“It’s Not the Way We Use English”—Can We Resist the Native Speaker Stranglehold on Academic Publications?

Abstract

English dominates the academic publishing world, and this dominance can, and often does, lead to the marginalisation of researchers who are not first-language speakers of English. There are different schools of thought regarding this linguistic domination; one approach is pragmatic. Proponents believe that the best way to empower these researchers in their bid to publish is to assist them to gain mastery of the variety of English most acceptable to prestigious journals. Another perspective, however, is that traditional academic English is not necessarily the best medium for the dissemination of research, and that linguistic compromises need to be made. They contend that the stranglehold that English holds in the publishing world should be resisted. This article explores these different perspectives, and suggests ways in which those of us who do not wield a great deal of influence may yet make a small contribution to the levelling of the linguistic playing field, and pave the way for an English lingua franca that better serves the needs of twenty-first century academics.

Brazilian researchers’ activity in international publication: a comparative view between Applied Social Sciences and Engineering

“…Having been created and developed by English speakers, today's research article, in its most prestigious form, is a genre whose conventions were shaped by an English-speaking research community within their culture (Strauss, 2017). In addition, as researchers are highly educated -having studied for more than 20 years -their command of English may be expected to be excellent.…”

Multilingualism in academic writing for publication: Putting English in its place

“…By ‘multilingual realities’, we mean both practices that involve the use of languages as relatively discrete semiotic resources (e.g., talking and/or writing ‘in Spanish’ as compared with talking and/or writing ‘in German’) as well as translingual practices (after García, 2009; Williams, 1994) involving the mixing of linguistic/semiotic elements in acts of spoken or written communication (see Lillis & Curry, in press). We view multilingualism in academic contexts as encompassing not only the use of ‘standard’ varieties of named languages (e.g., English, Spanish, Russian) but also ‘non-standard’ or vernacular varieties (Strauss, 2017). This point surfaces the problematics of labelling and categorizing language(s) as descriptors of the semiotic resources being used across contexts, recognizing that labels are as much artifacts of historical and political forces as descriptors of linguistic variation.…”

Fostering Academic Writers’ Plurilingual Voices

“…There is always room to negotiate, modify, and reconfigure. (Canagarajah, 2004. p. 266) Academic writing has been guided by conventions established by native English writer norms (Strauss, 2017;Lillis & Curry, 2015;Turner, 2018), when today's many, if not most, academic writers and their readers originate from non-English-speaking countries (Akst, 2020;Hanauer & Englander, 2011). This situation leaves these non-first-English-language writers at a disadvantage, since these scholars face the double challenge of both producing rigorous academic research and writing papers that meet the English-language expectations of journal editors and reviewers (Corcoran & Englander, 2016).…”