English as the Language for Academic Publication: on Equity, Disadvantage and ‘Non-Nativeness’ as a Red Herring
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Verbal Hygiene
In any given time and place, the most salient forms of verbal hygiene will tend to be linked to other preoccupations which are not primarily linguistic, but are rather social, political and moral. The logic behind verbal hygiene depends on a common-sense analogy between the order of language and the larger social order, or the order of the world. The rules of language stand in for the rules that govern social or moral conduct and putting language to right becomes a sort of symbolic surrogate for putting the world to right.[30] (transcribed from an oral presentation)
3. Discourses of EAL Disadvantage
The author is clearly well-versed in this area, but the manuscript needs quite a bit of work on its English grammar and spelling.
The English language should be improved.
The author(s) of the paper are clearly struggling with English as a second language, which is an issue in itself.
The English has to be revised and worded in a more idiomatic and simple way.
It is crucially important that the whole manuscript is proofread and edited by a native English speaker to make sure that all paragraphs convey the authors’ intended meaning accurately.
you become unsatisfied because you don’t write as easily as you would do it in Spanish. In Spanish, when you write you can express something in a way that you like, that looks nice, not a literary piece of art, but something that does not sound poor and this is what happens when using English, you don’t say what you know, only what you can.(Scholar interviewed in [42])
The abiding impression left by the interview data, then, is that interviewees certainly did feel linguistically constrained in writing their papers in English, and this was felt to be burdensome. Clearly, writing in Spanish would have been easier, quicker and allowed more nuanced expression, particularly in the introduction sections, and in this sense interviewees were at some linguistic disadvantage relative to English native-speaker academics. That said, there is little evidence that the interviewees considered language constraints a barrier to publication, or even a major cause of the rejection of submissions. The latter depended more on the quality of the research than on the quality of the language.[43]
3.1. Epistemic Reflexivity
sociolinguistic research seems to end up showing and saying exactly what one would have expected it to show and say, based on the position—social, academic or otherwise—from which the research was produced. Often, this is because scholars embody the values of the group they investigate and, all too often, fail to create a rupture with their inherited view of the problem they investigate.[47] (p. 2)
It is possible that the frequency of these comments, and occasionally their bluntness, may lead EAL writers to believe that language has played a decisive role in the rejection of their contributions.[2] (p. 65)
3.2. Inequities in Global Academic Publishing
Academics operate in an industrial model of production, in which their output […] is increasingly, and continuously more extremely, commodified. [A]cademic publishers (some of which are among the world’s most lucrative businesses) appropriate academic writings and put them behind paywalls. Such factors simply, and predictably, exclude the overwhelming majority of the world’s scholars, especially those who do not belong to the privileged elites studying and working in generously funded institutions. These elites, I should add, can be found in Harvard, Cambridge, Berlin and Bologna, to be sure. But also in Delhi, Shanghai, Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, Singapore, Cairo, Istanbul and Qatar.[48] (np)
4. Conclusions
- (1)
- Systems in addition to individualsThe critical scholarship that underpins the paradigm should be welcomed and continued; however, we need to widen the scope to better understand the neoliberal systems and processes that undergird the current system of global knowledge production. Systems must be explored alongside individuals; material conditions need to be considered alongside linguistic ones. Bibliometric performance systems, research funding structures and evaluation regimes need to be scrutinized along with their role in producing and reinforcing global inequalities. This applies not only to researchers but also to practitioners, whose important work in providing support for scholars in the periphery could usefully encompass, to the extent that it does not already, broader career guidance on how to navigate, or subvert, the performance-based systems that are increasingly in place in universities worldwide.
- (2)
- Widening of methodsCommonly used interview and questionnaire studies are useful in helping us understand the woes and worries of international scholars; however, they could usefully be supplemented by a wider range of methodologies, including macro-level and ethnographic studies [2,19,23]. All methodologies have strengths and drawbacks, with the result that some things are obscured, and other things foregrounded. This means that the greater the range of methodologies employed to study a particular problem, the better an understanding we are likely to get.
- (3)
- Comparative studiesWhere the focus remains on language, it would be useful to conduct comparative research. Comparing the views and practices of non-Anglophone scholars with Anglophone ones could reveal potentially useful findings about whether the frustrations so extensively documented among non-Anglophone scholars are shared by Anglophone scholars. There is evidence to suggest that they are, particularly among novice scholars [36,50,51,52,53,54]. For practitioners, this would mean attending, not only to EAL scholars, but all scholars who are in need and want of additional support.
Funding
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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1 | I am grateful to Maria Kuteeva for this point. |
2000 | 2011 | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
NES | EAL | NES | EAL | |
Biology | 424 (61.4%) | 267 (38.6%) | 740 (58.7%) | 521 (41.3%) |
Elec Engineering | 214 (46.0%) | 251 (54.0%) | 256 (24.7%) | 780 (75.3%) |
Physics | 109 (27.8%) | 283 (72.2%) | 714 (31.1%) | 1583 (68.9%) |
Economics | 340 (79.4%) | 88 (20.6%) | 270 (68/5%) | 124 (31.5%) |
Linguistics | 288 (74.8%) | 97 (25.2%) | 242 (61.2%) | 153 (38.8%) |
Sociology | 312 (79.0%) | 83 (21.0%) | 284 (69.8%) | 123 (30.2%) |
Overall | 1687 (61.2%) | 1069 (38.8%) | 2506 (43.3%) | 3284 (56.7%) |
Countries | Documents | GDP |
---|---|---|
1–10 | 63.3% | 66.0% |
11–20 | 17.1% | 12.4% |
21–30 | 7.6% | 5.6% |
31–40 | 5.1% | 4.4% |
41–50 | 3.0% | 3.6% |
51–60 | 1.5% | 2.3% |
61–70 | 0.8% | 1.6% |
71–80 | 0.5% | 1.1% |
81–90 | 0.4% | 0.6% |
91–100 | 0.2% | 0.6% |
101–231 | 0.5% | 21.6% |
Rank | Country | Docs/Population |
---|---|---|
1 | Switzerland | 11.68 |
2 | Australia | 8.72 |
3 | Sweden | 8.61 |
4 | Netherlands | 7.34 |
5 | United Kingdom | 6.39 |
6 | Canada | 6.13 |
7 | Germany | 4.51 |
8 | United States | 4.25 |
9 | Spain | 3.96 |
10 | France | 3.77 |
11 | Italy | 3.75 |
12 | South Korea | 3.5 |
13 | Poland | 2.35 |
14 | Japan | 2.09 |
15 | Turkey | 1.19 |
16 | Iran | 1.16 |
17 | Russian Federation | 0.99 |
18 | China | 0.74 |
19 | Brazil | 0.72 |
20 | India | 0.24 |
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Hultgren, A.K. English as the Language for Academic Publication: on Equity, Disadvantage and ‘Non-Nativeness’ as a Red Herring. Publications 2019, 7, 31. https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7020031
Hultgren AK. English as the Language for Academic Publication: on Equity, Disadvantage and ‘Non-Nativeness’ as a Red Herring. Publications. 2019; 7(2):31. https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7020031
Chicago/Turabian StyleHultgren, Anna Kristina. 2019. "English as the Language for Academic Publication: on Equity, Disadvantage and ‘Non-Nativeness’ as a Red Herring" Publications 7, no. 2: 31. https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7020031