Academic writing centres in multilingual settings : Intermediary agents of higher education language policy?

Academic writing centres in non-Anglophone countries navigate language policies that encourage the development of local languages and English within multilingual university settings. These policies entail diverging language ideologies that connect language use to diversification and standardisation aims. Although writing centres are stakeholders in academic language development and therefore participants in the policy process, their role and agency in this process has been neglected. The study explores how writing centre staff perceive their work in relation to university language policies and aims. Data were collected via a nation-wide survey of centres in Sweden and seven focus groups. The results demonstrate that the staff claim agency as language brokers. Institutional ideologies of monolingualism and assessment regimes that value the text product over the learning process provide limitations. The reported practices illuminate the special status of Swedish for English text production, and opportunities for grassroots agency as intermediaries between students, lecturers and policies