English or Chinese? The trade-off between local and international publication among Chinese academics in the humanities and social sciences (original) (raw)
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Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2009
"It has been recognized that English as the language of international scholarship represents a more complex picture in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) than in science and engineering, with multilingual scholars in the HSS often negotiating international engagement and local commitment by publishing both in English and their first language. However, the tension in the negotiation is likely to grow with the continuous push toward the globalization of the academia which is having an enormous impact upon the academics in research universities. Following up on an earlier study with mainland Chinese HSS scholars (Flowerdew & Li, 2009), in the present interview-based study we aim to find out how their counterparts in Hong Kong perceive the implications of international publication versus local publication. The findings of the study indicate that the privilege attached to publishing in internationally indexed journals stands out as a leading factor orienting the Hong Kong scholars toward writing in English and employing various strategies to facilitate successful publication. However, there is also clear resistance toward this assessmentdriven publication regime and some participants, apart from publishing mainly in English, also publish in Chinese for the purpose of serving their target audiences at the local/regional level. We end by calling for efforts to widen the regional impact of the existing locally-published journals and to enhance collaboration in developing regional databases that are competitive at the international level."
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?
2011
Academic writing has been prevalently conceived as part of scholarly literacy substantiated via textual competency, institutional practice and socio-political implications (Flowerdew, 2008; Lillis & Curry, 2006; Swales, 2004). Given English as the lingua franca in scientific publishing (Swales, 2004; A. Wood, 2001), multilingual academics find this ―joint enterprise‖ an inevitable interplay of local and international community engagement and alignment (Canagarajah, 2002b; Casanave, 2002; Curry & Lillis, 2004). The present thesis reports on English research articles in local and international publications of vernacularly-educated materials scientist writers in Mainland China. Corpus-based and ethnographically-inspired studies of this two-part genre analysis are integrated under the umbrella of Bhatia‘s (2004) multidimensional and multi-perspective approach to written discourse. In particular, an integrative model of writer identity is developed as the analytical lens on the basis of ...
“I won’t publish in Chinese now”: Publishing, translation and the non-English speaking academic.
Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2019
While EAL (English as an additional language) scholars across the world are increasingly under pressure to publish internationally, many are confronted with serious language barriers during the process. A key solution for them is turning to text mediators, and particularly translators. However, the effectiveness of research article manuscript translation remains contested. By presenting the case of a Chinese medical doctor who can hardly write a complete sentence in English but regularly publishes in prestigious international journals, we show the impact and importance of manuscript translation in text mediation practices. We argue that despite its somewhat dubious ethicality and hit-and-miss outcomes, manuscript translation appears to be a viable service for EAL scholars given the right set of circumstances. We believe research on text mediation, including translation, can assist authors and perhaps empower ERPP (English for research and publication purposes) teachers to help students mobilize resources more effectively for English text production in addition to enhancing their individual competence.
