Reviewer feedback on multilingual scholars' writing for English Publication: Perspectives from the 'Periphery' Reflections on Practice (original) (raw)
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English Language Teaching
This critical exploratory study aims to examine the role academic brokers play in opening (or not) the gates to non-first-language-English (NFLE) scholars to contribute to the global research conversation. For the study, a qualitative research approach was used to collect data; ten emergent and established researchers were interviewed, all of whom originated from non-Anglophone countries. Four academic brokers were also interviewed to further examine the topic from their viewpoints. The findings revealed that revisions recommended by journal editors and reviewers could perhaps diminish the richness of texts and ultimately affect the voices NFLE authors try to project in their papers. Findings also showed that academic brokers are cognizant of the problems NFLE authors face when writing for publication, especially those pertaining to the quality of their writing and to the ways they respond to reviewers’ suggestions and handle the review process.
Multilingualism in academic writing for publication: Putting English in its place
Language Teaching
We are living in an era characterized by multilingualism, global mobility, superdiversity (Blommaert, 2010), and digital communications. Mobility and multilingualism, however, have long characterized most geolinguistic contexts, including those where monolingual ideologies have influenced the formation of contemporary nation states (Cenoz, 2013). As language is a pillar of both curriculum and instruction, in many academic spaces around the world efforts are on the rise to acknowledge the colonial origins of English, decenter the dominance of Standard English(es), and decolonize knowledge production (e.g., Bhambra et al., 2018; de Sousa Santos, 2017). Additionally, many ‘inner circle’ (Kachru, 2001) Anglophone contexts have long witnessed the centrifugal forces of multilingualism. Yet what prevails in institutional academic contexts is a centripetal pull toward what has been captured in phrases such as ‘linguistic mononormativity’ (Blommaert & Horner, 2017) or ‘Anglonormativity’ (McK...
This paper draws on data from a larger project investigating the experiences of language teachers based in Japan, both Japanese and non-Japanese, who are relatively new to writing for academic publication as they seek to publish their work. The principle focus of this paper is on the email interaction between authors and “literacy brokers” (Lillis & Curry, 2006, p. 3) during the process of negotiating changes to manuscripts after they have been submitted to publications for review. The genre of the submission letter to the editor was first examined by Swales (1996) from a discourse analysis perspective, focusing on defining and describing genre norms. While such genre analysis investigations have led to a number of insights regarding the structure and organization of academic texts, how interaction between editor and author is locally constructed between particular interlocutors has not been investigated in detail to date. Research into how manuscripts have been altered post submission has shown the significant impact review and editing have on published manuscripts (see, for example, Lillis & Curry, 2010), but how authors and editors negotiate and mediate these changes remains largely “occluded” (Swales, 1996, p. 46). In examining the co-construction of the editor-author relationship, interactions between two authors, a Japan-based Anglophone author and a non-Anglophone author and their editors surrounding submission of their manuscripts for publication are analyzed and discussed. The emphasis is on how relationships are constructed and negotiated, how roles and responsibilities are assigned, and how Habermas’ (1984) system versus lifeworld dichotomy may assist in understanding interactions, with rhetorical movement between formation of social relationships and addressing the technical process of revision and editor-author expectations regarding the progression of manuscripts from submission to publication or rejection.
Unpacking the Lore on Multilingual Scholars Publishing in English: A Discussion Paper
Publications
In the past three decades, a body of research on issues related to multilingual scholars writing for publication has emerged, paralleling the rise of pressures on scholars around the world to publish their work in high-status journals, especially those included in particular journal citation indexes; these indexes typically privilege the use of English. Researchers have investigated multilingual scholars’ experiences and perspectives, the social contexts of their work, policies on research publishing, aspects of the texts produced by multilingual scholars, the kinds of people scholars interact with while working to publish their research, their collaborations and networks, and pedagogical initiatives to support their publishing efforts. Nevertheless, as ongoing research is conducted, the existing research base has not always been consulted in meaningful ways. In this paper, we draw on the notion of ‘lore’ to identify some of the preconceptions or received wisdom about multilingual s...
