reoriented toward an interplay between individual agency and prevailing systems of power. Communication, in this view, is a co-constructed process of meaning-making (Canagarajah, 2015; Ou & Gu, 2020) that is inherently more egalitarian and “open to plurality and dynamicity” (Ou & Gu, 2020). From this perspective, administrators, like learners and teachers, perceive global citizenship as a superordinate identity (Amiot & Jaspal, 2014; Colombo, 2015), languages as compartmentalized entities, English as the sole lingua franca (Tannenbaum et al., 2020), and non-English use as potentially disruptive to harmony in classroom (Shvidko, 2017; Wei, 2013).

Even so, administrators diverged somewhat from monolingual orthodoxy by rejecting the notion that grammatical accuracy, native-speaker pronunciation, and standardized English should be the only legitimate benchmarks of proficiency and acceptability. Yet their language-management strategies—emphasizing the erosion of linguistic differences, the exclusion of non-English cultural resources from the mainstream (Soler & Gallego-Balsà, 2019), and the reinforcement of English-only policies (Gaertner et al., 2016)—suggest a continued detachment from the deeper critique of monolithic discourses. This, in turn, reflects that their poststructuralist engagement remains limited, largely constrained by adherence to institutional norms and regulations (Mavioglu, 2024).

Implications

This study has attempted to analyze the participants’ conceptual and practical positioning vis-à-vis emerging lingua-cultural paradigms in a higher education institution in Northern Cyprus. In view of the aim sought, the research design implemented, and the theoretical approach utilized, the main priority of the present study is to elaborate a flexible groundwork that can encourage further research and reflection, in a contextualized and situated design, in the hope of initiating a reasoned debate which can yield further research in similar contexts.

In this vein, the findings of the present study remain in need of further analyses through future studies that will investigate whether the study participants’ perceptions are reciprocated with other participant groups and time periods. Although the theoretical framework used in this study warns against universal, one-size-fits-all approaches, and although multilingual pedagogical approaches may not work best in every setting and with everyone, it is still important to garner awareness on multilingual paradigms to ensure that noncompliance happens on valid contextual grounds instead of on unawareness or limited professional knowledge.

With specific reference to Northern Cyprus, where this study was conducted, the findings point to the need for a reconsideration of governmental and institutional language policy frameworks. At the institutional level, this may involve the introduction of small-scale, low-risk pilot initiatives that allow teachers to experiment with translanguaging practices in selected courses, as well as more flexible assessment rubrics that recognize learners’ strategic use of multiple linguistic resources without compromising academic standards. Furthermore, targeted professional development programs for teachers and teacher trainers—focusing on principled multilingual pedagogy, material adaptation, and classroom management in linguistically diverse settings—are necessary to support informed pedagogical decision-making. For students, the establishment of orientation and support mechanisms may help clarify the pedagogical rationale behind multilingual practices and reduce perceptions of chaos or instructional inconsistency.

Taken together, these measures highlight the importance of aligning language policy, classroom practice, and professional development in ways that move beyond symbolic support for multilingualism and toward context-sensitive, sustainable, and pedagogically grounded implementation.