Academia.edu uses cookies to personalize content, tailor ads and improve the user experience. By using our site, you agree to our collection of information through the use of cookies. To learn more, view our Privacy Policy.
Current Approaches to the Description of Scientific English
Tofan Hardjanto2013, Humaniora
https://doi.org/10.22146/JH.V0I3.2087…
20 pages
Sign up for access to the world's latest research
Abstract
In recent years scientific English has received a good deal of attention from researchers working in such diverse fields as Linguistics, ie (Applied) Discourse Analysis and the Sociology of Science. This growing interest in research into scientific English is primarily due to the importance that modern scientific communities have assigned to it. Indeed, over these years English seems to have enjoyed dominance over other languages as the language of international publication and it is now becoming more and more prominent in the pu blication of scientific research articles an d papers. Mounting evidence for this English domination has been offered by researchers such as Baldauf & Jernudd (l983a ; 1983b), Swales (1985), and Maher (1986). In 1983, fo r example, Baldauf & Jernudd (l 983a) conducted a study of the language use patterns in the Fisheries literature for 1978. Their analysis of 884 articles indicated that English is the dominant language (amounting to 75%) in the literature t...
Related papers
AILA Review, 2008
Throughout the 20th century, international communication has shifted from a plural use of several languages to a clear pre-eminence of English, especially in the field of science. This paper focuses on international periodical publications where more than 75 percent of the articles in the social sciences and humanities and well over 90 percent in the natural sciences are written in English. The shift towards English implies that an increasing number of scientists whose mother tongue is not English have already moved to English for publication. Consequently, other international languages, namely French, German, Russian, Spanish and Japanese lose their attraction as languages of science. Many observers conclude that it has become inevitable to publish in English, even in English only. The central question is whether the actual hegemony of English will create a total monopoly, at least at an international level, or if changing global conditions and language policies may allow alternative solutions. The paper analyses how the conclusions of an inevitable monopoly of English are constructed, and what possible disadvantages such a process might entail. Finally, some perspectives of a new plurilingual approach in scientific production and communication are sketched.
English has now clearly established itself as the main language of international scientific community pushing its political Euro-Asian rival candidates like German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, or Chinese to the margin. Certain historical, political, and economic factors have favoured English for this role. 80% of journals that are indexed in the Scopus (the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature) are published in English. It is presumed that there is no cause for concern when science adopts one language for publication so that English can make findings available to developing countries and it can also bring the contributions from these countries to the global attention. In this context, writing (presenting the research findings to the international community) assumes importance over the other skills though reading is also indispensable. This paper analyzes the importance of written English for science research and the difficulties faced by researchers.
Linguistica Pragensia, 2020
This study considers the behaviour of one specific stance adverb, indeed. In a previous analysis of scientific texts, indeed was found to be one of the most frequently used adverbs in the expression of emphatic standpoint evincing authorial presence (Moskowich and Crespo 2014). Also noted was its differing use by male and female writers, as well as differences according to genre and the geographical provenance of authors. My aim in the present study is to see whether such behaviour of indeed is also found in non-scientific texts, and if so to what extent. The analysis will include both scientific and non-scientific texts from the nineteenth century, a period in which the general fixation of English in its contemporary form had already taken place. The initial hypothesis is that authors of scientific texts tended to express themselves with more caution, even tentativeness, in comparison to authors writing less "impersonal" texts. External factors might also lead to identifiable variations in use in scientific writing, these including the sex of the speaker, plus his or her self-confidence as a writer. Such factors will be used as variables in the analysis. Data for scientific writing will be drawn from the Corpus of English Texts on Astronomy (CETA) and the Corpus of History English Texts (CHET); the Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English (PPCMBE) will be used for non-scientific texts.
Recently, philosophers of science have argued that the epistemological requirements of different scientific fields lead necessarily to differences in scientific method. In this paper, we examine possible variation in how language is used in peer-reviewed journal articles from various fields to see if features of such variation may help to elucidate and support claims of methodological variation among the sciences. We hypothesize that significant methodological differences will be reflected in related differences in scientists' language style. This paper reports a corpus-based study of peer-reviewed articles from twelve separate journals in six fields of experimental and historical sciences. Machine learning methods were applied to compare the discourse styles of articles in different fields, based on easily-extracted linguistic features of the text. Features included function word frequencies, as used often in computational stylistics, as well as lexical features based on systemic functional linguistics, which affords rich resources for comparative textual analysis. We found that indeed the style of writing in the historical sciences is readily distinguishable from that of the experimental sciences. Furthermore, the most significant linguistic features of these distinctive styles are directly related to the methodological differences posited by philosophers of science between historical and experimental sciences, lending empirical weight to their contentions.
