AILA Review - Volume 20, Issue 1, 2007

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 progressive spread of English as the main language of international scientific communication has been interpreted in many different ways by several scholars. The paper presents a brief review of the scientific debate on such topics, focusing on the main stereotypes which have been created in order to provide explanations for the development of English as the language of science, and on the perception of non-Anglophone scholars on the reasons of the predominance of English in scientific literature and their disadvantages with respect to native speakers. Frequently used stereotypes on English as the language of science are analyzed and discussed in reference to the motivations asserted by linguists and non-linguists. A double ideological evidence can be registered: (1) arguments essentially consist in a-posteriori justifications, (2) English — far away from representing a free choice for non-native scholars — is perceived as the repository of the linguistic power that is desired and worshipped. The overview closes with the results of a pilot investigation on the languages of scientific publications, conducted on a sample of Italian scholars belonging to various scientific fields.

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.

In science and in all other domains that require communication across borders, we need one lingua franca, and this lingua franca will be English. The adoption of the native language of some as everyone’s lingua franca unavoidably raises a problem of justice in various senses. One of these is cooperative justice, the fair distribution of the cost of producing a public good. This article proposes a criterion of fair burden sharing — proportionality of cost to benefit — and explores its policy implications. Does this criterion require a linguistic tax on the native speakers of the lingua franca in order to subsidize the learning of it by all others? If so, how high should the subsidy be, and should it be pitched at the same per capita level for all learning communities? If not, is there an alternative way of implementing a fair compensation for the free riding of lingua franca natives on everyone else’s learning? Among the article’s conclusions are that fair subsidies would need to be directed disproportionately to the Chinese — even abstracting from possible differences in the difficulty of learning English — and that more hopes should be focused on the compensatory poaching of the web than on anything resembling a linguistic tax.

The comparison between various language policies that aim to manage multilingual communication ought to rely on some robust methodology for evaluation. This paper discusses the possibility to found such a methodology on the well-established concepts of efficiency and fairness. Assessing efficiency implies comparing how resources are allocated under alternative policy options (or scenarios) in order to identify the policy promising the best overall allocation. Assessing fairness calls for the evaluation of the distributive effects of each scenario on the linguistic groups involved in communication — that is, ascertaining who benefits and who loses (and how much) under alternative policy options. This paper develops indictors of effective and fair communication, which synthesise some desirable characteristics of communication processes, and which enable us to rank-order, with respect to their relative efficiency and fairness, different ways of handling communication in multilingual settings. In order to assess effectiveness and efficiency, we work with three (not mutually exclusive) definitions of communication, namely, informatory, cooperative and strategic communication, which reflect the different (main) communicational intents of the actors. In order to assess fairness, we establish a distinction between communication in terms of access, process and outcome.

Malaysia experienced a major shift in language policy in 2003 for the subjects of science and maths. This meant a change in the language of education for both national and national-type schools. For national schools, this resulted in a shift from Bahasa Malaysia, the national language to English. Parallel with this, to ensure homogeneity of impact of change, the State persuaded the national-type schools, which have been utilizing the language of community, Mandarin and Tamil respectively, as medium of instruction since independence in 1957, to shift to English for the teaching of science and maths. This paper aims to unravel the socio-political reasons underlying the shift with a focus on the Chinese community’s responses to the change. This will be carried out by examining the discourses of the debate contested by members of the Chinese community, juxtaposed against the reasons for the change, set forth by the State, as articulated by the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad. This multi-pronged approach will be used to unravel the underlying ideologies for the change and the reluctant compromise that was reached by the Chinese community.