On the dialectics of policy and practice: Multilingualism and the virtual linguistic landscape of a South African university

Abstract Previous studies on linguistic landscapes have focused on language representation in public signs within fixed physical places. Recent developments on the global stage have brought dynamics of language contestations in virtual spaces to prominence. This study deploys the notion of Virtual Linguistic Landscape (VLL) to explore the nature of language visibility in cyberspace as a virtual linguistic landscape construction. By conceptualising websites as virtual public spaces, the paper analyses language practices on a South African university’s website to understand how they align with the institution’s multilingual language policy, in a context where websites have become indispensable avenues for communication. As a monologic web 1.0 arena, the university’s website is framed as an important space to scrutinise the dynamics of top-down language policy implementation. The study reveals that language use on the university’s website does not auger with the language policy’s commitment to equitably use, promotion and development of the university’s four languages. The VLL of the university is dominated by English and Afrikaans in varying extents while Setswana remains in a subordinate position. Sesotho is completely invisibilised on the website. The paper argues that these language practices validate pervasive language ideologies that valorise English and devalue indigenous African languages in cyberspace.


ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Busani Maseko is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the School of Languages at North-West University in South Africa.He holds a PhD in Languages, Linguistics and Literature from the University of South Africa.His research interests lie in the areas of language planning and policy, language and social justice, multilingualism and sociolinguistics broadly.Liqhwa Siziba is an Associate Professor and Director of the School of Languages at North-West University in South Africa.She holds a PhD in Languages from the University of Fort Hare.She has a keen interest in supervising and mentoring young academics and post graduate students in her area of expertise.Her research interests are in multilingual pedagogies, translanguaging, academic literacies and language planning and policy.

Introduction
Studies on the Linguistic Landscape (LL) have tended to centre on language representation in public signs within fixed physical places (Gorter, 2013).However, recent developments on the global context have amplified the need for research that spotlights the construction of the linguistic landscape in virtual spaces (Jiang et al., 2022).Accordingly, the term Virtual Linguistic Landscape (VLL) (Ivkovic & Lotherington, 2009) was proffered to describe how linguistic diversity and multilingualism are experienced in "cyberspace-as-a-landscape" (Gomaa, 2020, p. 21).The global spread of COVID-19 pandemic from the year 2019 exposed public and private institutions to unprecedented demand for virtual and online presence to conform to social and physical distancing protocols prescribed by the World Health Organisation (WHO).Education institutions all over the world swiftly adopted online classes as an emergency measure to ensure continuity in teaching and learning.Restricted access to the physical university space by staff, students, prospective students and stakeholders (Im, 2023) meant that university websites became important sources of information.Interestingly, even as the pandemic has begun to relent, as confirmed by the lifting of COVID-19 associated restrictions and protocols worldwide, some institutions continue to encourage virtual meetings and online access to resources to facilitate students' registration, updates of students' and staff records and the marketing of programmes and activities.Consequently, university websites are now, more than ever, indispensable aspects of universities (Manzoor et al., 2012;Rezaeean et al., 2012).
One of the key enablers of information dissemination on websites is the choice of language(s) used to present content.While the majority of websites present their content in English, which has aptly been described as the lingua franca of the electronic universe, other languages are becoming visible (Abdurahman et al., 2018;Ivkovic & Lotherington, 2009;Keles et al., 2020).The choice of language(s) used on websites does not only determine the extent of accessibility of its content but also has implications for the visibility of languages in the virtual sphere and by extension, identities and cultures marked by those languages (Abdurahman et al., 2018;Im, 2023).Interest on university linguistic landscapes has so far been limited to studying physical signs, yet there is an increasing virtual institutional presence as universities leverage on the affordances of the internet especially made salient by the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing drive towards internationalisation (Keles et al., 2020).The term virtual linguistic landscape is thus used to describe "language presence and linguistic diversity in cyberspace-as-the-public-sphere.That is, the saliency and conspicuousness of different linguistic elements representing ethnolinguistic and power relations in cyberspace" (Gomaa, 2020, p. 22).
University websites are public spaces through which universities reach out to the outside world.They are mirrors and windows into what goes on in universities (Rezaeean et al., 2012).Because they reflect the university, they tend to be bound by the different policies that apply to the physical space.They are expected to be a site of policy practice as they reveal the values of the university.Language planning and policy is a central component of the LL (Hult, 2018).By exploring language use on university websites, it is possible to discern the levels of language policy implementation, conformity, and the dialectics of language policy and practice.
