The discourse of Romanian universities

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address the discourse of Romanian universities as a mirror of the reformation process in the national higher educational system. Design/methodology/approach – The focus of this paper is on external and internal communication, on institutional identity and the symbiosis of orders of discourse. The paper highlights the prospective EU integration as a major trigger of change in the Romanian educational system. It then draws upon critical discourse analysis (CDA) as a relevant research approach and presents the results of conducting critical discourse analysis on a corpus consisting of the web site presentation of ten public and private universities, on three faculty and university prospectuses, and one promotional CD. Finally, the paper briefly compares the discourse of Romanian universities with the discourse of universities from the UK, France, Italy and Germany, and suggest lines for improvement. Findings – Romanian society is currently the site of ample reformation and one of the factors that trigger change is the prospective integration in the European Union. In higher education, change is enacted discursively though the emergence of new genres as the generalization of promotion as a discursive practice. The discourse of Romanian universities is heavily colonized by the EU discourse, but factors pertaining to local culture also resurface openly. Discourse is, indeed, a factor of change, but not the only one affecting it. The westernizing of Romanian university discourse needs to be backed up by a westernizing of patterns of thinking and behaving. Originality/value – The paper presents insights into the discourse of Romanian universities.