Multilingualism among university staff: a case study of language management at an Australian university

Abstract

Employing the language management framework, this paper reports on multilingual use among the staff of a major metropolitan university in Melbourne and covers both simple and organised management. It describes a top–down attempt to survey staffs' (academic and general) background in Languages other than English (LOTE), LOTE usage and evaluative behaviour towards LOTE usage and communication in intercultural contexts within the university. Although the study of LOTE by Australian university students has been covered in various reports in the past, this paper focuses upon academic and administrative staff. Despite being a seemingly monolingual university, the recent survey revealed that a large number of languages are known by staff members of the community, either as first, second or other languages, and that these languages serve a wide variety of functions.