The present study examines the VLL construction of a university in South Africa (hereafter, The university) as exemplified in its official website.The website is accessible via www.nwu.ac.za.By framing the university's website as an important space to scrutinise the dynamics of top-down language policy implementation, the study expands the understanding of the dialectics of language policy and practice in the virtual sphere.To this end, it examines the nature of language visibility in cyberspace and how the university's VLL construction aligns with its multilingual language policy imperatives.The university's website exhibits features of a top-down monologic web 1.0 (Keles et al., 2020) because content is uploaded and managed by authorised university personnel in a unidirectional manner.Unlike on dialogic and interactive web 2.0 platforms such as social media (Abdurahman et al., 2018), language choice in top-down items such as websites (Shohamy, 2006) can therefore be used to discern university authorities' implicit dispositions towards multilingualism, to confirm the linguistic ecology or expose attempts to manipulate language use or the discursive reconstruction of multilingualism.Accordingly, this study seeks to answer the following questions: (1) How is multilingualism presented on the university's website as a VLL construction?
(2) To what extent does the VLL construction align with, or contradict the university's documented language policy?
(3) How do language practices on the VLL reproduce the ideological climate of language use in South Africa?
Including this introduction, this paper consists of eight main sections.In the section that follows, we discuss the context of the study.This contextual discussion is followed by an engagement with the conceptual lens that undergirds the research.Thereafter, a discussion of literature on the nexus of language policy and VLL ensues.The paper then proceeds with an overview of the methodological approach deployed in data collection and analysis.We then move on to present the main findings of the study.The penultimate section is the discussion of findings, followed lastly, by the conclusion.

Study context
In 2002, the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) issued a directive to all public universities obligating them to individually enact and implement institutional language policies that would contribute to the transformation of higher education and foster access to the university spaces by historically underprivileged groups in South Africa.To that end, universities were mandated to promote multilingualism and foreground indigenous African languages in teaching and learning and in conducting university business in general.This was meant to redress the skewed language policies and practices entrenched by the legacies and ideologies of colonialism and apartheid which legitimate English and Afrikaans as the languages of teaching and learning ahead of indigenous African languages.Since the end of apartheid in 1994, there has been increasing enrolment of African language speaking students in South African universities.However, language policies have continued to be exclusive.It is not surprising that two decades after this 2002 language policy directive, universities in South Africa are still seized with mainstreaming African indigenous languages into teaching and learning.Although all public universities have some form of language policy in place, some of them have been criticised for their lack of policy implementation (Antia & van der Merwe, 2019;Drummond, 2016;Dyers & Abongdia, 2015).Pertinent among these criticisms is that some provisions are vaguely worded, while others contain caveats and conditions that make full implementation of multilingualism difficult or impossible (Docrat & Kaschula, 2015;Maseko & Siziba, 2023).Accordingly, South African universities have been revising their language policies to address these concerns.
The present study is conducted at a time when "language policy" and "multilingualism" have become buzz words in South African university spaces as institutions strive to outshine each other and be considered torchbearers in the transformation drive.The burden to show evidence of progress towards transformation has been more pronounced for the Historically White Universities (HWUs)-a designation for universities that previously pursued Afrikaans monolingualism (Antia & van der Merwe, 2019;Makalela & McCabe, 2013).
The university of focus in this study is a multi-campus HWU with three campuses: one located in Potchefstroom, the other in Vanderbijlpark (formerly Vaal Triangle campus) and another in Mahikeng (formerly Mafikeng campus).As an HWU, the DHET language policy directive provided the university with an opportunity to dismantle perceptions about its Afrikaans centred-ness and whiteness through the inclusion of indigenous African languages in its linguistic architecture.Accordingly, the university responded by including Sesotho and Setswana in its multilingual language policy.The revised language policy of the university therefore identifies English, Afrikaans, Sesotho and Setswana as the university's "languages of choice . . .that have to be acquired, learned and developed" (The university, 2022, p. 1).In addition, the language policy commits to further promote these four languages in teaching, learning and in conducting university business across its three campuses informed by the principle of "functional multilingualism."In the policy, "functional multilingualism means that the choice of a particular language in a particular situation is determined by the situation or context in which it is used" (The university, 2022, p. 1).
The parameters and principles of functional multilingualism pervade many policy provisions.They provide a guide towards managing language use in various contexts.To this end, and for the purposes of this study, section 10 of the language policy is pertinent.The section outlines "language policy principles for administration, work and the linguistic landscape."In this section, the principles of functional multilingualism are provisioned to apply as follows: 10.1.2The diverse linguistic realities at the different operational levels of the university, as well as due sensitivity towards the language preferences of internal and external stakeholders, are directional for the way in which the University's languages of choice are employed as working languages, languages of administration, internal and external communication, and the linguistic landscape.10.1.4The implementation of functional multilingualism for working, administrative and linguistic landscape purposes takes place in a systematic and purposeful manner.10.1.5By means of a consultative process and taking due account of the language realities of the NWU, strategies are continually developed, and structures are put in place to implement functional multilingualism as optimally as possible within the workplace.10.1.6External and corporate communication takes place in the NWU's languages of choice, determined by the purpose of the communicative event, language needs and language competencies of the audience.
