Perceptions and practices of senior Spanish academics regarding research dissemination in English

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.
net/publication/248530835
'You don't say what you know, only what you can': The perceptions and
practices of senior Spanish academic regarding research dissemination in
English
Article in English for Specific Purposes · January 2011

DOI: 10.1016/j.esp.2010.05.001
CITATIONS READS
163 588
3 authors:
Carmen Pérez-Llantada Ramón Plo

University of Zaragoza University of Zaragoza
79 PUBLICATIONS 1,121 CITATIONS 13 PUBLICATIONS 379 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE
Gibson Ferguson
The University of Sheffield
31 PUBLICATIONS 1,505 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:
English in Europe View project
Sci-Dis (Scientific Dissemination) View project
All content following this page was uploaded by Gibson Ferguson on 17 December 2018.
The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ENGLISH FOR
SPECIFIC
PURPOSES
English for Specific Purposes xxx (2010) xxx–xxx
www.elsevier.com/locate/esp
“You don’t say what you know, only what you can”:
The perceptions and practices of senior Spanish
academics regarding research dissemination in English
Carmen Pérez-Llantada a,*, Ramón Plo a,1, Gibson R. Ferguson b,2
a
Facultad de Filosofı́a y Letras, Departamento de Filologı́a Inglesa y Alemana, c/ Pedro Cerbuna 12, 50009 Zaragoza, Spain
b
School of English, University of Sheffield, Jessop West, 1 Upper Hanover Street, Sheffield S37RA, UK
Abstract
This paper is a contribution to an expanding literature on the challenges non-Anglophone academics confront in dis-
seminating their research in English, the dominant language of international scientific communication. Drawing on a cor-
pus of interviews with senior Spanish academics, who remain a relatively little researched academic community compared
to many others, we focus on the English language publishing/dissemination practices of our subjects, on their attitudes to
the dominance of English, on their perceptions of the most problematic aspects of writing in English, and on their views as
to how they might best be supported by their university with regard to their English language needs. The overall aim is to
better understand how these academics cope with the challenge of disseminating research in English with a view to formu-
lating the most realistic and most appropriate interventions to support them. Salient among our findings is that subjects
report a particular sense of disadvantage in relation to spoken communication at conferences, more so than for academic
writing. This, therefore, is a potentially fruitful area for supportive intervention along with others discussed in the conclu-
sion to the paper.
Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: ESP; English Lingua Franca; Non-Anglophone scholars; Language needs; ESP language policies
1. Introduction
In recent years there has been a significant growth in the literature on the role of English as a dominant,
language of scientific publication and on the challenges this presents for non-Anglophone scholars who are
increasingly obliged to write in English if they wish to gain an audience for their research (e.g. Ammon,
2007; Benfield & Feak, 2006; Burrough-Boenisch, 2006; Curry & Lillis, 2004; Flowerdew, 1999, 2000, 2001,
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 976 76 15 38; fax: +34 976 76 15 19.
E-mail addresses: llantada@unizar.es (C. Pérez-Llantada), plo@unizar.es (R. Plo), g.r.ferguson@sheffield.ac.uk (G.R. Ferguson).
1
Tel.: +34 976 76 10 65; fax: +34 976 76 15 19.
2
Tel.: +44 (0)114 222 0224.
0889-4906/$- see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.esp.2010.05.001
Please cite this article in press as: Pérez-Llantada, C. et al., “You don’t say what you know, only what you can”: The perceptions and
practices of senior Spanish academics regarding research dissemination in English, English for Specific Purposes (2010), doi:10.1016/
j.esp.2010.05.001
2 C. Pérez-Llantada et al. / English for Specific Purposes xxx (2010) xxx–xxx
2007; Kaplan & Baldauf, 2005; Lillis & Curry, 2006; Uzuner, 2008). In this paper, we return to this topic,
focussing in particular on Spanish academics for two main reasons.
The first is that, whereas there has been considerable work carried out in settings such as Hong Kong (e.g.
Flowerdew, 1999, 2000), there is still comparatively little published research on the publishing practices of
Spanish academics – with the exception of a now rather dated article by St. John (1987), a contrastive study
of Hungarian, Slovakian, and Spanish scholars (Curry & Lillis, 2004) focussing only on the psychology dis-
cipline, and a recent survey about English needs in a Spanish university (Fernández-Polo & Cal-Valera, 2009).
A second reason is that because Spanish is itself a world language, the writing practices of Spanish academics
and their attitudes to English-language publication may well be different from those in smaller, more inten-
sively researched language communities such as Scandinavia or Switzerland. In these countries – for reasons
of history, size and educational policies – English is more firmly established, functioning almost as a second
language, than it is in Spain, where, according to a 2005 Eurobarometer survey (http://ec.europa.eu/pub-
lic_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_237.en.pdf), only 36% of the population claim to be able to speak a language
other than their mother tongue.
