ABSTRACT
Multilingualism in South African universities is a highly contested practice and process that is receiving increasing attention from a wide range of philosophical orientations. In this chapter, I reflect critically on this complex phenomenon from an integrationist perspective. I start by offering a historical and political context of multilingualism in the South African situation in general. I then briefly discuss an historical and political context of the university language policies during colonial, apartheid and democratic South Africa, highlighting the contribution of the policies to the mythical view of languages as fixed codes, which is the view that is at the centre of the language debate from an integrationist perspective. Drawing on this approach, I critically analyse the multilingual language policies of two selected universities as well as the linguistic discursive practices in two selected classrooms of these universities. I conclude by looking at the implications of integrationism for the language policies and linguistic discursive practices in multilingual South African universities in general.