Barring the conditional and discretionary implementation of multilingualism as provisioned in the above quoted section of the language policy, it is important to note that the use of the university's languages of choice (English, Afrikaans, Sesotho and Setswana) within the LL of the university is explicitly provided for in the policy.Although the wording of the policy suggests that such use should be done within the parameters of "functional multilingualism", a condition which can be used to justify the exclusion of Sesotho and Setswana in the VLL, the "language realities" of the university begs for their visibility and use, especially considering that two of its three campuses are located in the predominantly Sesotho-and Setswana-speaking communities.These explicit proclamations on language use can thus be used to discern the ideological climate that shapes the university's VLL.

Conceptualising linguistic landscapes: Transcending physical places to virtual spaces
The Linguistic Landscape (LL) is a recent conceptualisation of language visibility in public places.It is a metaphor for language around us (Gorter, 2013;Gorter et al., 2021;Ivkovic & Lotherington, 2009).Accordingly, the term LL has often been associated with the projection of multilingualism in physical public signs such as billboard advertisements, entertainment posters, street names, public building names, parking options, and other forms of public notices (Hong, 2020;Hult, 2018;Ivkovic & Lotherington, 2009;Moustaoui, 2019).Although the study of language in public signage predates the term linguistic landscape (Huebner, 2016), the introduction of LL in the study of public signage is attributed to the seminal work of Landry and Bourhis (1997) whose definition is also widely used.Gorter (2018) suggests that while their definition is useful in guiding LL studies, it has been overused.He thus suggests a "more current" definition to include an understanding of "the motives, uses, ideologies, language varieties and contestations of multiple forms of 'languages' as they are displayed in public spaces" (Gorter, 2018, p. 4).In this light, LL cannot be treated as a concept that is self-contained, analogous and abstracted from the physical entity to which it relates.It is never decontextualised from the ideological climate that influences specific regimes of language use in named geographical spaces (Hult, 2018;Moustaoui, 2019).
Top-down-derived LLs often reflect dominant language ideologies and the geolinguistic architecture of a polity.They also function as symbolic reproductions of language hierarchisation and the language politics (Jane- Francis & Foncha, 2014;Moustaoui, 2019).Along the metaphor of "languages as doors that open other doors" (Adekunle, 2019), the concept of LL allows us to view languages as systems which interact with extra linguistic systems such as politics, culture and the environment (Adekunle, 2019).A basic understanding of the LL is that it is never isolated from the socio-political milieu.It results from intersecting factors that influence language choices (Hult, 2018).These factors include language ideologies, language policies, and general communicative needs of a community (Akindele, 2011;Albury, 2021;Gorter, 2013;Hult, 2018;Moustaoui, 2019).In this thinking therefore, the concept of LL facilitates an understanding of language use in public spaces as a product of the enduring contextual influences on texts.For instance, the dominance of particular language(s) in the LL of a named polity cannot be decontextualised from the status of those languages.The visibility of languages in the LLs is also important in creating a lasting impression of the geolinguistic and geodemographic order as it supplies important clues about the existence and acknowledgement of monolingualism, bilingualism or multilingualism (Adekunle, 2019;Hong, 2020).Above that, LLs influence society's perceptions regarding the nature of attendant power relations as embedded in linguistic representations (Akindele, 2011;Gorter, 2013;Ivkovic & Lotherington, 2009).
Recent theorisations of the LL have begun to extend beyond the linguistic configuration of physical places to the virtual, given the salience of the virtual space in an increasingly digital age.Virtual Linguistic Landscape (VLL) is a concept coined by Ivkovic and Lotherington (2009) to facilitate discussions about multilingualism on the web (Hiippala et al., 2019).According to Ivkovic and Lotherington (2009, p. 19), analogous to the physical LL, the virtual LL serves to delineate the linguistic community and to mark language status in expressed power relations among the coexisting linguistic choices in the cyberspace community.The VLL describes the linguistic cyberscape just as the LL describes the linguistic cityscape.