The study reported in this paper is the second phase of a wider project focussing on linguistic disadvantage and
academic publication in English. The first phase (see Ferguson Pérez-Llantada, & Plo, in press) was comprised of
an anonymous3 questionnaire survey of the attitudes of 300 senior and junior Spanish academics at the Univer-
sity of Zaragoza to English as an international language of academic publication. The main focus was percep-
tions of equity and access in English language academic publishing. However, while questionnaire surveys are
useful for collecting large quantities of data relatively economically, they also have well-known limitations. It
is difficult, for example, to probe into the reasons prompting particular responses. For this reason, a second more
ethnographically-oriented phase of research was undertaken focussing on both a more detailed elicitation of atti-
tudes to English-language publication and senior Spanish academics’ writing/publishing practices in English.
This, then, is the subject matter of the study reported below, whose aims can be summarised as follows:
(i) to probe further into interviewees’ perceptions of potential linguistic disadvantage in publishing in
English,
(ii) to investigate how interviewees negotiate and manage the process of preparing a paper for publication in
an English language journal,
(iii) to document and analyse interviewees’ accounts of the specific linguistic difficulties and challenges they
face in preparing a research paper for publication, and
(iv) to determine subjects’ perceived needs regarding language training and the potential role of the univer-
sity in catering for these needs.
Before detailing the design of the study we comment briefly on the role of English in the Spanish academic
context.
1.1. The Spanish academic context
Spain, like many other countries, is increasingly impacted by the dominance of English as an international
language of academic exchange. One indicator of this is the rapid decline in recent years of publication in
Spanish-language journals – from 5309 articles in 1996 to 2744 in 2006, and a correspondingly substantial
increase in English-language publications in international journals – from19,820 papers in 1996 to 39,115
in 2006 (COTEC, 2008), as indicated in Fig. 1 below.
A major factor underlying this shift is the Spanish academic reward system (cf. Curry & Lillis, 2004;
Moreno, 2010), which confers greater recognition on international as opposed to national level publications.
Spanish scholars seeking academic recognition are obliged to publish in English or perish, as the saying goes.
Specifically, one of the most important criteria for academic promotion is publication in indexed journals (e.g.
JCR and ISI), which are, as it happens, almost invariably English language journals. The effect has been to
3
Respondents were asked to write their names on the questionnaire to allow for easier follow-up but they were also assured that
responses would be kept confidential.
j.esp.2010.05.001
C. Pérez-Llantada et al. / English for Specific Purposes xxx (2010) xxx–xxx 3
Fig. 1. Papers published in Spanish National Journals 1996–2006 (Source: Instituto de Estudios Documentales sobre Ciencia y
Tecnologı́a. CSIC (September 2007).
diminish the importance of Spanish-language journals. To take but one example, the journal Applied Econo-
metrics and International Development, though published in Spain (University of Santiago), was initially
launched in 2001 as an English-medium publication with the aim of being included in international databases
and reaching a wider readership. While this journal is one of the top 25 most widely read journals in the world,
a closely-related journal, Estudios económicos de desarrollo internacional/ Economic Studies of International
Development is not accepted in IBSS since the latter prioritises English-medium publications (M.C Guisán,
personal communication, March 1, 2010). Prestigious Spanish medical journals now offer bilingual (or trilin-
gual) abstracts (Medicina Clı́nica, Anales de Medicina Interna) and are included in international indexes. Con-
versely, Dı́az et al. (2001) criticise the fact that prestigious Spanish biology journals are not indexed in ISI
because they are published in Spanish.
A secondary factor driving the increased emphasis on English is the growing internationalisation of teach-
ing and research in Spanish universities, leading to increased academic exchange and collaboration between
Spanish and overseas academics. Internationalisation is, of course, one of the strategic priorities of the Euro-
pean Union’s 7th Framework Programme (http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/home_en.html), and this has clearly
been influential in fuelling the process.
Another indicator of the increased importance of English is the growing trend toward using English as a
language of instruction in universities throughout Spain. In Zaragoza, for example, the university offers Eng-
lish-medium courses in Science, Economics, Law, Education and Arts; the purpose being to cater to the grow-
ing number of international exchange students (e.g. Erasmus students) studying at this university. In 2009–
2010, 795 students studied at Zaragoza under the Erasmus programme, a European scheme to stimulate stu-
dent and staff exchanges within European countries.
That said, the University of Zaragoza has only recently (in 2008) begun to provide financial support for
English language tuition for its academic staff, but currently it does not offer these staff any in-house transla-
tion or language revising services.
We now turn to the design and methodology of the study.
