English in Italian universities: the language policy of PoliMi from theory to practice

In Italy the decision of the Politecnico di Milano concerning the exclusive adoption of English in all MA and PhD courses starting from 2014 gave rise to a heated debate and triggered a lawsuit. The paper examines the arguments put forth by the advocates of the decision as well as the claims of the opponents, and analyzes the conclusions of the Court which judged the case, ruling against PoliMi. It then focuses on PoliMi's website, with a view to verifying how the policy of the institution is practically implemented. The overall structure of the site is described, with special attention for the different language versions, and then a small sample of texts concerning the presentation of courses is analyzed. The comparison between the Italian and the English versions of the texts aims to investigate the relationship between them, highlighting differences that reveal how language choices discursively reflect and construct different ideological attitudes.