Prophesying Success in the Higher Education System of Multilingual Switzerland

• Published in: Multilingua Vol. 39; no. 3; pp. 299 - 320
• Main Author: Zimmermann, Martina
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: De Gruyter Mouton 01-05-2020
• Subjects: Economic Factors; Educational Change; Ethnography; Foreign Countries; French; Futures (of Society); German; Higher Education; Human Capital; Institutional Characteristics; Italian; Language Attitudes; Language of Instruction; Language Usage; Language Variation; Marketing; Multilingualism; Neoliberalism; Reputation; Second Language Instruction; Second Language Learning; Student Mobility; Student Recruitment; Universities; Switzerland
• ISSN: 0167-8507
• DOI: 10.1515/multi-2019-0037

This paper investigates the conditions under which stakeholders in the higher education system in multilingual Switzerland link expectations of students' future economic to the development of human capital. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in a project focusing on mobile students crossing linguistic borders within Switzerland, I examine how this expected success in the imagined future is conceptualized, i. e. what kind of learning and which multilingual repertoires are part of the prophesying marketing discourse produced by universities and students alike. I explore how dominant language ideologies are reproduced and transferred into a speculative future, without any adjustment to account for changing market conditions. Juxtaposing institutional and individual discourse, I first argue that understandings of language ideologies are shared, seen as promotional assets translatable into the imagined but unchallenged future of which students as well as universities have a joint vision. Second, I suggest that investigating dominant visions of the future sheds light on which languages are chosen to be taught/learnt at tertiary level and how this offer mirrors the economized perspective adopted in the higher education system. Finally, I conclude that considering time as an analytical dimension contributes to our understanding of how prophesies of the multilingual (and thus marketable) self are discursively constructed in the here and now, and are dominated by certain interests, and I raise the question whether the successful visions we are striving for are ever to be reached in a neoliberal logic in line with the pressure of continuously becoming.