2. Methods
The dataset for this study was comprised of 10 qualitative semi-structured face to face interviews of senior
Spanish academics at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). The subjects were all full professors, five from the
field of physical sciences and engineering (numbered 1–5) and five from the field of social sciences (numbered
6–10). The sample of scholars was homogeneous in the following respects: (i) they all had a considerable
number of publications in international English-medium journals, (ii) collaboration with native English speak-
ers-scientists is for content purposes but not for writing/editing papers, (iii) all the scholars had either studied
abroad or had experience of research stays in an English-speaking country, and (iv) all reported satisfactory/
good self-confidence in writing and speaking academic English.
j.esp.2010.05.001
Subjects were selected on the grounds of their research publishing experience both as writers and journal
referees. The experience of the subjects together with their responses to the previous questionnaire was
thought to be conducive to detailed responses and willingness to participate. These had been sufficiently inter-
esting and enigmatic as to invite further investigation by interview. Interviews were conducted in Spanish over
a two week period, each one lasting around 40 min, and were digitally recorded so as to allow subsequent
detailed content analysis and the identification of emergent themes.
Questions for the semi-structured interviews were divided roughly into two main groups as follows:
(a) those probing the reasons for particular responses to the previous questionnaire survey (research ques-
tion i). For example:
Can you explain why you think English has more advantages than disadvantages for you personally
in your academic work? Or vice-versa?4
In responding to an earlier questionnaire you said that the dominance of English in academic publi-
cation gave/did not give an unjust advantage to native-speaker academics. Can you explain the rea-
sons for your answer in more detail?5
How confident do you feel yourself when delivering a talk and replying to the audience’s questions at
an academic conference? Do you feel that conference participants tend to judge you on the basis of
your English rather than on the content of your paper?
We also asked here about the subjects’ publication experience and the role English played in their research
activity (research question iii) – with questions such as:
Can you tell me about your publications? Do you publish in Spanish as well as English? What types of
academic texts?
Is publishing in English important for you? Why? Was it so a few years ago? Why/Why not?
(b) those enquiring into subjects’ publishing practices, use of ‘language brokers’ (see Lillis & Curry, 2006),
and specific writing difficulties (research questions ii). The questions here included:
Do you tend to write academic papers as a team or individually? If as a team, how is the responsibility
for writing divided up among the team?
Which part of the paper (introduction, methods, results or discussion) is generally the most difficult to
write?
What aspect of writing in English do you tend to find the most difficult (e.g. persuading the reader,
organising ideas and making the discourse coherent, relating ideas in order to build an argument,
vocabulary choice, grammar constructions, etc.).
Do you normally use ‘language brokers’ to help revise your paper? If so, do you pay for this service,
and are you satisfied with it? In what ways (yes or no)?
We also asked questions here as to how subjects tried to improve their English, and their opinions on Uni-
versity policies concerning language support and training for staff (research question iv).
Once recorded, the interviews were listened to repeatedly and a number of themes identified. These are dis-
cussed below.
3. Findings and discussion
In the first part of this section, following up on the previous questionnaire survey (see Ferguson et al., in
press), we focus on interviewees’ views of the role of English in academic publication, and how they feel about
issues of potential linguistic disadvantage relative to native Anglophone academics.
4
One of the Likert scale questions in the original questionnaire survey requested a response to the following statement: ‘I personally feel
more advantaged than disadvantaged in my academic work by the dominance of English as an international language of science, technology and
academic exchange’.
5
Another question required a response to the following statement: ‘The dominance of English as an international language of science,
technology and academic exchange gives an unfair advantage to English native-speaking academics.’
j.esp.2010.05.001
3.1. Attitudes to English as an international language of academic publication
The attitude of all the interviewees, regardless of their disciplinary backgrounds, to the dominance of Eng-
lish can best be described as one of qualified acceptance, as exemplified in one interviewee’s remark (scholar
#7) that “(the dominance of English) is the way it is, whether we like it or not”.
On the one hand, all interviewees were ready to acknowledge the pragmatic utility of using a single lan-
guage (English) for easier international communication across research communities, a view which would
seem to offer little backing for the notion of multilingual scientific publication as advocated by some commen-
tators (e.g. Salager-Meyer, 2008). They also recognised, as others have elsewhere (e.g. Gosden, 1992; Curry &
Lillis, 2004; Flowerdew, 1999), that international publication in English was necessary both for academic
career advancement – the national assessment system in Spain giving priority to publication in ‘high impact’
international journals – and for getting their research noticed and read (see also Medgyes & Kaplan, 1992 for
Hungary, or Ives & Obenchain, 2007 for Romania): . . ..in order to be ‘in the market’ . . . we have to contribute
with academic publications, otherwise we are not visible. (scholar #3)
At the same time, however, interviewees were aware that the emphasis on English-language publication
came at a cost, especially to scientific publishing in Spanish. As one social scientist explained, writing research
papers in Spanish was little valued with the result that Spanish was increasingly restricted to popular science
publications (e.g. the Spanish equivalent of ‘Scientific American’), national conference proceedings, and regio-
nal government reports, all of them considered necessary for knowledge transfer but of limited prestige: . . ..in
publishing internationally we tend to neglect the Spanish context. Therefore, every now and then we try to
publish science literature within the professional Spanish circuit so as to transfer the knowledge gained from
our research to working practitioners.
