Translanguaging and Language Policy in Thai Higher Education EMI Programs

Thai higher education (HE) and the Thai government have implemented internationalization strategies since the 1990s and this has led to an increase in the number of EMI (English Medium Instruction) courses (Lavankura in J Stud Int Educ 17:663–676, 2013). Furthermore, as English has been officially adopted as the ASEAN lingua franca since 1967 (Kirkpatrick in English as a lingua franca in ASEAN. Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2010), relevant authorities of English education in Thailand have been faced with tasks to equip citizens with English language skills required in this globalized world. As a result, English has become a significant part of various Thai language education policies over the last 30 years. However, in spite of tremendous efforts made by the government to improve Thai citizens’ English skills, the effectiveness of English education policies has been viewed as very mixed (Kaur et al. in English language education policy in Asia. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016). In this chapter, we propose that two of the causes of this perceived lack of success are an unrealistic focus on Anglophone “native speaker” English and a lack of recognition of the multilingual landscape and translanguaging practices in Thailand in general and in Thai education in particular. Until now, very little investigation has been done in terms of translanguaging in EMI in the Thai context. This chapter aims to explore to what extent multilingualism is recognized by the Thai government and three major Thai universities by looking into English language policies on websites and documents publicly displayed. We sought to understand underlying language ideologies within the policies and consider how these might be informed by translanguaging and ELF theory. Findings suggest that bilingual, Thai, English, policies and the recognition of English as an ASEAN lingua franca have become more conspicuous in both the Thai government’s general and HE policies. They also commonly put emphasis on harmonizing diversity and building networking relations with ASEAN. However, this seems to be only superficial and has not been reflected in actual language policies.