ABSTRACT
The university workplace contains numerous stakeholders who do not necessarily share the same discourse communities or apply the same discursive strategies. The first division is between external and internal stakeholders, i.e., government policy-makers and civil servants on the ‘outside’ and university administrators, lecturers/researchers and support staff on the ‘inside’. In its own category are the students who benefit from these stakeholders’ efforts, but who often have little involvement and say in the decision processes. As illustrated in this study, the work environment of the lecturers and support staff who serve international students is highly complex and requires communication across various discourse groups even while being impacted by globalization, the development of the mass-university and the administrative decisions of policy-makers. Based on questionnaires administered to faculty and staff at a Danish and a Canadian university, this paper analyzes the ways in which frontline faculty and staff within the university perceive the impact of internationalization and how they are trying to remain faithful to ideals of quality while managing the challenges of everyday multilingual and intercultural interactions.