A number of interviewees also referred to the demise of Spanish-language journals, describing how some
prestigious ones had switched to English-language publication to reach a wider international readership. A
similar path, of course, has been followed by French and German language journals; for instance, the German
Angewandte Chemie journal re-titled itself as Applied Chemistry. There was, however, comparatively little
overt expression of anxiety that Spanish might lose domains to English, especially scientific domains, with
a consequent slow impoverishment of the language’s lexical and stylistic resources. In this respect there is a
contrast with Scandinavia (see e.g. Berg, Hult, & King, 2001; Gunnarsson, 2001; Preisler, 2005) where domain
loss is publicly debated and where policies have been introduced to maintain the research and scientific reg-
isters of national languages (University of Oslo, 2006). Indeed, one of the older subjects, an emeritus profes-
sor, commented eloquently that the historical shift he had himself witnessed from local publication in Spanish
to international publication in English had had some positive effects:
In Spain there has been a tremendous change in the past 40 years. In the past, there was no perceived
need for publishing. We lived in isolation for whatever reasons. Publishing was not common, and we
only published in national journals produced by the Spanish Royal Academy. It was all at a local level,
not because people were not qualified, but simply because people did not think about the fact of pub-
lishing. When I finished my degree a visiting professor came from the US bringing with him the idea that
we had to publish, it was essential to publish. Maybe we published things that were not so important, but
for us it was a different way of seeing things. We realised that we could not confine ourselves to our lab-
oratories. We had to be in contact with the outside world and publish, and publish in English so that
others could read our work. (scholar #4)
One reason for this relatively relaxed view as compared, say, with the views prevalent in Scandinavia, may
be the very different sociolinguistic status of Spanish as a world language, and as a regional lingua franca
within the Hispanic world – one where Spanish still has a foothold in scientific research publication.6 The
key point here, however, is not so much the underlying determinant of attitude as the fact that this particular
emeritus academic chose to highlight the gain accruing from the shift to English as a primary language of
6
To take just one example from one field (cancer research) and one hispanophone country (Puerto Rico), Ortiz (2009) reports that
though English was the predominant language of publication (72.1%) in the Puerto Rico Health Sciences Journal and the Boletı́n de la
Asociación Médica de Puerto Rico, a not unhealthy 27.9% of papers were published in Spanish.
j.esp.2010.05.001
publication rather than dwell on the loss to the Spanish language, and in this respect his views have some affin-
ity with those of Haarman and Holman (2001, p. 256):
Finland’s decision to favour English as its primary vehicle for scientific research has enabled the country,
perhaps unexpectedly, to assume a major role, both active and passive, in the process of globalisation.
We now turn to the specific issue of perceived linguistic disadvantage in research dissemination, particularly
vis-à-vis Anglophone academic peers, and here the first point to be made, confirming the finding of the pre-
vious questionnaire survey, is that almost all the interviewees reported that in their personal work the dom-
inance of English in academic/scientific communication had more advantages than disadvantages (e.g. in
overcoming academic parochialism and gaining international recognition of their work).
That said, when asked about the specific issue of equity, a number of scholars did remark that they felt
unfairly disadvantaged linguistically relative to Anglophone academics. Interestingly, though not unexpect-
edly, this was felt more keenly in spoken rather than written communication. Most of the interviewees com-
mented, for example, that not being fluent in English was a significant handicap in international conferences
when presenting their papers and fielding questions from the audience, and also in international meetings,
dealing for example with Erasmus administration. Though some pointed out that thorough preparation for
the presentation could alleviate the linguistic handicap, they still felt uncomfortable and at a disadvantage
interacting with international peers and responding to questions ‘off the cuff’:
I sometimes feel that they look at me with sad faces and say ‘poor guy, he doesn’t even know what he’s
saying’. I sometimes feel this way. At the beginning I make an effort to pronounce well but you can’t
maintain the tension in front of an audience and I feel they are saying ‘please finish soon’. As for ques-
tions, in my last conference they asked me questions and fortunately they spoke very clearly. They were a
German and an Italian – and so I could understand them. (scholar #7)
As further pointed out by scholar #7, quite subtle linguistic factors (e.g. telling a joke with skill or a lack
thereof) might provoke invidious and unfair comparisons with native Anglophone presenters:
Of course it is an unjust advantage. I attend a conference, I read my paper after the native, the native
wraps the audience around his little finger using a joke that I cannot tell. He doesn’t have to prepare.
I will never be able to do it like him. I cannot interact.
Even those with confidence in their spoken English, such as scholar #8, pointed out how they felt they per-
form better in their native language:
It may be a bit uncomfortable for the non natives, having to express themselves and to understand. To
some extent it is relatively unfair. You think you would do more in your language, express ideas more
clearly, and there you have a very important limitation. But that’s the way it is and I think it is difficult to
fight against it.
