Towards a new model of communicative competence in multilingual higher education

Current research suggests that the existing models of communicative copetence (CC) fail to reflect the communicative practices in multilingual contexts (Baker & Hope, 2019; Shohamy, 2011). A multilingual understanding of CC is especially needed for applied linguistic research and professional work in the linguistically diverse higher educational settings such as the English medium instruction (EMI) programs in geographical regions where English is not a dominant language (Dimova, 2020). The question arises: How to expand or refine the current communicative competence models in order to account for multilingual mediation in communication?

Based on a cross-contextual comparative ethnography that includes three EMI contexts in Denmark, Austria, and Sweden, the project seeks to expand the current conceptualizations of the communicative competence construct and theorize the extension, enrichment, and refinement of
the current theoretical frameworks.

In applied linguistic research, the concept of communicative competence is central space and has been the subject of continuous development. However, researchers point out that existing models of communicative competence only poorly reflect communicative practices in multilingual contexts. This poses a problem in the application of the term in many educational contexts, not least with regard to the support of English speakers university courses in regions where English is not the most widely spoken language. Here is characterized
the communicative practices increasingly of linguistic diversity.

The question that is the focal point of this project is therefore how the latest models of communicative competence can be further developed so that they take multilingualism into account in university education. This is investigated through a comparative ethnography, through which the project seeks to expand the communicative competence concept towards a multilingual model.