Multilingual access: Language hegemony and the need for discoverability in multiple languages

Abstract

It is widely accepted that English is the current lingua franca, especially in the scientific community. With approximately 527 million native speakers globally, English ranks as the third most-spoken language (after Chinese and Hindu-Urdu), but there are also an estimated 1.5 billion English-language learners in the world.The preeminence of English reflects the political power of the English-speaking world, carrying privileges for those who can speak, write, and read in English, and disadvantages to those who cannot. This is also the case in scholarly communication. Linguist Nicholas Subtirelu identifies three privileges for native English speakers: 1) easier access to social, political, and educational institutions; 2) access to additional forms of capital; and 3) avoiding negative opinions of one’s speech.For example, we were both born into families that speak American English at home, we were surrounded by English books and media growing up, and our entire education was in English. Even defining who counts as a “native” speaker can be refracted through other social identities. As college-educated white Americans, our English is never questioned, but the same is not true for many equally fluent people around the world.

Scholarly publishing and peer review in the Global South: the role of the reviewer

“…Around 80% of journal indexed in Scopus are in English. The hegemony of English reinforces the dominance of an Anglo-American worldview and marginalizes the cultures of other language communities (Márquez and Porras 2020;McElroy and Bridges 2018). This has implications for researchers in the Global South, where 'non-native speakers' of English suffer disadvantages, when compared with native speakers of English.…”