Power of Language
In Chinese history, there were some examples using language as a power to control the countries. The first emperor of China- Qin Shi Huang (259-210BC) conducted the best implementation of language management. In order to govern the whole China, he unified the Chinese characters from various regions (Chang, 2007).
The other evidence is the Kangxi Dictionary. This standard Chinese dictionary was ordered by Kangxi emperor during the 18th and 19th centuries. 47,000 characters (including obscure, variant, rare, and archaic characters) are contained in this dictionary. Although less than a quarter of these characters are now in common use, the influence of language use could not be ignored (Teng and Biggerstaff, 1971) .
Nowadays, the role of language has changed from nationalism to globalization (Wright, 2004) because of the interaction of knowledge, business, and education.
Therefore, on the international level, historically there has been an influence of the west so that most countries use English as one of the communication tool in order to increase the interaction worldwide and gain more opportunities at the same time.
Another influence is the growing power of China which encourages more people to learn Chinese. These prove that language can be the indicator to see the power of country.
English has been the dominant language to communicate in international activities. Besides, Singapore realized the power of language, so it has engaged in language policy since 1965. Due to the uniqueness of its population, English has been
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adopted as the official language. Now Singapore is the example of success, using the advantage of language to connect to the international economy. From Table 1.2, it seems that percentage of foreign students is somewhat related to the ranking of global competitiveness
Table 2.1
The Percentage of Foreign Students and Ranking of Global Competitiveness
COUNTRY PERCENTAGE OF
FOREIGN STUDENTSa
RANKING OF GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESSb
JAPAN （2009） 4.7% 9
KOREA （2009） 3.3% 24
SINGAPORE （2009） 45.5% 2
MALAYSIA （2010） 7.3% 22
HONG KONG （2010） 10 % 11
TAIWAN （2010） 3.3% 13
a Note. Adapted from “Education in Taiwan 2011-2012”, by Ministry Of Education, 2011a, http://english.moe.gov.tw/public/Attachment/1113011175371.pdf, on January 15, 2012.
b Note. Adapted from” Export of Higher Education: Study-in-Taiwan Enhancement Program”, by Ministry of Education, 2011b,
http://www.ey.gov.tw/public/Attachment/1671614971.doc, on January 15, 2012.
The power of language can be seen from the previous discussion. This interesting association motivates this study to look into the language management practices in schools as they are influenced by governmental policy toward internationalization, and examine the effects of these language management practices on internationalization outcome of higher education.
Language Management
Spolsky (2004) turned the term “language planning” into “language management,” though he is not the first to perceive it. Spolsky (2010) defined language management as “the formulation and proclamation of an explicit plan or policy, usually but not necessarily written in a formal document, about language use.”
Luo and Senkar (2006) perceived language management as “a variable mechanism that needs to balance global integration with local adaptation in line with corporate strategy and an evolving global environment” (P.322), which limited language management in enterprises. The concepts of language management are mostly discussed in national and business level. However, Spolsky (2010) explained more details. He mentioned school language management is forced by the language policies adopted by educational system and identified the participants of school language management: Pupils, professors, and others (professional administrator and non-academic support staff).
Altbach and Knight (2007) mentioned, “Internationalization has included policies and practices undertaken by institutions to cope with the globalized academic environment.” Management consists of strategies made to achieve the goals of organization and develop further policies and practices to influence the organization outcome. In this research, combining business management concepts, the definition of Spolsky will be mainly adopted for discussing language management of schools.
Therefore, language management here is a set of actions determined by internationalization strategy in school composed by goals and characteristics of school and form explicit policies and practice about language use to influence internationalization outcome.
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Language Barrier
Feely and Harzing (2003) addressed language barrier as a problem of
‘‘miscommunication’’, which will not only occur but also arouse a series of negative effects. Language enables internal communication by providing a tool within a global organization (Lehtovaara, 2009). Selvadurai (1998) mentioned the problem of language barrier, identification of classroom atmosphere and faculty-student relationship are the difficulties for international students. In the difficulties, language is the first barrier they encountered, and Olivas and Li (2006) also proved that language is one of the anxieties of international students.
