This study critically examines the intersection of English language teaching (ELT) and global citizenship education (GCE) in higher education (HE) through data from state-funded universities in the Global South (Colombia, Iraq, Thailand, and Vietnam). It examines how students, educators, and administrators perceive and engage with global and intercultural citizenship through the medium of English. Data were collected through 126 semi-structured interviews and analysed using thematic and content analysis to identify cross-contextual patterns and context-specific interpretations. Participants described a two-fold experience in which English facilitated global academic, professional, and personal access and mobility, while generating concerns about the erasure of local identities and knowledge systems, framed by enduring forms of epistemic inequality, cultural hierarchy, and instrumental pressures reinforced by neoliberal frameworks. In response, many educators and learners challenged dominant Anglophone models by adopting decolonial pedagogies that emphasise ethical engagement, foster critical reflexivity, and reflect locally rooted practices. The study calls for reconfiguring GCE and ELT as interconnected domains of transformation that support inclusive, context-responsive, and socially engaged models of global citizenship within Southern HE settings.

Abstract Global Englishes, and within that the field of English as a lingua franca, is a huge and expanding area of research and pedagogy. This paper provides a sample of our beliefs about productive areas of research. The nine tasks presented suggest the importance of research in the areas of intercultural and digital communication, especially through the adoption of trans theories such as translanguaging, transmodality, and transcultural communication. Furthermore, concepts such as communicative competence will need rethinking to match the multilingual, multimodal, and multicultural resources that appear in such communication. The implications for pedagogy are extensive, including a re-evaluation of models and aims such as the (ir)relevance of the native speaker, global citizenship education, translanguaging, and decolonial perspectives, and approaches to both oral and written communication. Accompanying any changes in pedagogic practices must be changes in how we think about teacher education as well as assessment. Pedagogic research is crucial as there is a need to address the persistent gap between “real-world” translingual, transmodal, and transcultural uses of English and monolingual, Anglophone-orientated English language teaching models and approaches.

English language teaching (ELT) has traditionally been influenced by hegemonic worldviews and standardized practices stemming from the Global North that perpetuate the subaltern position of local actors, their knowledges, languages, and practices. In response to this, teachers find a way to resist and subvert colonial discourses to reconfigure English language policies and the classroom space. This study focused on the role of participants' actions and views in decolonizing ELT. It addresses the research question: What pedagogical orientations, policies, and practices are found to be successful in decolonizing English in ELT within and across the contexts of Colombia and Mexico? Part of a broader multisite international case-study, the report focuses on Southwestern University (Colombia) and the Intercultural University (Mexico). Data were collected through classroom observations and interviews with teachers, administrators, and students. Findings reveal similar decolonial pedagogical practices, including translanguaging and the design and adaptation of teaching materials to facilitate understanding, establish rapport, and strengthen students’ identities. Regarding language policies, both universities seek for the recognition of some local languages and the promotion of other additional languages from a decolonial perspective. Overall, teachers engage with contextual factors and transform the classroom into an inclusive space.

The deep connections between English, globalization and intercultural communication are now well established. Research in English as a lingua franca (ELF) has made clear that this is a multilingual use of English in which other linguistic and communicative resources are present and frequently a core part of the interaction. Furthermore, ELF studies have highlighted that pragmatic strategies are a central part of those communicative resources. Yet how to approach pragmatics within an ELF framework has not been straightforward. Cross-cultural perspectives comparing the norms of first language communication in relatively static communicative contexts have little relevance to the dynamic and fluid communicative practices of ELF. This has led scholars to adopt intercultural frameworks to conceptualizing and documenting pragmatics in ELF interactions in which cultures and languages, and the accompanying pragmatic strategies, are viewed as adaptable and hybridized. Nonetheless, there are limitations to such intercultural perspectives due to the range and complexity of communicative resources we see documented in the superdiverse settings of much ELF communication. It is not always possible to delineate which languages or cultures are being hybridized and adapted and the 'inter' of intercultural communication becomes problematic. Transcultural communication perspectives are a recent extension of intercultural communication research in which interactants are seen to move through and across (rather than in-between) cultural and linguistic borders. Transcultural perspectives align with translanguaging and transmodal theories with participants making use of their full range of communicative resources in a manner which transcends national borders. Communicative resources and references may simultaneously index multiple levels or scales from the local, to the global, without being fixed to any single scale and often involve the use of emergent resources and practices. In this brief position piece, I will discuss a transcultural communication approach and consider its relevance for understanding, researching and teaching pragmatics in ELF.

Key claimed benefits of internationalizing higher education (HE) are increased intercultural interaction and awareness with internationally oriented universities aiming to produce graduates who are intercultural or global citizens. Yet, there have been few core strategies presented on how international HE programmes might realize such aims, and more research is needed. Furthermore, English language teaching (ELT) plays a central role in preparation and support for study abroad (SA) and internationalization in English medium education (EME), but has also been slow to incorporate intercultural education and intercultural citizenship. Hence, this study aimed to describe how Thai SA students developed a sense of intercultural citizenship during SA experiences with international HE programmes in Anglophone countries and identify roles ELT in facilitating the preparation for their subsequent SA programmes. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews (n = 14) conducted with students from three Thai universities who had experienced EME overseas education. From qualitative content analysis, findings revealed a range of understandings and responses to intercultural citizenship, English learning, language utilization, and the SA experiences. In addition, a mismatch was identified between ELT preparation and support efforts compared to the multilingual and multicultural reality of international HE.

Abstract This chapter focuses on English language policy and education in Thailand. We begin with a description of the linguistic profile of Thailand and the status of English as part of presumed monolingual and monocultural ideologies. We then discuss the current prominent role of English in Thailand and ASEAN, which has resulted in greater emphasis on English language education. The chapter then turns to a detailed investigation of current policy and its adoption of the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) at basic and higher education levels, and reveals the tensions between the multilingual uses of English as a lingua franca across ASEAN and the monolingual Anglophone orientations of current language policy. We highlight the detrimental effects of these Anglophone ideologies on ELT and assessment. The chapter ends with a call for multilingual-oriented policy and practices which reflect the changing roles of English in global contexts, especially in the ASEAN community.

This chapter presents transcultural communication as an approach to understanding the complexity and fluidity of communication in contemporary social spaces where the borders between cultures and languages are transcended and transgressed. Transcultural communication is introduced as a next step in critical intercultural communication research drawing on earlier discourse approaches to culture and transculturality. Specifically, transcultural communication is focused on interactions in which participants make use of multiple cultural scales simultaneously and where it may not be possible or appropriate to attribute communicative practices to a single 'named' culture. Transcultural communicative practices are also characterised by a fluid and complex use of language and modality. Thus, the parallel trans theories of translanguaging and transmodality are used to inform transcultural communication theory. As such this perspective is distinguished from earlier transculturality approaches that focused on hybridising identifiable cultures and third spaces between those cultures. However, like transculturality, transcultural communication shares an interest in power relations and how different cultural references, discourses, practices and identities may be foregrounded, negotiated and given or denied legitimacy and space. The extent to which transcultural communication is commensurable with cultural discourse studies will also be discussed, particularly in relation to perspectives on cultural discourse that resists essentialism, view culture as interactive and fluid, emphasise the importance of uncovering power structures in cultural discourses and challenge hegemonic characterisations. It is hoped that transcultural communication will provide an alternative to the methodological nationalism and colonialism that remains deeply embedded in much of our thinking about language, discourse, culture and communication and open up new directions in how we research and teach these subjects.