In this study, we focus on the website of the university as a "virtual public space" to examine the extent to which its VLL aligns with or contradicts the university's documented language policy.Taking a cue from Gomaa (2020) we deploy the term "virtual" to denote "the non-physical linguistic representation in the public sphere of electronic communication and digital technologies" (Gomaa, 2020, p. 22).Given the explicit reference to language representation in the LL by the policy, and the centrality of the university's website as a window into the university's daily language practices, we submit to the view that how languages are used in the university's website reflects the extent to which it lives up to the promise and commitment to uphold and promote multilingualism in all its business.Using the LL concept to analyse how languages are represented in public places enables an understanding into how ideological and language policy factors act on language representation (Gorter, 2023;Hult, 2018;Jane-Francis & Foncha, 2014).It also helps to expose the socio-political tensions underlying publicly visible language practices and choices (Gorter, 2013;Hult, 2018).
Although the physical and VLL share common characteristics, the VLL, by virtue of being online, creates its own dynamics through the affordances of the internet.Their differences lie in issues relating to accessibility rather than what they reveal about the ideological and power relations within institutions they represent (Ivkovic & Lotherington, 2009).Both the physical and the VLL are capable of exposing how language use relates to extra linguistic systems.In both the physical and the virtual, language choice indexes an acknowledgement that particular languages exist and/or are used in the community (Adekunle, 2019).Conversely, the invisibility of some languages in the LL would speak to their subordinate and non-dominant position in that space (Moustaoui, 2019).
As a multilingual institution that is bound by its language policy in line with the national constitution, the national language policy and the DHET directive on language policy, the expectation is to see the language policy coming to life in the virtual spaces.While we admit that the university website is meant to serve virtual community who are by nature not limited by space (Ivkovic & Lotherington, 2009), we also argue that the language representations in the university's website should align with the language policy and give space especially to indigenous African languages to fulfil its transformation imperatives.It is axiomatic that languages which are not present in cyberspace face a real threat of extinction in this digital epoch.The affordances of digitalisation in the re-intellectualisation of indigenous African languages cannot be overemphasised.We argue that the use of indigenous African languages in the university's website creates opportunities for them and their speakers in the global arena of online communication (Ivkovic & Lotherington, 2009).As noted by (Shohamy, 2006), the visibility of specific languages or language items in public spaces sends direct and indirect messages about their centrality or marginality in society.It also symbolises society's disposition towards legitimating or delegitimising represented and underrepresented languages, respectively.Accordingly, Landry and Bourhis (1997) note that having one's own language represented in public signs cultivates a sense of belonging and adds to the valorisation of the included language(s) while the opposite is true for underrepresented language(s).On both the physical and virtual spaces of the university, the LL can be interpreted as an ideological act of validating or invalidating a de jure language policy or establishing a defacto policy through practice (Hult, 2018;Shohamy, 2006).An analysis of language policy proclamations vis-a-vis language practices on the university website therefore enables us to make connections and conclusions on these dialectics.

The nexus of language policy and VLL
Although there has been an increase in studies of linguistic landscapes, a vast majority of these have tended to limit their analysis to the physical milieu.This includes the examination of language representations in public and street signage (Akindele, 2011;Burwell & Lenters, 2015;Hong, 2020;Moustaoui, 2019), shop signs (Mubarak & Abdul Muthalib, 2021) and in educational institutions (Adekunle, 2019;Gorter et al., 2021;Jane-Francis & Foncha, 2014).While such analysis has been couched on understanding the physical space, studies examining multilingualism in virtual spaces are beginning to emerge.These studies also focus on a variety of contexts, including the urban "cityscape", social media and education spaces (Jane-Francis & Foncha, 2014; Keles et al., 2020;Lyons, 2017;Paramarta et al., 2022).
There is an emerging strand of literature investigating the construction of VLL on social media.This upsurge can be explained in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic which has amplified the affordances of social networking sites and reshaped how people interact and communicate (Jiang et al., 2022).Through an analysis of geotagged posts on Instagram, Jiang et al. (2022) suggest that interaction between major and minor languages has increased and added to the rich diversity of the city of Dublin.They explain this increase in language interaction to be a result of decrease in Instagram activities due to restrictions in travel which meant a reduction of geotagged content (Jiang et al., 2022).Similarly, Hiippala et al. (2019) also suggest that Instagram and other social media platforms with geolocated content can be used as indicators of language diversity in the VLL.Their conclusion is informed by an analysis of geotagged Instagram posts in Helsinki, Finland.