International Higher Education, 2015
The increasing dominance of English in higher education and research over the last few decades is often assumed to be a linear, unavoidable, and cumulative process resulting in improved, perhaps more egalitarian, international academic communication worldwide. This article will offer some challenges regarding this view of a global trend in the adoption of English and discuss some dilemmas confronted by academics in developing countries where English is not the national lingua franca (i.e., outside the British Commonwealth countries).
Ibérica, 2006
Almost ten years ago we wrote that academicians had been debating about the exact place of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP)-and similarly, Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) and Languages for Academic Purposes (LAP)-, and whether or not ESP was valued on a par in higher education vis-à-vis EAP and vice versa. Some linguists tended to reject this parity on the grounds that one devalues the other. Our proposal, at that time, was that we "concentrate on what can be developed in common to contribute positively to the debate" (Piqué et al., 1996: 6). LSP is sufficiently diversified, as Kachru (1988: 9) wrote, to cover three basic assumptions: […] appropriateness of language corpus; format organization of the corpus at various linguistic levels; phonetic, phonological, lexical, syntactic, and discoursal; and the relationship between the formal features and the functions of the texts in terms of the profession, participants, and so on. And Alcaraz (2003: 5), in his prologue to Rosario Bueno's bibliographical study, wrote: En lo que a las lenguas modernas se refiere, la interdisciplinariedad ha significado su fecunda unión con otras ramas del saber, como el derecho, la medicina, los negocios, la ciencia y la tecnología, la industria, etc., y el resultado de esta fructífera alianza son las lenguas de especialidad, también llamadas lenguajes profesionales y académicos.
Historical Pragmatics (Handbook), 2010
hops_018.pod 548 08-03-09 12:45:28 -fk-fk hops_018.pod 549 08-03-09 12:45:28 -fk-fk
Akademik Hassasiyetler, 2021
English has been used as the primary language of academic publications and international research. Many academic institutions worldwide have founded their hiring, promotion, reward and graduation systems on publishing in international indexed journals. In this sense, academic members and graduate students have no choice but to publish in international arena which is tremendously dominated by English. The aim of this paper is to investigate the role English played in the academic world. As a part of this paper, first the position of English will be examined from a historical perspective and then the current position of English in the academic world will be described. Further, a brief literature analysis with regard to the international scholars' problems in writing for academic publication process and the strategies they use to deal with these problems will be provided. Finally, the role English play in Turkish academia will be discussed. It is concluded in this paper that although international scholars have a number of difficulties, they also have a number of strategies to overcome the problems in writing for scholarly publication.
Related papers
Scientometrics, 1983
A cross-sectional examination of the fisheries literature for 1978 was made to see how language use patterns were related to communicating research information. An analysis of 884 articles indicated that despite the dominance of English as an international communicative medium, there was a strong national language usage pattern. National language usage was not confined to local fisheries problems, but cut across issues of international importance. For most of the articles the language of publication was directly predictable from the first author's country of residence. However the mismatch between these variables for about six percent of the sample suggested the need for a detailed study of individual cases.
Depuis sa premiere edition en 1991, Minimum Competence in Scientific English a joue un role important dans I'enseignement de I'anglais scientifique en France. Plus de 50 000 scientifiques I'ont utilise et il a semble opportun de I'ameliorer pour mieux repondre a I'attente des nouvelles generations d'etudiants. La structure de base ayant fait ses preuves, nous I'avons gardee comme telle. En revanche, les textes ont ete renouveles et furent affines les key points et le lexis, elargie la gamme des activites linguistiques et communicatives et integree I'utilisation du web. Public vise -MCSE a ete congu d'abord pour les etudiants des universites scientifiques et technologiques, des IUT et des ecoles d'ingenieurs ayant une base d'au moins trois annees d'anglais, mais il est egalement adapte a tous les scientifiques francophones. Contenu linguistique -L'ouvrage est fonde sur une analyse du discours scientifique, notamment sur un recensement de la frequence du lexique scientifique, et des fonctions qui sous-tendent le discours scientifique. C'est cette analyse prealable qui a permis d'etablir un contenu particulierement pertinent. Contenu pedagogique-Pedagogiquement, I'utilisateur se voit dote des armes necessaires a un apprentissage efficace. D'abord il dispose d'un systeme d'auto-evaluation combine avec une check list et peut etablir avec clarte ce qu'il doit apprendre. Ensuite I'utilisation repetee des elements permet d'optimiser I'apprentissage. MCSE regroupe done pour I'etudiant un inventaire de ce qu'il doit savoir, avec les outils pour I'apprendre. II permet un parcours d'apprentissage rapide, efficace et, par consequent, un parcours qui apporte beaucoup de satisfaction. MODE D'EMPLOI -MCSE peut etre utilise de plusieurs fagons : dans le cadre d'un cours traditionnel, en semi-autonomie ou en autonomie. Les quelques suggestions qui suivent sont loin d'etre exhaustives. L'ouvrage est divise essentiellement en 2 sections : les 12 units, suivies d 1 annexes et d'un lexis. Chaque unit correspond a une fonction de base de I'anglais scientifique, measurement, frequency, hypothesis, etc. et comprend : Entry test -Ce test permet de faire d'emblee une evaluation realiste de son niveau ; trop frequemment, I'apprentissage est entrave par I'ignorance de I'etudiant quant a ses propres lacunes. Key points-Les key points doivent etre consideres comme une check list, indiquant tous les elements qui doivent etre sus. Ainsi, et apres avoir fait l' entry test, I'etudiant est en situation, des le depart de \'unit, de determiner avec precision ce qu'il doit faire, c'est-a-dire son "contrat d'apprentissage".