Although spoken communication, particularly conference presentations, attracted the most comments in
the two disciplinary-subsets of participants regarding ‘unfair linguistic disadvantage’, the domain of written
communication did not entirely escape critical remarks – with some interviewees observing, somewhat contro-
versially given some previous research (e.g. Flowerdew, 1999), that while English was rarely a determining fac-
tor in having a paper accepted or rejected, it could have a role in marginal or borderline cases:
Surely a good piece of work will not be rejected because of the English but one which is on the borderline
[pause] may be at a disadvantage. (scholar #9)
We now turn to our second research question concerning the processes of preparing a paper for
publication.
3.2. Interviewees’ writing/pre-publication practices
In this section we focus attention on three specific aspects of the interviewees’ pre-publication practices: (i)
the allocation of responsibility for writing up research papers within the research team, (ii) the use of trans-
j.esp.2010.05.001
lation in the process of writing and (iii) the use of ‘language brokers’. First, we consider the distribution of
writing responsibilities.
As is well-known, but sometimes overlooked in commentaries on scientific writing, a great deal of research
in the physical and social sciences is, for reasons of cost and complexity, carried out in research teams, and this
has very considerable consequences for the writing/publishing process. The most obvious, perhaps, is that in
contrast to the arts and humanities, where the paradigm of the lone researcher still has some currency, almost
all papers in the sciences carry the names of multiple authors, though this does not necessarily mean, of course,
that all those named actually participate in writing up the research. What it does imply, though, is that the
production of the paper, if not the written composition, is very much a collaborative process, with intense
group interaction typically preceding the writing up, responsibility for which is distributed among members
of the research team in various ways. In some cases, for example, it is the research team leaders who take
on responsibility for writing up, with the actual experimental work carried out by the more junior members
of the research team, as scholar #1 explains, “junior researchers conduct the experiment and research group
heads – and not junior researchers – always write the papers.”
A similar division of responsibility along lines of seniority was also mentioned by three of the social science
interviewees, but here a further important factor was introduced – that of the perceived difficulty of writing
specific parts of the research paper. The most difficult section by far was unanimously felt to be the Introduc-
tion as this involved the complex rhetorical work of “selling the research” (scholar #4), “building convincing
arguments” (scholar #3) and of “persuading referees of the motivation and interest of the research” (scholars
#7 and #8) – in short, what Bhatia (2004, p. 59) refers to as ‘promotional discourse’.7 Ranked next to intro-
ductions in difficulty was the discussion section since this involved setting findings in context and relating them
to previous research. By contrast, the empirical sections of the paper (methods and results) were considered
relatively easy to write on account of their more formulaic character. Interviewees commented here, for exam-
ple, on the recurrent phraseology of Materials/Methods sections, on a higher level of ‘linguistic standardisa-
tion’, and on writers’ ability to deploy “. . .a repertoire of set phrases retrieved from other papers and previous
readings” (scholar 5), all of which eased the writing process. This greater ease relative to the more difficult
introduction and discussion sections meant that the empirical sections tended to be allocated to the more
junior members of the research team and the more rhetorically complex to the more senior or experienced,
as scholar #8 explains:
Empirical papers are not excessively difficult. Once you know what you want to do, you handle the sta-
tistical methods, the [rhetorical] models, and this can be done by a PhD student or an assistant
researcher. It is a question of investing time and getting used to the model. What is really difficult is
the introduction, where you explain what motivates your work, why it is interesting to do this work,
what it contributes to, and also the discussion and conclusion sections. The results are set in a context,
they are compared with other opinions, and a senior [scholar] has greater capacity to contribute than one
who is just starting.
3.2.1. Use of translation and ‘language brokers’

We now turn to two further elements of the writing-for-publication process that previous research has high-
lighted: the use of translation as a writing strategy (see St. John, 1987) and the use of ‘language brokers’ (Lillis &
Curry, 2006). Translation refers here to the process described by St. John (1987, p. 116) whereby scientists write
the initial draft of a paper in Spanish and then translate it into English, either themselves or with the help of a hired
translator. St. John (1987) found that while many of her subjects relied initially on this translation strategy, they
all – with one exception – swiftly abandoned the practice, finding it cumbersome and time-consuming. We were
interested in determining whether the same was true of our subjects some twenty years later in an era where the
English proficiency of the Spanish scientific community is generally supposed to be at a higher level.
We also found that while the majority (8 out of 10) wrote their papers directly in English, only two inter-
viewees (#9 and #10, both having spent a year at a US/UK institution) reported having their papers translated
7
These views on which sections of the research paper are more difficult to write are fully consistent with St John (1987), who reports very
similar opinions among her sample of subjects.
j.esp.2010.05.001
into English from an initial Spanish draft. They explained that for them writing papers in Spanish was much
less time-consuming, and that, with an output of four/five papers annually, this allowed them to dedicate more
time to their primary research. Both expressed satisfaction with the quality and cost of the translation services
of their current English native-speaker translators. Scholar #10 reported previous unhappy experiences. She
had had a paper rejected due to “lack of readability and poor command of English” despite having submitted
the paper to a recognised translation service who, she claimed, had “simply used a non-specialised web trans-
lator”. The other (scholar #9) complained about the quality of many translation services, implicitly suggesting
that the ‘ideal situation’ is to resort to a language professional who specialises in academic writing and is an
expert in the disciplinary field (cf. Benfield & Feak, 2006).
