The ‘language preference’ in sociology: Measures of ‘language self-citation’, ‘relative own-language preference indicator’, and ‘mutual use of languages’

Abstract

The aim of this article was to examine the relations of physical and human geography with selected disciplines of natural and exact sciences as well as social sciences. The results shows that: (1) the position of geography among other disciplines is relatively high, however the relative position of human geography in social sciences is higher than that of physical geography in natural and exact sciences, (2) both geographical disciplines show an adverse 'trade balance' in scientific exchange, (3) human geography is more 'introverted', (4) relations between human geography and other disciplines are stronger than in the case of physical geography.

A citation analysis of the quantitative/qualitative methods debate's reflection in sociology research: Implications for library collection development

“…Likewise, research demonstrates that English-language publications dominate the citations in the sociological literature [19,20,22,28], and that authors are more likely to cite materials written in their own language [29,29]. Moreover, Broadus [19] and Baughman [22] found the majority of cited materials in the sociological literature are less than ten years old.…”

Significance: U.S. Blind Spots in Judging Research

“…Scholars in many countries are multilingual, and within their local disciplinary discourse/speech community it may be the norm to communicate in two, three or more languages. In contrast, the social science disciplines in the United States operate as virtually monolingual, as can be demonstrated by our citation patterns (Gingras & Mosbah-Natanson, 2010;Hewings et al, 2012;Yitzhaki, 1998). This monolingualism, compounded by the low rate of book translation noted above, isolates U.S. readers from the conversations going on in other languages.…”

Significance: recognizing the value of research across national and linguistic boundaries

“…Scholars in many countries are multilingual, and within their local disciplinary discourse community or speech community, it may be the norm to communicate in two, three, or more languages. In contrast, the social science disciplines in the USA operate as virtually monolingual, as can be demonstrated by our citation patterns (Gingras and Mosbah-Natanson 2010;Hewings et al 2012;Yitzhaki 1998). This monolingualism, compounded by a low rate of book translation into English, isolates US readers from the conversations going on in other languages.…”

“…Citation patterns also reveal national and regional boundaries independent of linguistic borders (Yitzhaki 1998). For example, US ethnographers of education cite relatively little British ethnography of education (Delamont and Atkinson 1995), while neither British nor US scholars cite much from the large body of Scandinavian work published in English (Larsson 2006) or the large body of English-language educational research from India.…”