Throughout the 20th century, international communication has shifted from a plural use of several languages to a clear pre-eminence of English, especially in the field of science. This paper focuses on international periodical publications where more than 75 percent of the articles in the social sciences and humanities and well over 90 percent in the natural sciences are written in English. The shift towards English implies that an increasing number of scientists whose mother tongue is not English have already moved to English for publication. Consequently, other international languages, namely French, German, Russian, Spanish and Japanese lose their attraction as languages of science. Many observers conclude that it has become inevitable to publish in English, even in English only. The central question is whether the actual hegemony of English will create a total monopoly, at least at an international level, or if changing global conditions and language policies may allow alternative solutions. The paper analyses how the conclusions of an inevitable monopoly of English are constructed, and what possible disadvantages such a process might entail. Finally, some perspectives of a new plurilingual approach in scientific production and communication are sketched.
Language Sciences (Special Issue on Ecolinguistics: the Ecology of Language and the Ecology of Science), 2013
In this conference, the idea of collaboration was suggested by Sune Steffensen, with two or three authors working together on a topic, uniting differing view-points and finding out about the reasons for differences in opinion. Following up on this, the structure of the present volume was born: two or even three authors have worked together on one topic with the intention of uniting or contrasting view-points and showing the interdisciplinarity of Ecolinguistics. It turned out to be impossible to carry out this cooperation with all topics represented, but still, of the eleven papers contained in the volume, six are the result of such a co-operation, and only five are authored by only one scholar.
This paper contributes to the didactic foundations of an epistemology of specialized English from a French perspective. Scientific English will be the content domain which will serve this purpose. While its transverse features (e.g. discourse, genre) have been widely investigated, it continues to lack a comprehensive approach to what is a multifaceted object, namely: 1) scientific content; 2) expressed in a foreign language; 3) which needs to be appropriated by student-learners. Another concept is needed. The transition from scientific English to English for science is regarded in terms of territory, domain and disciplines and from various perspectives and limits. Scientific English is envisaged as a narrow domain focused on linguistic aspects. To remain relevant, scientific English needs to be both broadened and enriched, and its scope delimited. These weaknesses lead to the design of English for science. The meta-concept of English for science has been forged to overcome these gaps, by crossing boundaries that limit an epistemological approach. It is then necessary to trace the method which consists in setting the boundaries for the new territory of language teaching and learning, which overlaps two domains – English and science – to develop a new domain – English for science –.
Journal of Science Communication, 2004
Halliday has demonstrated that changes in discourse function covary with changes in the grammatical resources a language makes available to construe discourse. Specifically, he outlined the ways in which nominalisation evolved as a resource for construing scientific reality as a world of logical relations among abstract entities. In the present article,
LSP and professional communication (2001-2008), 2008
Ibérica, 2016
2010
Language plays a central role in a researcher's dialogue with colleagues and with the public. This paper deals with the situation for researchers whose mother tongue is an indigenous or minority language, who do their research in areas or countries where the majority language isn't one of the world's larger languages. Even in countries where English is not the native language, there seems to be an increasing opinion that English is the most suitable and acceptable language for academic purposes. In addition, it is often argued that it is not acceptable to write in a lesser used language, e.g., in the Sámi language, if you want to make an academic career. Politically, it is decided at a high level that the use of lesser used languages, such as Sámi, should be strengthened. In practice, though, it is a challenge to achieve the goal of using Sámi e.g. academically as long as higher education and research evaluation systems emphasize publishing in English through internation...
Journal for Research Scholars and Professionals of English Language Teaching, 2018
English as the global academic language facilitates the international mobility of young researchers (Graddol, D. ,2006). English has been the language of choice for many international scholarly journals. Academic writing is complex, formal, objective, explicit, hedged, and responsible. It is organized and planned precisely and accurately. Glatthorn, A. (1998) says about the academic writing style that the academic writing should strive for clarity, maturity, and formality and should strike a balance between confidence and tentativeness.
Related topics