Writing for scholarly publication in English: The case of Hong Kong
Journal of Second Language Writing, 1999
People's Republic qf Chincr With English becoming increasingly dominant as the international language of research and publication, there is a need to empirically investigate the question of international scholarly publication in English on the part of nonnative speakers of English. This paper presents the results of a large-scale survey concerning publication in international refereed journals in English by Hong Kong Chinese academics who have Cantonese as their first language. The survey seeks answers to the following questions: What exposure to English have these Hong Kong scholars had? What are their attitudes towards publishing in English? What are their problems? What are their strategies for successful publishing? And what change to the language of publication, if any, do they see accompanying the reversion of sovereignty over Hong Kong from Britain to China?
The non-Anglophone scholar on the periphery of scholarly publication
2006
As a symptom of globalization and the marketization of the universities, more and more scholars, many or most, of whom use English as an additional language (EAL), are being required to published in English. This article presents some qualitative data which highlights some of the difficulties encountered by such writers. It first discusses a previously published case study of an EAL writer writing for publication, highlighting some of the difficulties encountered by this young scholar. It then goes on to consider a particular writing strategy adopted by some EAL writers which might be considered to be controversial, the copying of fragments of text from previously published work, and referred to here as language reuse. The final part of the paper discusses various approaches directed towards alleviating problems encountered by EAL writers such as those exemplified in the main body of the paper.
The Extent of Korean Authors' Use of English in Journal Publications
PROCEEDINGS OF THE 6th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ASIA - PACIFIC LIBRARY AND INFORMATION EDUCATION AND PRACTICE (A-LIEP 2015), 2015
In academia, the English language is the most widely used language for scholarly communication. Korean authors who write journal articles in English have published in Korean domestic journals and in international journals. The objective of this study is to investigate the extent of Korean author's use of English in journal publications. In order to conduct this study, using Scopus and RISS databases, a large number of journal articles from the year 2000 to 2013 were selected and examined. The results of this study indicated that Korean author's use of English in journal articles has been growing much more rapidly in the international journals than in the domestic journals. In contrast, within Korean domestic journals, the number of Korean based journal articles have grown more than journal articles written in English; thus journal articles written in English are unlikely to be widespread in Korean journals in the years to come. The possible explanation for this phenomenon is that Korean authors tend to publish in English-based international journals for articles written in English, and in domestic Korean journals for articles written in Korean. This paper suggests that to understand language uses in the academic field, both the domestic and international journal databases should be considered for data analysis. In a large sense, the trend of English language appears to be useful in monitoring the globalization effects in academic writing.
Language Policy, 2013
The rise of English as the presumed global medium of scholarly publishing has resulted in both obvious and less obvious consequences for individual scholars, journals, institutions of higher education and knowledge production more broadly (Lillis and Curry 2010). A body of research emerging in the past 10 to 15 years has explored these consequences mainly in terms of how individual multilingual scholars working outside of Anglophone contexts respond to the growing pressure to publish in high-status, English-medium journals. Researchers have used qualitative/ethnographic methodologies (e.g.
Language Teaching, 2019
Academics are coming under increasing pressure to publish internationally. Given the global dominance of English, this very likely means publishing in English-medium journals and with publishers which publish in English. This raises the important question of the possible disadvantage of those scholars whose first language is not English and who therefore have the additional burden of having to develop adequate proficiency in an additional language, English. As a student of modern languages to university level and of other languages to rather lower levels of proficiency and as a teacher of English for academic purposes (EAP) and of English for research and publication purposes (ERPP), since I became aware of this issue, I have always believed this extra burden on the English as an additional language (EAL) academic writer to be a self-evident truth. Ken Hyland, however, in a recent book (Hyland, 2015) and an article titled ‘Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice’ (H...