It becomes increasingly complex to deal with multiple channels’
Materialised communicative competence and digital inequality in English-medium higher education in the digital era
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11184237 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Amy Wanyu Ou (0000-0001-5172-5608, Chalmers University of Technology, corresponding author), Hans Malmström (0000-0003-2450-7650, Chalmers University of Technology) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 25-43 |
| Publication date | 2026-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0143-4632 • E-ISSN: 1747-7557 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/01434632.2023.2222102 |
| OpenAlex | W4380248951 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 14 |
| References cited | 48 |
This article explores university students’ communicative competence for English-Medium Instruction (EMI) at a Swedish university in the era of digitalisation and blended learning. Based on a linguistic ethnography, we present an argument for communicative competence as repertoire assemblages orchestrating digital materiality and human language to construct meanings. The study shows how diverse digital multimodalities and AI-language tools are essential features of spatial repertoires for academic communication, and how they cooperate with and mediate students’ personal repertoires to accomplish interactive learning tasks in EMI contexts. The study also highlights how digital diversity in EMI causes a ‘digital divide’, potentially impacting power relations among students. These findings underline the importance of acknowledging the communicative value of digital materiality and negotiating difference and normativity for intercultural academic communication in EMI
Aesthetics · Art · Communicative competence · Competence (human resources · Digital media · Intercultural communication · Linguistics · Materiality (auditing · Pedagogy · Sociology · Computer Science · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning · Multilingual Education and Policy · Psychology · Second Language Learning and Teaching · Social Psychology
Communicative repertoires in multilingual universities
Assessing intercultural communicative competence
Time, Space, and Tools
Deep learning as a bridge between intercultural sensitivity and learning outcomes
Academic communication with AI-powered language tools in higher education
Writing economics
Visualising identities and values in the educationscape of a U.S. international branch campus
The complexities of ‘sticky objects’ and ‘happy objects’ in multilingual universities
Multilingual and multimodal digital communication in the post-pandemic era
Developing pre-service teachers’ critical awareness and strategic use of multilingual and multimodal repertoires in materials design
The creation of an institutional communicative repertoire at a multilingual Finnish university
Negotiating cultural identity in the trans-digital space
Chinese international students' emotional experiences during their English-medium instruction programmes in Malaysia
The emergence of academic writers
Mobility and English language policies and practices in higher education
Supersizing the Mind
English Medium Instruction in Higher Education in Asia-Pacific
Linguistic Ethnography
Materializing ‘Competence’
The Interpretation of Cultures
Translingual Practice as Spatial Repertoires
Posthumanist Applied Linguistics
Whose Karate? Language and Cultural Learning in a Multilingual Karate Club in London
Negotiating language use and norms in intercultural communication
Competence beyond language
The multilingual turn
The content lecturer and English-medium instruction (EMI)
Revisiting the ‘E’ in EMI
The English-medium paradigm
Translanguaging in digital learning
The unit and focus of analysis in lingua franca English interactions
Theories of trans/languaging and trans-semiotizing
(Re)conceptualizing “Language” in CLIL
First-Order Languaging Dynamics and Second-Order Language
Sociolinguistics and Discourse Analysis
Beyond languages, beyond modalities
Translanguaging and semiotic assemblages
Translanguaging for intercultural communication in international higher education
Materialising semiotic repertoires
Language policy from below
English and more
Learning and communication in online international higher education in Hong Kong
English in Globalisation, a Lingua Franca or a Lingua Frankensteinia
At the Crossroads of Tesol and English Medium Instruction
Deleuze and Guattari's A thousand plateaus
A thousand plateaus
Translanguaging as a Practical Theory of Language
The Linguistic Repertoire Revisited
| Unique citing works | 14 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 7 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 14 |