This socio-linguistic study investigates attitudes of French speakers of English to using English for academic purposes. The study is situated within the post-Fioraso Law period (2013), which sees France joining the process described as the ‘internationalisation' of Higher Education in Europe. This study confirms that rather than encouraging multiple languages in academia, the term ‘internationalisation' implies ‘Englishisation' in Europe by contributing to studies which show how English is instrumental to academic identity in Europe. Through the use of complementary qualitative methods (questionnaires, interviews, visual methods and classroom observations), the narratives of 164 academics working at the science faculties of Nantes University were analysed for how they positioned their professional identities in relation to the use of English for professional purposes (such as writing research papers, presenting at conferences, and teaching in English as a medium of instruction, EMI). The major divisions regarding the attitudes towards English as a medium of academic identity in France are to be found in the issues relating to the legitimacy and authority of French speakers of English within the wider international academic community. The principal arguments are based on beliefs concerning the ownership of the English language and whether it is possible for L2 speakers of English to ever identify themselves as being anything other than ‘learners of English', despite repeated proof of their language expertise. The study concludes that within French Higher Education in 2016, English is a strategic medium through which to access research and teaching communities. Ownership of the English language as an identifying feature comes second to the emerging bilingual identities of the participants who are competing in the global market of Higher Education.

This thesis investigates the phonology of loanword adaptation focusing on English loanwords in Urban Hijazi Arabic (UHA). It investigates the segmental adaptations of English consonants that are absent in UHA as well as the various phonological adaptations of illicit syllabic structures. It is based on dataset of around 100 English loanwords that were integrated into UHA that contain several illicit consonants and syllable structures in the donor language. This dataset is compiled from different published sources along with a data collection exercise. The first significant source is Abdul-Rahim (2011) a dictionary of loanwords into Arabic, while the other one is Jarrah's (2013) study of English loanwords into Madinah Hijazi Arabic (MHA) adopting the on-line adaptation. The third source is original pronunciation data collected from current UHA speakers. Furthermore, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was consulted for the etymology and transcription of the English words. The goal is to provide a thorough analysis of these phonological patterns whether consonantal or syllabic ones found in the adaptation of English loanwords into UHA. To accomplish this, the adaptations have been analysed according to two theoretical frameworks: the Theory of Constraints and Repair Strategies Loanword Model (TCRSLM) proposed by Paradis and LaCharité (1997) and Optimality Theory (OT) introduced by Prince and Smolensky (1993). The different proposed analyses in this study facilitated an evaluation of the adequacy of each of these theories in accounting for the discussed phonological patterns found in UHA loan phonology. The thesis concludes that OT better explains the adaptations, but neither theory fully accounts for the variety of adaptations found in UHA.

This is an account of qualitative ethnographic case study research investigating the identity construction of English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers. This study was conducted at a higher education (HE) college, namely, Public High College (PHC) in Oman over a period of six months. In this study, I explore teacher identities in relation to the particular spatial locations of the teachers as well as the ways that networking and social capital and institutionalised cultural capital intersected with their nationalities and linguistic backgrounds to produce complex hierarchies. The thesis provides a rich exposition of teacher identity construction in Omani HE as theorised through the lens of Bourdieu, recognising the different educational practices, such as assessment and teacher evaluation, as well as the influence of space in the field of struggle within which teacher identities were implicated. The methodological approach and research design adopted in this study was dictated in part by the nature of the research questions and the theoretical framework adopted. Because I was interested in the embedded struggles in different educational practices between different groups and how these groups articulated and expressed these struggles, I positioned my research within a constructivist-interpretive paradigm. I adopted a case study approach and drew on ethnographic methods, such as semi-structured interviews, observation, and field notes. Over thirty-five local and non-local ESL teachers from western, Arab, African, and Asian contexts took part in this study. Furthermore, I kept a research diary to record my own experiences and decisions about my research. In addition, I analysed official documents from macro, meso, and micro levels. Both content analysis and thematic analysis were conducted to trace the tensions which were observed during my ethnography of teacher identity construction at Public High College in part produced by the emergence of new assessment procedures, and quality assurance agendas, and the Global North's influence on the Omani HE system. In the analysis chapters (Chapters Five to Seven), I problematise how educational practices were implicated in the production of hierarchical, spatial, and at times, male-female positioning of teachers. In the first analysis chapter, I conduct a documentary analysis of the national standards for the General Foundation Programmes to trace back potential tensions that were embedded in the new assessment processes and teacher appraisal procedures and the potential importance of these for teacher identity production. In Chapter Six, I examine the significance of space in producing hierarchical relations between local and non-local teachers and other hierarchies that cut across these groupings. My analysis shows that research respondents gained social capital from networking and highlights the complexity of this networking. In my final analysis chapter, I examine both assessment and teacher evaluation as the key processes through which teacher hierarchies at Public High College were produced. My analysis shows that assessment was one of the fields where struggle for positioning and legitimacy took place so that teacher identity production was bound up with assessment practices at Public High College. In addition, my analysis focuses on teacher evaluation processes in this chapter as another field where struggles for teacher positioning and legitimacy took place. My analysis interrogates both implicit and explicit teacher evaluation processes and the implications of such processes for the production of teacher identities. Through its ethnographic approach, the thesis shows the tensions, nuances, and power relations that pervade this HE institution, and examines how these were central in the production of teacher identities. It also shows the importance of taking teacher identity construction into account in the expansion and reform of Omani HE.