Interest in institutional websites as VLL is gaining momentum.Government websites have been the subject of analysis to show how they are sites of language and identity contestations (Paramarta et al., 2022).By focusing on the construction of the VLL on the government of Bali website, Paramarta et al. (2022) have shown how the VLL tends to resemble the physical LL.They suggest that the dominance of English in the physical LL tends to be replicated in the VLL as a symbol of the dominance of English in the socio-political domain.The dominance of English in the VLL of the website is despite the existence of a language law which seeks to enforce the use of Indonesian in public places.Similar studies have yielded the same findings that there is always a relationship between the virtual and the physical LL (Gomaa, 2020).For example, through a study of the language policy as exemplified in the Kingdom of Bahrain E-Government portal, Gomaa (2020) has also shown how the Bahrain VLL shares common features with the physical LL.The study further suggests that the VLL of Bahrain possesses some unique features.While a common finding in some studies has been the dominance of English in the government websites (Paramarta et al., 2022), the Bahrain E-Government portal reveals a bilingual VLL, where Arabic and English are used to different ends.The use of English fosters the inclusion of non-Arabic speakers while also serving as a symbolic gesture to affirm the government's commitment to promote diversity and inclusion in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Gomaa, 2020).The VLL is therefore constructed to align with dominant government ideologies and other national imperatives.
Studies that examine the nexus of university language policies and the VLL are rare.Prominence has been given to how university language policies affect the construction of the physical LL (Jane-Francis & Foncha, 2014).This is certainly not unexpected since physical interaction has characterised the conducting of university business until recently.There is increasing interest in how de jure language policy aligns with de facto language practices in university websites.Focusing on the content of a Turkish-English bilingual website of a university in Turkey, Keles et al. (2020) have shown that official language policies are often incongruent with defacto language practices.By performing a comparative content analysis of the Turkish and English homepages as subsections of the official website of Yildiz Technical University (YTU) in Turkey, the findings reveal a dominance of Turkish on the website.This does not align with the university's policy on internationalisation and the fulfilment of its obligations to its international partners (Keles et al., 2020).In particular, inaccessible English content, broken links and the use of incomprehensible English on the English version of the website occasioned the exclusion of English-speaking website users and students and staff on international exchange programmes.In the Arabic-speaking context, studies have also found an increasing presence of Arabic even in the physical LL (Moustaoui, 2019).These findings suggest that there is hope for the use of non-globally dominant languages in VLL.In the present study, the university under focus has been trying to promote the use of indigenous African languages in all domains of the university.Therefore, important insights can be drawn from these two previous studies.
As evident in the reviewed literature, the point of convergence for these studies is that the VLL shares similar features with the physical LL.The studies also reveal ways in which the VLL construction is a function of how language choices, ideologies, and policies are negotiated and enacted in digital public spaces (Ivkovic & Lotherington, 2009).The present study adds to this growing body of literature by examining how the VLL of a selected university in South Africa as reflected on its website aligns with the multilingual language policy of the institution.

Data collection and analysis
The present study adopts a qualitative case study approach to explore the language practices on the university's website as one aspect of its VLL and how these practices align with the university's multilingual language policy.To gather data, we performed manual web crawling of the university's publicly accessible website.The website can be accessed via the following address: www.nwu.ac.za.We also analysed the revised language policy of the university adopted in 2022 which is also available online.By posting it publicly online, the university voluntarily waived its right to privacy and subjected the language policy to scrutiny as a public document.As such, our critical appraisal of both the university's website and its language policy does not constitute a breach of ethical research practices.The language policy is available through the following link: (https:// www.nwu.ac.za/sites/www.nwu.ac.za/files/files/i-governance-management/policy/2022/LanguagePolicy/2P_2.5_2022_e1.pdf).The university was purposively selected because of history.Being one of HWUs, expectations for transformation are high.Given the centrality of the language question in the transformation agenda, the university presents an interesting case that could help give a sense of how the adoption of indigenous African languages for use in the university is progressing.
Data was collected over a period of 30 days (15 th of June to the 15 th of July 2023).To do this, the first author logged onto the university twice a week to observe how multilingualism featured in the presentation of website content.The study focused on the English, Afrikaans and Setswana home pages as entry points into the university.On each visit, the researcher crawled the three language versions of the website through secondary links and tabs that provided for an in-depth exploration of the different aspects of the website.The study also took a keen interest in the home pages of the Humanities and Education faculties.These two faculties house the School of Languages and the School of Language Education, respectively, which are directly involved in language teaching, research and the promotion of multilingual pedagogies.