Another area of enquiry was the use of ‘language brokers’, or language editors. In our previous question-
naire survey we found that around 53% of the 300 academics surveyed reported using ‘language brokers’ in
revising the paper prior to submission, with some 12% reporting dissatisfaction with their services. In the pres-
ent study, three of those eight scholars initially drafting their paper in English used English native-speaker
‘language brokers’ on a regular basis, paying for their services out of their research funds, and on the whole
they expressed satisfaction with the help afforded, particularly in “polishing the style” (scholar #8) and in
improving such rhetorical aspects as “persuasion and hedging” (scholar #1).
Meanwhile, the five scholars not reliant on ‘language brokers’ reported a range of coping strategies for pub-
lishing in English. Some allocated responsibility for drafting and revising papers to their most English-profi-
cient co-authors or colleagues (scholars #2 and #4) or to an English native-speaker co-author in the case of
international collaborative research (scholars #2 and #3). Scholar #6 passed his papers on to colleagues and
asked them to identify sections/ideas “not sufficiently clear or understandable”. On a related matter, four of
the interviewees (scholars #1, #3, #6 and #8) commented on the considerable variability between journals in
the degree to which editors and referees seemed prepared to extend help to non-Anglophone authors.
We now address our third research question regarding interviewees’ perceptions of linguistic difficulties in
writing-for-publication.
3.3. Interviewees’ linguistic difficulties
Consistent with St. John’s (1987, p. 115) much earlier findings, all interviewees reported that they were fully
acquainted with the typical rhetorical organisation of scientific research papers (e.g. the IMRaD pattern), with
the kinds of information conventionally included in each part of the research paper, and with the phraseology
and discourse conventions specific to each section.
A potential implication here might be that in research writing instruction for senior Spanish academics, the
teaching of genre conventions and discourse features should give way to a much stronger emphasis on the real-
isation of rhetorical functions at the level of lexis and grammar. But this, we feel, would be a premature con-
clusion since the interviewees are, we may recall, not early career researchers but senior academics drawing on
many years of exposure to a variety of academic genres (articles, abstracts, grant proposals, referee reports,
etc.). It is possible therefore that some direct genre-based instruction would help speed the academic accultur-
ation of novice researchers.
Interviewees also displayed sensitivity to cross-cultural differences in scientific writing style, commenting,
for example, on what they considered a Spanish predilection for long sentences and complex constructions
with a heavy use of the passive. The same interviewee (#2) remarked later that “English norms are different”.
While writing in English involved a ‘concise, straightforward style’, “we Spanish use very long sentences, con-
voluted grammar and argumentation” (scholar #10) (similar opinions were reported in Pérez-Llantada (2007).
Moving to the level of grammar and vocabulary, the two disciplinary-subsets of interviewees made similar
comments regarding what they considered difficult or easy in academic writing. Unsurprisingly, given the lit-
erature on ESP/EAP vocabulary (see Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998), technical vocabulary was not felt to be
a problem because, as one interviewee remarked, “it is part of our specialisation”. More problematic was a lack
of resource in general everyday vocabulary, which was felt to reduce precision and richness of expression.
Another perceived difficulty was that of achieving an appropriate degree of assertiveness in making claims
and defending positions. As one interviewee put it, “sometimes you want to convey nuances but you don’t know
how to do it” (scholar #5).
j.esp.2010.05.001
As all the interviewees made frequent reference to questions of modulating the strength of claims, of strik-
ing the right ‘tone’, one might surmise that part of the problem here has to do with control over the English
modality system and rhetorical strategies for persuasion, as the following comments seem to imply:
. . .the main difficulties are those of persuading, convincing and clarifying (scholar #6)
...we feel confident with specialised vocabulary, grammar is difficult till you get to use it correctly,
hedging and persuasion are very difficult, but it is likewise difficult to do it in Spanish (scholar #8)
(we have) problems in constructing elaborate arguments (scholar #5)
For the most part, however, interviewees tended not so much to identify specific linguistic difficulties as to
recognise a generalised lack of grammatical and lexical resources compared to native-speakers of English, and
this was felt to be a significant handicap leading to a certain impoverishment of expression, as signalled in the
following remarks of one interviewee:
you become unsatisfied because you don’t write as easily as you would do it in Spanish. In Spanish, when
you write you can express something in a way that you like, that looks nice, not a literary piece of art,
but something that does not sound poor and this is what happens when using English, you don’t say
what you know, only what you can. (scholar #4)
And, as mentioned previously, this linguistic handicap was generally experienced most keenly when writing
the introduction to papers, and specifically when performing the complex rhetorical task of persuading editors
and readers of the value of the research.
