Beyond inter- and transdisciplinarity

Abstract

While English-medium instruction (EMI) is growing rapidly as a field of practice, there is a lack of agreement around its conceptual and terminological boundaries, and its purposes are often ill defined. To deal with the complexity of the phenomena it addresses, it has been argued that EMI should adopt an interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary perspective. This conceptual article adopts a different position, arguing that EMI is best seen as an example of a “practical assemblage” (

), which draws on different epistemic resources to engage with its own set of problems, rather than vying to become a discipline in itself. Using the sociological lens of Legitimation Code Theory (), the article proposes a framework for positioning EMI as an autonomous field of inquiry, addressing its own problem-situations and research questions. The analysis finds that, rather than building boundaries around itself, EMI as a practical assemblage would be better placed to open itself to ideas from other domains of enquiry while maintaining its autonomy in working on its own problems for its own purposes.