Fostering Academic Writers’ Plurilingual Voices

Abstract

In today's global society, a majority of academic writers come from diverse linguistic backgrounds, where English is an additional language. Publishing in most academic journals, however, is governed by native-English norms. As instructors and tutors guiding novice plurilingual writers through these conventions so that their papers meet publishing standards, we feel that their voices and styles get lost in the process, and fear that the academic and scientific community may be losing out when these writers' work is not accepted. To understand how plurilingual novice writers experience writing for publication, we conducted in-depth interviews, followed by a content analysis of the interviews, which revealed recurring themes relating to barriers and gains from writing in English. We present these along with exemplary quotes from the respondents. Additionally, we examine the ways in which the publication world is changing and how these changes can aid novice writers, as well as consider ways in which academic writing boundaries can become more elastic and inclusive.

Translation of Scientific Texts into English as Intercultural Mediation

“…Manuscripts displaying deviations from the expected standard may be perceived as a sign of the authors' incompetence and may therefore not be accepted for Półrocznik Językoznawczy Tertium. Tertium Linguistic Journal 8 (2) (2023) 120 www.journal.tertium.edu.pl publication in international journals (Belcher 2007;Broido & Rubin 2020;Canagarajah 2002;Englander 2014: 63, 77-81;Flowerdew 2001;Golebiowski 1998: 69;Kijak 2014;Lillis & Curry 2015;Mur-Dueñas 2013;Tardy & Matsuda 2009;Uzuner 2008: 255-256).…”

Review of What is Good Academic Writing eds. Whong & Godfrey

“…Literacy brokering has the goal of making the student's writing more "native-speaker-like" and, as Turner (2018) would argue, more transparent or invisible. However, some scholars now question the need for this conformity, and advocate greater acceptance of academic writing that reflects the linguistic and cultural background of the writer (see, for example, Broido & Rubin, 2020).…”