Harzing and Feely (2003) categorized language barrier in business into three dimensions: the language diversity, the language penetration, and the language sophistication. The language diversity is the number of different languages the company has to manage. The language penetration means the number of functions and the number of levels within those functions that are engaged in cross-lingual communication. The language sophistication refers to the complexity and refinement of the language skills required.
In school language management, the language barrier mainly results from the language sophistication, which refers to the language acquisition. Bulavatski (1998) provides two reasons why schools do not have good language management. First, school administration does not want to exert any effort and spend resources on teaching in two languages; they consider it a complication. Secondly, most members of the school administrations do not have a positive attitude toward it.
Language Management in Schools
English has become the dominant language of the world on account of colonial
expansion, trade, science and technology, ideology and religion, and the waning of British power (Wright, 2004; Herriman and Burnaby, 1996). This trend also influences the situation of internationalization in higher education. Students are willing to study in America, or other English-dominant countries with well-prepared English ability. For those international students who study in English-dominant countries, with the advanced level of language ability, their language difficulties/barrier is their academic learning (Kim, 2009; Kuo, 2011; Maybin, 1985;
Turner, Y., 2006; Yang, Noels, & Saumure, 2006). On the contrary, the non-English-dominant countries like Asian countries in order to ride the waves of internationalization; they made efforts to recruit international students whereas few students would have acquired local language when they first arrive. Hence, the schools need to make a series of policies and plan to fulfill the pursuit of internationalization strategy. The first step is to create a non-language-barrier environment to assist foreign student to learn and live in schools, so the language management would focus on the campus environment, administration, international curriculum and etc. However, there are few researches discussing the language management practices regarding the internal language setting at school.
The main purpose of this study is to discover all language management practices employed in higher education institutes of Taiwan and find out the efficient model on account of impact of internationalization. Therefore, it is clear that managing language is the focus in this study to increase internationalization outcome in school.
However, most of researches studied the relationship between internationalization practices and international outcome (Altbach and Knight, 2007; Bennett and Kane, 2009; Stromquist, 2007) instead of language management practices, so the literature of language management study is limited. There is one study conducted by Harzing
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and Feely (2003) and contributed 11 language management practices in business.
Strategy, Policy, and Practice School Strategy
Porter (1996) asserted the nature of strategy is to choose what to do and what not to do, which means the decisions made during the process of competition. Hill and Jones (2007) defined strategy as ‘a set of actions that managers take to increase their company’s performance relative to rivals’. Strategy is a framework of choices that determine the nature and direction of an organization (Freedman, & Tregoe, 2003).
Miles and Snow (1978) mentioned there must be a clear and direct match between the organization's mission/values. From the discussion above, strategy can be concluded as a process to make decisions based on limited resources according to the internal and external environment in a competitive market. Hax (1991) further defined strategy in schools: it is based on school objectives, environment and trend, and unique characteristics.
The strategies are categorized into different types. Porter (1980) addressed generic strategies which are overall cost leadership, differentiation, and focus strategies to assist managers realize how to use low cost, build service differentiation, and develop in a focus market in a competitive industry environment. Other researchers brought up with synergy and preemptive move strategies in the following years (Aaker, 1995; Schuler and Jackson, 1987). Miles and Snow (1978) divided business into four types based on an in-depth cross-industry study:
Prospectors: Prospectors which almost continually search for market opportunities, and they regularly experiment with potential responses to emerging environmental
trends. Thus, these organizations often are the creators of change and uncertainty to which their competitors must respond.
Defenders: Defenders are organizations which have narrow product-market domains.
Top managers in this type organization are highly expert in their organization’s limited area of operation but do not tend to search outside their narrow domains for new opportunities.
Analyzers: Analyzers are organizations which operate in two types of product-market domains, one relatively stable, the other changing. In their stable areas, these organizations operate routinely and efficiently through use of formalized structures and processes. In their more turbulent areas, top managers watch their competitors closely for new ideas, and then rapidly adopt those which appear to be the most promising.
