Linguistic ideologies in a Mexican research center

This paper is a critical case study which analyzes the linguistic ideologies, from an ecological perspective, of teachers and researchers working at a research center in social sciences and humanities in Mexico. Our objective is to identify whether their linguistic ideologies affect their academic work. Findings show that, in terms of academic production, English monolingualism has been established at a global level and Spanish monolingualism at a local level, which clearly impacts on the beliefs and attitudes of the participants in this study. Participants perceive English as a bridge, a lingua franca, an international language and as the only language which would allow their research to achieve global impact. However, participants are also highly aware of the hegemony of English, and some of them use Spanish as a form of resistance, (re)asserting the power of Spanish over the 68 Mexican Indigenous languages which are also recognized as national languages. We therefore make a call to adopt a more multilingual approach in the field of academic production in higher education to help to maintain linguistic diversity in Mexico.