The researcher would then note how the language usage aligned with or contradicted the multilingual language policy of the university.To document the observed language use patterns, screenshots of interesting language practices were taken using the Windows print screen function feature on a Lenovo IdeaPad.These screenshots were lifted and pasted onto a word document using a snipping tool embedded onto the print screen function.The intention was not to delve into the discursive meaning of posted content, but to note and document overall language choices, language consistency and extent of language use across the English, Afrikaans and Setswana dedicated home pages.By the end of the research period, a total of 19 screenshots had been taken and saved.Of these, seven are used as anecdotes to illustrate the university's VLL construction as exemplified on the website.Consistent with the character of qualitative research, this sample satisfies our criteria for being information rich as opposed to the quantitative preference for generalisability.In any case, this study did not seek to affirm or dismiss any claims by previous researchers but sought to explore language representation on the university's VLL in a synchronic manner.

Findings
To understand the VLL as constructed on the university's website, we focused on the global navigational tabs on the university's home page and their sub menus to note the language(s) in which the content is packaged vis-a vis the multilingual language policy of the university.According to Keles et al. (2020) navigational tabs function as signposts that help organise information and content into thematic categories in the same manner that physical signs are used to provide direction and access in physical campus sites.Our analysis therefore sought to establish a sense of how the official language policy of the university resonated with language practices on the website.Taking a cue from Keles et al. (2020), we compared how the university's four "languages of choice" were used in their dedicated home pages.Besides noting the inconsistencies in how the university's languages are used, we sought to relate these observations to the language ideologies that circulate within the university and the South African society in general and how the VLL reproduced these ideologies.The main finding of this study is that there is unequal representation of the university's four languages that are identified for use, development and promotion by the language policy.This inequality is punctuated by the dominance of English and Afrikaans in different extents, the inconsistent use and underrepresentation of Setswana, even on the dedicated Setswana home page, and the complete invisibilisation of Sesotho on the website during the research period.Sesotho's invisibility is to the disregard that it is one of the four languages explicitly identified for use by the policy.English use tends to overlap and encroach into the domains of Setswana and Afrikaans in varying extents.Variable contents such as announcements and transient news were consistently presented in English even when embedded onto the Afrikaans and the Setswana home pages.In the following sections, we present detailed findings relating to the construction of the VLL as observed during the research period.

Entry into the university: The legitimacy of English, the subservience of Setswana and the invisibilisation of Sesotho
Contrary to the multilingual policy proclamations, only three of the four languages of choice are visible on the university's VLL.While the default language of access to the website content is English, visitors have an option to access the website content in Afrikaans and Setswana by using available navigational tabs at the top-right corner of the main home page.Figure 1 shows the language options available to facilitate entry into the university's "virtual scape".
As Figure 1 shows, entry into the university via the website is facilitated only in three languages as encircled at the top-right corner.A notable absentee in this language mix is Sesotho, which has been identified in the de jure language policy as one of the languages to be promoted, developed and used as one of the languages of choice in the university (The university, 2022).Since the university's home page is the point of entry into the university's virtual space, visitors get an impression of these three languages as being the only "official" languages of the university.At the surface therefore, it will seem that the university promotes "trilingual" language practices while the documented language policy purports to promote multilingualism in four languages.Although the three languages are visible at the point of entry into the website, they are not equally represented throughout.The VLL is English-dominant in many ways.For example, English tends to acquire legitimacy as the default language of the university website.The default homepage, which is the "front stage" of the university's virtual existence, uses English.Afrikaans and Setswana versions are only available as alternatives through submenus.The order in which the languages appear on the submenus may also be revealing of the level of prioritisation of each language.As shown on the encircled language menu, English appears first, followed by Afrikaans and lastly, Setswana.The preference and foregrounding of English as the default language of access is barely arbitrary nor incidental.It aligns with the dominant ideology of English as the legitimate language because of its global economic capital.As such, to cater for the diversity of visitors to the site, English is the most "convenient" language, described as the official language of the electronic universe (Ivkovic & Lotherington, 2009).English is thus used consistently throughout the website from the main menu through the secondary links provided.Where English is concerned, there are no broken links or inconsistencies.
The Afrikaans version of the website also provides content in Afrikaans.However, during the study period, it was observed that while the website predominantly displayed content in Afrikaans, English tended to overlap into the Afrikaans and Setswana domains especially in the presentation of variable and temporary contents such as announcements and "news".Figures 2 and Figure 3 show the overlap of English in Afrikaans web pages: As evident in the two screenshots of the Afrikaans home page above, the encircled English titled links lead to English content and not Afrikaans.However, this English encroachment on the Afrikaans website was mainly for presenting temporary content such as news and announcements.Some of the global navigation tabs on the Setswana home page direct users to Setswana themed secondary links.For example, when one clicks on the "Ka rona" (About us) navigation tab, it opens a secondary dropdown menu which signposts specific information about university governance (Balaodi jwa NWU), management (Botsamaisi jwa NWU), statutes and guiding documents (Molao wa NWU le ditokomane tsa kaelo) as well as the university's transformation imperatives (Phetolo mo NWU) among others.Consistently, these tabs are titled in Setswana.However, clicking on the "Phetolo mo NWU" (Transformation at the University) directs the visitor to a page whose content is presented in English.Figure 4 demonstrates this language inconsistency in the Setswana home page.The practice of language switching (Keles et al., 2020) is a compensatory strategy to make up for the loss of Setswana content.