Reactors: Organizations in which top managers frequently perceive change and uncertainty occurring in their organizational environments but are unable to respond effectively. Because this type of organization lacks a consistent strategy-structure relationship, it seldom makes adjustments of any sort until forced to do so by environmental pressures. (P. 29)
In Table 2.2 retrieved from Miles and Snow (1978) show the basic strategy set of these four different strategy type.
Table 2.2
Basic Strategy Set of Business Type
BASIC STRATEGY SET
PROSPECTORS Broad domain, in a continuous state of development
(continued)
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Monitors a wide range of environmental conditions, trends, and events
Creators of change in their industries
Growth primarily from new markets and new products
Uneven, spurt-like growth
DEFENDERS Aggressively maintain prominence within its chosen market segment
Ignore developments outside of this domain
Penetrate deeper into current markets
Normally, growth occurs cautiously and incrementally ANALYZERS A mixture of products and markets, some stable, others
changing
Successful imitation through extensive marketing surveillance
Avid follower of change
Growth normally occurs through market penetration
Growth may also occur through product and market development
REACTORS Management fails to articulate a viable organizational strategy
Management articulates an appropriate strategy, but technology, structure, and process are not linked to strategy appropriately
Management adheres to a particular strategy-structure relationship that is not relevant to the environment Note. Adapted from “Miles and Snow Organizational Types,” (1978)
According to the literature discussed above, Miles and Snow’s model is considered relatively appropriate to be applied to differentiate school strategy type.
The concepts of this model start from this question: “What strategies do organizations employ in solving their entrepreneurial, engineering, and administrative problems?”
Thus, in schools, the internationalization strategy will be adapted to how school dealing with operational, teaching, and administrative problems. To attain sustainability, more and more schools adopt strategic management. In this study, Table 2.2 (continued)
higher education institute is considered as a business organization. May (1997) also mentioned that social institutions needed to refer to government policies and translate them into strategies. The process is to analyze the whole education environment through external and internal analysis, evaluate the resources and limitation of school to further innovate the school, and create service characteristics. However, the school characteristics are still different from business, so the adjustment while applying is necessary.
The study aims to apply the four organization types mentioned above to categorize the school strategy towards internationalization.
Language Policy in Schools
Fishman (1995) defined, “language policy is as the set of measures taken by public bodies with the intention of intervening in society's linguistic communications.”
Spolsky (2010) distinguishes its three components: (1) language practices, (2) language beliefs or ideology, and (3) “any specific efforts to modify or influence that practice by any kind of language intervention, planning or management”. In a specific academic discipline, language policy is employed as the same concept with language planning at times (Wiley, 1996). Fishman (1973) made definition of language planning as, “the organized pursuit of solutions to language problems, typically at the national level,” which is adopted by most scholars.
Corson (1999) further defined school language policy. He addressed, “school language policies are viewed by many in education as an integral and necessary part of the administration and the curriculum practice of school which identified areas in the school’s scope of operations and program where language problems exist that need the commonly agreed approach offered by a policy,” which is the definition this
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study adopts. In school policy making, the needs of students and language problems which deeply influence the school and social content are concerned the most (Corson, 1999).
Corson (1999), in the book of “Language Policy in Schools” brought up a practical approach for school administration and professor to design a language policy and to deal with the school language issues. In the end of this book, he used what a school language policy might contain under three headings: organization and management of the school, professor approaches to language use, the curriculum to conclude. Siaya and Hayward (2003) considered study-abroad experiences, curriculum enrichment via international studies majors or area studies, strengthened foreign-language instruction, and sponsorship of foreign students to study on campus are the motivations of campus-based internationalization. This definition can help school to determine the international policy from the perspectives from international students instead of local students.
In 2011, Taiwan governmental policies towards internationalization of higher education are to expand the recruitment of international students, strengthen academic international cooperation, and cultivate language talent of excellence. In evaluation plan of learning environment for international student in Taiwanese universities/
colleges conducted by FICHET, it employed five dimensions to evaluate the achievement of internationalization: International recruitment and courses, administration resource, campus environment and equipment, life supporting system, and finally the construction of school website.