In this paper we report a study which was aimed to find out how overseas-trained Chinese management academics (CMAs) compare with their home-trained counterparts in English-medium scholarly experience. Our data were drawn from a web-based questionnaire distributed following the conclusion of the biennial conference of the International Association for Chinese Management Research (IACMR) held in 2014, the part of the conference program which featured English sessions, e-mail interviews with some questionnaire respondents, and observation at the conference site. Our findings comparatively illustrate the English-medium scholarly experience of the two cohorts of CMAs in terms of their participation in the English presentation sessions of IACMR2014, their use of English as university academics, and the relationship between English/Chinese-medium research productivity and self-perceived English abilities. Our study highlights heterogeneity among different groups of English as an Additional Language (EAL) scholars and calls for more contextualized investigation of the diverse experiences of EAL scholars across countries and disciplines in this English-dominant academic world. Resumen El uso del inglés como leng ua académica en el ámbito de las c ienc ias em presariales en China: Una perspectiva comparativa de los profesores con f orm ac ión internacional y aquellos con formación nacional En este artículo se presenta un estudio que buscaba explorar comparativamente la experiencia académica de los profesores del ámbito de las ciencias empresariales en China con formación internacionalmente con la de aquellos con formación únicamente nacional. Nuestros datos se obtuvieron a partir de un cuestionario online distribuido después del congreso bianual de la Asociación Internacional de Investigación en Ciencias Empresariales en China (IACMR por sus siglas en inglés), celebrado en 2014, de las sesiones del congresos en las que se presentaron ponencias en inglés, de las entrevistas por e-mail a algunos de los participantes en el cuestionario y de la observaciones in situ durate el congreso. Nuestros resultados ilustran de manera comparativa la experiencia de dos grupos de profesores del ámbito de las ciencias empresariales en términos de su participación en las sesiones con presentaciones en inglés en el congreso IACMR2014, su uso del English en las actividades académicas en la universidad, y las relaciones entre la productividad investigadora en las que se emplea el inglés o el chino y la auto-percepción sobre la destreza lingüística en inglés. Nuestro estudio señala la hetereogenidad entre los diferentes grupos de académicos que usan el Inglés como Lengua Adicional (ILA) y propone la necesidad de una investigación más contextualizada de las diversas experiencias de los académicos que usan ILA en la comunicación académica en diferentes países y disciplinas en un mundo académico marcado por el uso dominante del inglés. Palabras clave: académicos chinos, académicos del ámbito de las ciencias empresariales, el inglés en conferencias internacionales, el inglés para la publicación científica.
Chinese university faculty’s motivation and language choice for scholarly publishing
2019
espanolLa investigacion sobre la publicacion academica se ha centrado principalmente en las experiencias y practicas de investigadores bilingues y multilingues al publicar en ingles. Apenas se ha prestado atencion especificamente a su motivacion y su eleccion de lengua para la publicacion bilingue o multilingue. Con base en los datos recopilados de 318 profesores de diferentes facultades chinas, en este trabajo se examina la motivacion de investigadores bilingues (valor de interes, valor de utilidad, coste, autoconcepto de capacidad) y su eleccion de lengua (solo la primera lengua, solo ingles, ambas lenguas) a la hora de publicar articulos de investigacion, asi como los factores que pueden influir en ello. Por medio de anovas de diseno mixto se han detectado claras diferencias relacionadas con la lengua, la disciplina y la experiencia en el extranjero en lo que respecta a la motivacion, y tambien se ha identificado una compleja interaccion entre la lengua, la disciplina y la experi...
Chinese academics writing for publication: English teachers as text mediators.
Journal of Second Language Writing , 2016
This paper discusses a key aspect of Chinese scholars writing for publication in English: the role played by local English teachers as literacy brokers or ‘text mediators’. Increasingly, academics in China are required to publish their research in prestigious international journals to progress their careers, and are turning to local English-teaching colleagues for assistance. The expense, uncertain competence and sometimes dubious ethical practices of professional editing services, combined with the co-present contact and personal relationships formed with local colleagues, mean that Chinese English teachers are rapidly becoming a valuable resource for turning the massive number of Chinese submissions into publishable papers. This relationship, however, is complicated by the lack of institutional funding for language mediation of this kind and by the uncertainties of appropriate reward for this work. This paper examines the kinds of cooperation and difficulties experienced between local English teachers and scientists in some Chinese universities.
Academic writing in a global context: Politics and practices of academic publishing in English
Academic Writing in a Global Context examines the impact of the growing dominance of English on academic writing for publication globally. The authors explore the ways in which the global status attributed to English is impacting on the lives and practices of multilingual scholars working in contexts where English is not the official language of communication. The book throws into relief the politics surrounding academic publishing. Drawing on an eight year ‘text-ethnographic’ study of the experiences of fifty scholars working in Europe, this book discusses these questions at both a macro and micro levelthrough discussions of knowledge evaluation systems on all levels, and analysis of the progress of a text towards publication. In addition to this, case studies of individual scholars in their local institutions and countries are used to illustrate experiences of using English in the academic world. Academic Writing in a Global Context addresses the issue of the pressure on academics worldwide to produce their work in English in scholarly publishing, and why the growth of the use of academic English matters.
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.