Faculties' Perceptions of Using the English Language in an EFL Context for Medical Education Internationalization

Research on the pros and cons of using English as the lingua franca of internationalization and medium of instruction abounds. However, there is a paucity of research on faculty members' beliefs about the role of English in the internationalization of medical education in non-English speaking countries. As metaphor provides a fundamental scheme by which people conceptualize the world and their activities (Gibbs, 2008) and displays individuals' mental structures, images, beliefs, feelings, and thoughts (Eren and Tekinarslan, 2013), this study used metaphor analysis to discover Iranian faculty members' mental images of the role of English in the internationalization of medical sciences education. To collect data, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the faculty members on their metaphors of the role of English in the internationalization of the university. The content analysis of the metaphors showed that, on the one hand, they viewed English as a necessity for the establishment and development of an international entity by comparing the language for internationalization to the blood, kidney, and hand for the body, the fertilizer and water for plants, a pen for a writer, and a foundation for a building. They also likened English to a ladder, an element of reform, a bridge, and a railway. On the other hand, they took a dim view of the role of English in the internationalization of the education, describing it as systematically and linguistically the Achilles heel of internationalization. The study concludes that the faculty members had a fear and hope stance on the role of English in the internationalization of the education in a nonEnglish speaking country, conceiving of having a good command of the language, to a large extent, as a pathway and the lack of knowledge of the language, to a lesser extent, as an obstacle.