In this study, the language policy will include the range discussed above, and divided into four dimensions: teaching and curriculum, international academic
performance, administration support and campus environment, and finally the language ability.
Practices of Language Management
Spolsky (2004) mentioned, “Appropriate language practice is to form a consensual ideology, assigning values and prestige to various aspects of the language varieties used in it.”
Feely and Harzing (2003) came up with options of managing language problems which are the practice of language management in business. They divided these options into 11 categories:
1. Lingua Franca: Use English as the communicative language in a company.
2. Functional Multilingualism: “Muddle through, relying on a mix of languages, pidgins and gestures to communicate by whatever means the parties have at their disposal.” (P. 7)
3. External language resource: “Employ external resources such as translators and interpreters.” (P. 7)
4. Training: “The immediate and understandable reaction to any skills-shortage in a business is to consider personnel development and certainly the language training industry is well developed, offering programs at almost every level and in numerous languages.” (P. 8)
5. Corporate language: “Adopt a single corporate language. All recruitment and personnel development could then be focused upon achievement of required standards in that one chosen language.” (P. 9)
6. Language node: “Dependent upon their scarce linguistically skilled personnel.
These key personnel become informal language nodes establishing themselves
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as the default communications channel between the company and the external world.” (P. 10)
7. Selective recruitment: Hire people already possessing the required skills.
8. Expatriate management: “Any multinational company facing a language barrier with its subsidiaries is to assign expatriates to work within each subsidiary to act as the language node linking back to corporate headquarters.”
(P. 11)
9. Inpatriation: Inpatriate subsidiary personnel into the head office operation.
10. Machine translation: Use machine to translate language and help the communication efficiency.
11. Controlled language: “A controlled language imposes limits on vocabulary and syntax rules so as to make the text produced more easily comprehended by the non-native speaker/reader and equally more amenable to machine translation.” (P. 13)
The above mentioned language management practices may not apply to schools, thus investigation is needed to find out how schools confront language barriers.
Internationalization Outcome in Higher Education
The Times Higher Education Supplement has set the internationalization criteria since 2004. It has evaluated the level of internationalization by peer review, recruiter review, international faculty score, international student score, faculty/student score, and citation/faculty score. Bartell (2002) addressed the international indicator should include the number of exchange and international students, the budget of internationalization, the number of international academic programs, international partnership, and curriculum content of internationalization. Besides, a Taiwanese researcher, Dai (2004), mentioned the internationalization outcome can be seen from
the internationalization level of students, professors, curriculum, and research.
Internationalization outcome can be diverse.
This study also conducted telephone interview with one member of MOE to investigate the appropriate criteria to test international outcome in this study. The interviewee also revealed that the internationalization criteria can be very diverse and flexible. Moreover, each school might implement different approaches.
However, in this study, language barriers would be aroused by the enrollment of international students, so the number of international students will be utilized as the indicator to evaluate the internationalization outcome.
Relationship among Strategy Type, Language Management Practices and Internationalization Outcome
Strategy Type and Language Management Practices
Language management practices represent a major mechanism to fulfill the organization strategy towards internationalization. Higher education institutes have different internationalization strategy because of the concern of internal and external situation; thus, there must be strategy differences between schools to lead the production of various management practices. According to literature, Miles and Snow divided strategy into four types: prospector, defender, analyzer, and reactor based on the product-market domain and construct mechanisms (structures and processes). In this study, this model will be applied to distinguish the school strategy type. Product and market opportunities will also be considered as language management practices to find the relationship. Thus:
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Proposition 1: Schools with different strategy types will adopt different language management practices.
Language Management Practices and Internationalization Outcome
According to Altbach and Knight (2007), “internationalization has included policies and practices undertaken by institutions to cope with the globalized academic environment.” (P. 290) From this perspective, the related policies and practices are brought up to confront internationalization. Besides, it is assumed that any practice will have its influence to a different degree on internationalization outcome. Thus:
Proposition 2: Language management practices have an impact on schools’
internationalization outcome.
Proposition 3: The more language management practices a school adopts, the better the internationalization outcome of the school is.