As Figure 4 shows, the university's statement on transformation is packaged in English even when accessed via the Setswana sub menu.This represents an inconsistency in language use.This anomaly is also noted when tabs that direct users to "Dipalopalo tsa bonako" (NWU way values and culture), and "Tsebe ya Dinnete tsa legoro" (Faculty fact sheets) are clicked.Other drop-down links under global navigational tabs default back to English and Afrikaans web pages.This means that content under these sub menus is only available in English and Afrikaans and not in Setswana.One therefore gets a sense that the Setswana navigational tab on the university's main home page is included as a window dressing strategy to manage perceptions about multilingualism in the institution.From the outside, it gives an impression of equitable representation of the three languages on the website yet English and Afrikaans are more dominant.
Sesotho is conspicuously absent from the language options altogether.There is no Sesotho option on the main home page.This is regardless of its identification by the language policy as one of the four official languages of the university.One can only wonder why Sesotho does not feature anywhere on the website.
To further examine the nexus of language policy and the VLL construction of the university's cyberspace, we took a keen and conscious interest in the language representation in the faculty of humanities and faculty of education web pages.In particular, we focused on the School of Languages and the School of Language Education due to their direct involvement in language teaching and research.Interestingly, the School of Languages web content is available only in English and Afrikaans.The school, however, purports to align its activities with the multilingual character of South Africa as envisioned by constitution.Despite this commitment, all global and local navigational links default to English and Afrikaans.Setswana and Sesotho are not offered any space at all.The same is evident on the faculty of education's web page in general.Content under the School of Language Education is also available in English and Afrikaans.Figure 5 and Figure 6 reflect this dynamic.
Overall, the findings of this study align with what has been observed in both the virtual and physical linguistic landscapes in other contexts.They show that there is often a mismatch between documented de jure language policies and defacto language practices (Adekunle, 2019;Jane-Francis & Foncha, 2014;Keles et al., 2020).English and Afrikaans are legitimated by the language practices that make up the VLL of the university while Setswana subordinates to the two languages in varying degrees.The VLL of the university is punctuated by a complete absence of Sesotho, despite its identification by the policy as one of the university's languages of choice.

Discussion
This study is premised on a view of the university' website as a VLL construction.It extends the concept of linguistic landscape to describe multilingualism in the virtual public sphere.The paper examines how the VLL aligns with the language policy of a South African university.The main finding of the study is that language representation on the website partly aligns with the multilingual language policy of the university.As the findings suggest, the VLL is dominated by English, followed by Afrikaans while indigenous African languages are barely visible.In particular, there is a partial representation of Setswana and a complete absence of Sesotho on the VLL.The complete absence of Sesotho does not only symbolise the exclusion of Sesotho visitors to the website but possibly reveals the underlying disposition towards indigenous African languages in general.By juxtaposing these visible language practices on the website to language policy imperatives, we argue that skewed language representation reflects language ideologies that circulate in the South African higher education sector at large.Ideologies that valorise English and Afrikaans ahead of indigenous African languages are still pervasive in the South African higher education sector.Language choice in the VLL has an ideological complexion and the decision to foreground English and Afrikaans on the website reflects an important dimension of the linguistic ecology (Gomaa, 2020).It is also a critical signpost about the university's valuation of the university's language resources.The picture painted in the university's VLL is not unusual.It is a picture which pervades the South African linguistic landscape in general.As previous studies have also shown, English has continued to dominate the South African LL, contradicting documented language policies that deliberately promote multilingualism by according parity of esteem to all official languages of South Africa (Adekunle, 2019;Jane-Francis & Foncha, 2014).The dominance of English in the VLL is not just a South African picture.It has also been observed in the linguistic landscape as exemplified by language use in public signage in Botswana (Akindele, 2011) and other contexts outside the African continent.This has to be read as a validation of the global status of English as a preferred language of public communication and the official language of the virtual world (Abdurahman et al., 2018;Ivkovic & Lotherington, 2009).Despite this global picture, some studies, particularly in the non-English first language speaking world, have begun to show English subservience in VLL constructions (Keles et al., 2020).In non-English dominant context such as Turkey, English was found to be subordinate to Turkish in the VLL of a university.Akin to the subordination of Setswana and Sesotho in the VLL of the university under investigation in this study, the use of English in the VLL of the Turkish university was characterised by unavailable and inaccessible content, inconsistent content, and incomprehensible and unclear English content on the English version of the university website (Keles et al., 2020).This VLL construction was found to be misaligned with the university's de jure policies geared towards marketing the university to a global audience as part of its internationalisation strategy.This is particularly interesting in that it demonstrates how designation of English as the "lingua franca of the electronic universe" (Ivkovic & Lotherington, 2009) is challenged in some local contexts.
