Researchers’ language practices concerning knowledge production and dissemination : Discourses of mono- and multilingualism

Drawing on research interviews with 43 researchers working across four disciplines in two Nordic countries, this chapter examines the researchers’ perceptions of, and choices related to their mono/multilingual knowledge production and research writing practices. Three discourses were found to be constructed in the interview talk: (a) disciplinary monolingualism, (b) dual monolingualism, and (c) functional epistemic multilingualism. For research writing, most researchers in the study opted for a mono- or bilingual publication strategy, but when doing research, the main determiner in terms of how many and which languages the researchers reported to use was the object of research. The pragmatism associated with the researchers’ language practices may thus be related to both mono- and multilingualism.Peer reviewe

How is the digital medium shaping research genres? Some cross-disciplinary trends

There is little dispute that technologies are impacting academic communication today, rendering new forms of accessing information and disseminating knowledge. To explore this impact, in the first part of the paper I review a selection of scholarly literature that addresses ways in which digital technologies are shifting the scholars’ information access behavior and introducing new forms of research dissemination. I also discuss how these new forms of communication are modeling new ecologies of genre systems and genre sets. In the second part of the paper I conduct genre analysis with a sample corpus of texts from different disciplines to illustrate how the emergence of new multimedia genres and the use of multimodality, hypertextuality and interdiscursivity features in genres within electronic environments appear to be pointing at generic evolution and innovation. In light of the findings, I propose some areas in which genre research can engage in interdisciplinary conversation (with ethnography, academic/digital literacies studies, situated genre analysis and reception studies). Regarding EAP instruction, I suggest a pedagogy that provides corpus-based linguistic and rhetorical input on the new genre formats, opportunities for noticing, hands-on practice and critical awareness of aspects of genre innovation and change

Rendíthetetlen-e az angolszász hegemónia a nemzetközi társadalomföldrajzi és városkutatási folyóiratokban: egy bibliometriai elemzés tanulságai

A jelen tanulmányban egy bibliometriai elemzés eredményeit mutatom be: a társadalomföldrajz és a városkutatás rokonterületek 14 vezető folyóiratának közel 23 ezer cikkét vizsgálom meg az 1986-2015-ös periódusban azzal a céllal, hogy feltárjam, melyek a legproduktívabb országok és intézmények, illetve a kulcsszavak között melyek a legtöbbet említett országok és városok. Az elemzés célja felhívni a figyelmet, hogy a nemzetközi városkutatásokat nagymértékben befolyásolja a szakterület angol-amerikai hegemóniája. Az eredmények azt mutatják, hogy a rokonterületek legproduktívabb országai az angol nyelvterületen találhatóak, továbbá az Egyesült Királyságbeli, amerikai és kanadai egyetemek számítanak a legproduktívabb intézményeknek is. A kulcsszavakként legtöbbször felbukkanó ország az Egyesült Királyság, az Egyesült Államok és növekvő mértékben Kína, míg a városok közül London áll az élen. Az utóbbi évtizedben a kínai városok említéseinek a száma jelentősen emelkedett, vagyis a nemzetközi városkutatásokban Kína egyre fontosabb szerepet tölt be

Performance and legitimation in political research : publications and citations in twelve countries in the extended Baltic area

The purpose of this article is an examination informed by neo-institutional political and related research on two foremost aspects of institutionalization, performance and legitimation. Political research published by scholars of the extended Baltic region by late May r 2013 comprises the study topic. The article considers political research in four selected subfields: general political science, international relations/world politics, public policy, and public administration/public management. The results indicate that Denmark and Norway are “great powers” in the region, with a strong presence in strongly legitimate publication arenas of political research. Looking further at the performance suggested by publications and citations to these, Sweden and Finland stand out no less than Denmark and Norway, and Estonia and Lithuania also receive visibility. Examining performance with the bibliometric “h” index suggests that “size matters”, which accentuates German achievements, although Norway, Denmark and Sweden continue to stand out despite their relatively small population size

Social sciences and the English language

ABSTRACT The article analyses the predominance of the English language in the globalization context, particularly the implications related to the social sciences. It first makes a critical analysis of the literature elaborated by linguists concerning the expansion of the language in the contemporary world, focusing on the evolution of English from an international to a global language. It then discusses the supremacy of English both in natural and social sciences. The central argument is that such scientific practices are distinct, i.e., having English as lingua franca for natural sciences will make it impossible to have it doing so in the human sciences ambit. Assuming that the construction of the social object is achieved through the language, being it also referred to a specific historicgeographic context, the making of the social sciences must keep several languages in the process. The imposed prevalence of a language happens due to a power hierarchy in the linguistic métier, within which there has been an erroneous nearing between the ideas of universal and global