The internationalisation of higher education: a comparative study of English language use and multimodality on Italian and UK university websites

A critical examination of university websites is essential to comprehending the communication tactics used by academic institutions to draw in international students in the present climate of globalisation and the internationalisation of higher education. The examination of the websites of four Coimbra Group universities, two in Italy and two in the UK—the University of Padua, the University of Bologna, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Durham—is the main emphasis of this study. This thesis investigates the linguistic, visual, and semiotic aspects utilised in these university websites to promote the institutions and their educational offers through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA). With an emphasis on the use of rankings, figures, and personal pronouns, this study aims to evaluate how these institutions portray themselves and their academic offers to international students. To comprehend how student life, academic activities, and campus amenities are portrayed, presentation films and photos used on pages for international students will also be analysed. Furthermore, a particular focus will be on the significance of the English language used on the websites of Italian universities in comparison to that used on the websites of the UK institutions, with an eye towards examining the influence of language on the internationalisation of higher education.