The above dynamic can be used to make a case for the promotion and uninterrupted use of Setswana and Sesotho in the university's VLL.However, we note that the present picture is not divorced from the political, socio-economic and ideological influence of language planning.Accordingly, we argue that the VLL of the university represents a picture which is synonymous with tensions and contestations between English, Afrikaans and indigenous African languages in the linguistic milieu of South Africa.That English dominates the university's VLL validates the pervasive ideology of English as the lingua franca of the globe, and of therefore of the cyberspace (Ivkovic & Lotherington, 2009).These contestations have a historical dimension to them.The academy is still white dominated.As such, even the ordering of languages on the website language menu also indexes the hierarchy of importance and preference ascribed to the respective university's "languages of choice".The position of English is inherited from the colonial order which placed indigenous languages in subordinate position as a result of colonial ideologies that sought to undermine everything African.Such ideologies still circulate in South African higher education, reflecting the untransformed state of the university.
The evident mismatch between the language policy and visible language practices in the VLL of the university under focus corroborates the view that linguistic landscapes are not randomly generated but are products of intersecting factors mediating language choice.These factors include language ideologies, language policies and communicative needs (Gorter, 2013).This means that while the language policy of the university may be well intended, language practices as evident on the university's VLL reflect a defacto language policy that is shaped by historical, political and economic considerations.The preponderance of English and Afrikaans in varying extents, and the subservience of Setswana and Sesotho on the university's VLL therefore has to be read through the lenses of attendant power contestations between speakers of respective languages, which power relations are products of the historical, socio-political and economic context.These dynamics are important in shaping and reinforcing language attitudes since the cyberspace is a site where linguistic struggles play out (Shohamy, 2006).

Conclusion
This paper focused on a virtual linguistic landscape as constructed by the official website of one university in South Africa.The paper draws on a conceptualisation of the university's website as a virtual public space and a site of language policy entextualisation.Through an analysis of the documented language policy and particularly the provisions for language management in the linguistic landscape, the paper examined how the language policy aligns with the language practices visible in its VLL.Findings of the study revealed that while the language policy of the university explicitly commits to promote multilingualism and contributes to the transformation of language use in the university spaces, language practices evident on the university's website reveal underlying contestations among the university's languages of choice.In particular, the VLL of the university as exemplified on the website is dominated by English and Afrikaans in different extents while Setswana remains in a subordinate position.Sesotho is completely invisibilised on the website.Access to the website content is possible through English, Afrikaans and Setswana.However, the extent to which content is provided reveals the underlying ideologies about the three visible languages.English is the default language of the website, and English content is consistently presented in English.English tends to overlap into Afrikaans and Setswana versions of the website in various ways.We therefore argue that the construction of the VLL as evident in the university's website gives away clues on multilingualism and the valuation of these languages in the university at large.The findings of this study are consistent with previous studies that have revealed the currency of English as the dominant language in the cyberspace.In the context of the university, the dominance of English reproduces wider societal language ideologies that have continued to valorise the language as one of the enduring legacies of colonialism.In light of the findings of the study, we recommend a relook into the language representation on the university's website, and in particular, a continuous update of the website content to align with the language policy's explicit provisions for equitable use of all the university's languages of choice.The scope of this study was limited to the analysis of a language policy of one university in South Africa to understand how it aligns with language practices on its official website.We only examined the visibility of multilingualism as reflected in the language representation.Future studies could thus expand the understanding of VLL by examining how staff, students and other stakeholders experience multilingualism on the university's website and other virtual domains of this, or other universities.
10.1.3The determination of language choice for internal and external communication takes the following factors into consideration: 10.1.3.1 the situation and context of communication; 10.1.3.2 the purpose and future pathway of the communication; and 10.1.3.3 the language needs and levels of language proficiency of the audience.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Languages of access to website content.

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Figure 2. English overlap in announcements.

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Figure 4. Setswana -English language switch on the Setswana homepage.

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Figure 5. Language options on the school of languages web page.