In the introduction there is a fixed structure, it includes a motivation, a problem is stated and you have
to justify why you got involved with it. But then you have to sell [...] it is a matter of justifying your
work. To do this you cite other articles currently dealing with the topic and then you have to convince
the reader that there is some interest in the topic within the international community. (scholar #4)
While interviewees were sensitive to their perceived linguistic handicap, they did not seem to see this as
decisive in the acceptance or rejection of papers, readily acknowledging that papers were commonly
rejected not for reasons of language but because they were uninteresting or had a poor research design
and methodology. And asked if they themselves had received negative comments from reviewers on lin-
guistic aspects of their journal submissions, 9 out of the 10 scholars, including those who used language
translators, reported that they had but that these were relatively minor in scale, asking for minor stylistic
revisions (e.g. “eliminate the passive”, scholar #7) or for revision of the paper by a native (scholars #4 and
#10).
The abiding impression left by the interview data, then, is that interviewees certainly did feel linguistically
constrained in writing their papers in English, and this was felt to be burdensome. Clearly, writing in Spanish
would have been easier, quicker and allowed more nuanced expression, particularly in the introduction sec-
tions, and in this sense interviewees were at some linguistic disadvantage relative to English native-speaker
academics. That said, there is little evidence that the interviewees considered language constraints a barrier
to publication, or even a major cause of the rejection of submissions. The latter depended more on the quality
of the research than on the quality of the language. Indeed, two interviewees pointed out that they themselves
had commented on the English of some submissions, asking for language revisions, a fact from which they
derived some comfort and which implies that they felt their style had improved over the years and they were
now able to detect some inconsistencies in other people’s writing.
We now turn to our fourth research question relating to views on language training and university language
support for academic staff.
3.4. Views on language support for university staff
The interview data and the previous questionnaire survey (Ferguson et al., in press) suggest there is little
support for the substitution of English by some neutral lingua franca (e.g. Esperanto). Instead, the stance
of the interviewees appeared to be one of pragmatic resignation to the likely persistence of English as the dom-
inant language of scientific/academic communication. Given these attitudes, and the macro socio-economic
j.esp.2010.05.001
forces reinforcing the linguistic status quo, it seems to us that the mitigation of linguistic disadvantage is more
likely to flow from relatively modest interventions at the level of the journal and the university community,
including measures to improve the English proficiency level of non-Anglophone academic staff. Accordingly,
we were interested to ask interviewees for their views on how universities could support their staff in their
efforts to publish internationally in English.
As a preliminary, however, we first asked our interviewees how they helped themselves to improve their
own English. The strategies reported ranged from the fairly predictable and individualistic – watching TV in
English, listening to English language radio, conversation classes (scholars #1) – to slightly less predictable
forms of learning at work – through, for example, interaction with international scholars on research
sojourns at the University of Zaragoza, collaboration with international research groups abroad (scholars
#2 and 3), or simply “reading papers in English” (scholar #3). Scholars #6 and #10 drew attention to pre-
vious residence in English-speaking countries as an important factor in raising their English proficiency: the
former had done part of his PhD at a US university, while the latter had enjoyed a research sabbatical at a
UK institution.
On the issue of university language support, the majority of interviewees (8 out of 10) called for an increase
in the provision of specific courses in academic writing for academic staff, though a few added that even this
would be insufficient because ‘ongoing learning’, as they called it, would be necessary (scholar #7). Rather
surprisingly, only two of the interviewees brought up the subject of university-subsided ‘language brokering’
or translating services for academic staff. No references to in-house editing services paid by universities were
made by the scholars. We can only speculate here that the relative silence on this topic indicates that intervie-
wees feel able to cover the cost of such services from their research grants, or that they feel such services are
unnecessary. Another possibility, of course, is that they have simply not, as yet, given the subject much
thought.
One interviewee (scholar #2) drew attention to the responsibilities that senior academics have for mentoring
junior researchers, for initiating them into academic cultures, and for developing their awareness of the con-
ventions of English language academic genres. This, they felt, could be accomplished through such activities as
giving feedback on early drafts of papers, convening research group meetings in English, and encouraging
junior academics to rehearse conference papers in advance with colleagues. Working with a well-established
research group and under effective mentor supervision would indeed quicken the acculturation of young
researchers into academic communication in English.
Also helpful, several interviewees argued (scholars #2, #4, #6), would be an intensification of EAP instruc-
tion in all undergraduate, masters and doctorate level programmes at the university, especially in the first
year of study. This, they thought, would help mitigate the linguistic difficulties of future generations of
researchers.
4. Conclusion
The goal of the research reported in this paper was to mount a qualitative investigation of the perceptions
and practices of Spanish academics regarding research dissemination in English, and in so doing contribute to
a better understanding of the challenges of scientific communication in English for non-Anglophone academ-
ics. Our findings substantially confirm what the literature has suggested is the case in a range of countries
world-wide. Specifically, our Spanish subjects, like their international peers (e.g. Flowerdew, 1999; Curry &
Lillis, 2004; Giannoni, 2008), feel that English is having an increasing impact in their academic lives. They
recognise that career advancement and gaining a readership for their work requires international publication
in English, and they all remark quite openly that competence in English is now a requisite for full participation
in a globalised and highly competitive academic world.
