Problematising English monolingualism in the ‘multicultural’ university: a Bourdieusian study of Chinese international research students in Australia

With English hegemony sustained in ‘multicultural’ Anglophone universities, non-English speaking research students often develop diverse strategies to improve their English. While such demonstrate a form of resilience, the symbolic power remains intact. To grapple with this paradox, we draw on work Pierre Bourdieu probe Chinese international students’ academic language practice response monolingualism Australian universities. Findings from semi-structured interviews 18 universities indicate that participants’ is influenced by both doxic and evolving exercise multilingualism. Drawing insights Bourdieu-informed sociology resilience post-monolingual theorising, problematise provide recommendations for (Chinese) students, supervisors, capitalise linguistic repertories sake enriching experience.