Interviews with 24 discipline-specific lecturers at a regional Thai campus revealed two negotiated ideologies: high-stakes assessment, graduation and employment favored native-speaker standards, whereas multilingual professional communication prioritized mutual intelligibility.
Key findings
- Proficiency requirements, graduation benchmarks and employment demands reinforced native-speakerism and English as measurable human capital. In multilingual collegial communication, flexible lingua-franca practices prevailed, and diversity awareness arose more from lived exposure than formal training.
Why this matters globally
Universities worldwide face this tension between internationalization and native-speaker assessment. The findings support policies that distinguish task-specific accuracy from effective multilingual communication.
Thai researcher contribution
Kasetsart University authors, working with a Global Englishes scholar, center lecturers outside language departments and show how language policy operates across disciplines.
Limitations to consider
Twenty-four interviewees from one campus cannot represent all Thai lecturers. Self-report is not observed classroom practice or student outcome evidence, and qualitative patterns do not estimate prevalence; native standard may also vary by discipline.