That this is so does not, however, appear to be a substantial cause of resentment; the most common stance
of the interviewees is rather one of pragmatic resignation to the fact of English dominance. Thus, while they
feel at a disadvantage relative to native-speaking peers on account of what they see as their limited linguistic
resources, particularly when writing complex rhetorical texts such as the introduction or discussion sections of
research papers, this was not a subject of vociferous complaint, and most did not feel their language limita-
tions actually prevented publication.
j.esp.2010.05.001
That said, interviewees did express concerns more forcefully regarding spoken communication, at confer-
ences for example, reporting not only a sense of disadvantage but even of injustice. One aspect of this was a
sense that their presentations tended to be unfairly assessed, not on the basis of their scientific content but on
linguistic style (e.g. pronunciation); another was that they could not compete with the facility native-speakers
had in injecting humour into their presentations and fielding audience questions adroitly. Given the important
role conferences have in disseminating research, in forging academic reputations, and in establishing links with
potential collaborators, this is clearly a serious matter which, because it is relatively under-researched com-
pared to research writing, clearly merits further investigation. It is also an area where there is scope for reme-
dial interventions, to which we will come presently.
Pre-publication practices were another focus of questioning, with the relatively frequent use here of
‘language brokers’ and the less frequent use of translation as a writing strategy. This represents further indirect
evidence of the burdens faced by some Spanish academics in publishing their work in English. Confident and
highly proficient users of English are less likely to use the services of such brokers simply because in doing so
they incur the cost of time consumed in negotiating revisions with a broker and the literal cost of payment for
services rendered, sometimes with a less than optimal product. It is unclear, given the paucity of international
comparative data on this topic, whether language brokers are more commonly used in the Spanish academic
context than elsewhere, but the frequency of comments on their use suggest that this may be the case. What is
clear, however, given the significance of their role, is that there is a need for further research on how academics
interact with these brokers. Although there is some literature on this subject (e.g. Burrough-Boenisch, 2006)
this is limited in scale.
We have already argued that, with English firmly established as the dominant language of scientific com-
munication, small-scale ameliorative measures are perhaps easier to implement than large-scale reforms to
help reduce the linguistic disadvantage of non-Anglophone academics. In that light we asked our interviewees
for their views on the language support their university might offer. Their responses calling for increased EAP
instruction for researchers can hardly be regarded as especially innovative, given that such ideas have been
widely mooted in the international literature (see Belcher, 2007; Lillis & Curry, 2006; Tardy, 2005). Neverthe-
less, they do offer further reasons for a review of university policy at a time when internationalisation is
becoming something of a key motif in university administration. More illuminating was the emphasis some
interviewees gave to the role senior academics can, and should, play in mentoring junior colleagues and in
socialising them into academic communities and their discourses. This, combined with increased instructional
support, may help alleviate, if not eliminate, some of the difficulties non-Anglophone scholars face in writing-
for-publication, difficulties attested to in our data and in the wider literature (see, for example, Flowerdew,
1999; Bennet, 2007; Curry & Lillis, 2004; Li, 2002).
Questions remain, of course, about just what instructional content would be most helpful for non-Anglo-
phone scholars, including our Spanish subjects. While any full answer lies beyond the scope of this paper, we
can venture a few tentative suggestions based on our data, one of which is that spoken interaction in academic
settings, including conference presentations, deserves a considerably greater weighting in instructional pro-
grammes. Another is that our interviewees report less difficulty with genre conventions than with vocabulary
range, sentence level syntax, control of modality and the rhetoric of introductions, suggesting that these fea-
tures should feature more prominently in instruction. The implication here is that the content of instructional
programmes should be based, at least partly, on the identification of specific linguistic difficulties which may
vary depending on the academics’ L1 background and general level of proficiency. This in turn points to the
desirability of further detailed textual studies which, once replicated in different settings, will provide a fuller,
more detailed picture of the syntactic and lexical difficulties of non-Anglophones in writing to complement
what we already know about their rhetorical difficulties.
Finally, we need to note the limitations of this particular study which, as mentioned earlier, forms part of a
wider research project. The most obvious is that, being a qualitative study, the sample size is limited to a small
group of senior academics at one institution. We therefore have to be very cautious about generalising our
findings to academics at other Spanish universities. We have no reason to believe that things would be per-
ceived very differently elsewhere but clearly this possibility cannot be excluded. Another limitation is that
our data are restricted to self-reported perceptual data, and it is advisable therefore that these be triangulated
against other forms of data deriving, for example, from questionnaire surveys, textual studies and observa-
j.esp.2010.05.001
tional studies, which together might paint a fuller picture of the linguistic burden borne by non-Anglophone
academics.
However, we can claim on the basis of our interview data to have a better understanding of how Spanish
academics view the challenges of communication in English. This turns out not to be so very different from the
difficulties experienced and reported by scholars elsewhere (see e.g. Flowerdew, 1999; