Deborah Meunier’s research focused essentially on Erasmus students who came to Liège to learn French. She believes that their perception of the French language was an obstacle to the relativist position. “French has a very high linguistic standard. Students saw it as a language that could not be spoken imperfectly, that to speak French badly was to ruin it.” The researcher noticed that students with only partial French proficiency were stigmatised. “Students completed rejected French speakers with foreign accents. This was sometimes because of comprehension problems, but also for purely ideological reasons related to the weight of French linguistic standards”. Deborah Meunier used the term "façade plurilingualism" to describe her sample: even as students claimed that the Erasmus experience promoted tolerance of imperfection, they themselves strongly stigmatised such imperfections.

This façade of plurality also applied to non-linguistic cultural elements. Though the Erasmus generation was supposed to be more tolerant of diversity, Deborah Meunier wasn’t so convinced. "The student’s tolerance of diversity was merely a façade. They would say, 'the Erasmus experience allows me to discover the other's culture', and see this as a validation of interculturality. But just using the term 'the other’s' culture is already a categorisation. That's not interculturality", she explains. During their immersion programme, the students' perceptions of people they met were framed by their search for prototypical traits in each culture. They would say things like "people from Liège are typically like this"; "the Spanish are all like that".

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In general, few students appear to have acquired a form of plurilingualism based on increased tolerance towards languages and speakers. Deborah Meunier summarises the situation as such: "the pluralism students talk about is often just for show".

Since the humanist posture is just a façade for instrumentalist motives even within certain Eurodiscourses, it's worth asking whether that has a direct influence on the student's experience. However, Deborah Meunier warns, "if there is such an influence, it would be hard to identify with any certainty." However, the connection remains troubling.  

Deborah Meunier's research raises another question: why don't immersion programmes bring about the expected plurilingual competences? In other words, why don't Erasmus students develop the linguistic and cultural tolerance that Europe expects? "The transition from a plurilingual practice to a plurilingual competence is not a given. It requires tools that don't currently exist within the Erasmus programme," says Deborah Meunier. These tools might include special instructional modules for Erasmus students, for example. "Of course, some professors understand that they can't expect the same things from Erasmus students as other students, but that's the end of it. For example, few of them wonder whether Erasmus students might need to develop specific skills. And even fewer think about how to do that."

As to the development of a relativist, flexible relationship to linguistic standards, Deborah Meunier’s research shows that this can only occur within an educational framework that takes into account students’ social perceptions of the language they are studying. The example of the French language is telling. Interviews with Erasmus students in Liège showed that the study of French goes almost hand-in-hand with a purist attitude. In this context, it's therefore counter-productive to recommend that students adopt a relativist attitude, unless something is also done to change their social perceptions. And that's precisely one of Deborah Meunier’s recommendations for improving European educational policies: "In my conclusions, I suggest that if we want realistic educational policies, we have to take into account how students perceive the target language".

Deborah Meunier’s goal is not to completely overturn European educational policies, but she does point out weaknesses in the of Europe's experts, whose objectives were likely both scientific and political. In response, she presents a detailed study of non-francophone Erasmus students at the University of Liège that offers new ideas for improving European instructional programmes. -