Linguistic practice of knowledge mediation at German and Italian universities

This article reports on the design and the key findings of the euroWiss-Project Linguistic profiling of European Academic Education (Germany/Italy), a project intended to investigate comparatively the linguistic aspects of academic teaching at German and Italian universities. The data and their analyses show that – albeit being based on a unified concept of academia as a collective enterprise ensuring a ratification of new, precarious knowledge – academic teaching in both countries is characterised by very different linguistic methods and strategies of knowledge mediation. These results are crucial for an integral – and plurilingual – concept of a European academic identity beyond reforms that settle for the lowest common denominator with a putative global lingua franca as the icing.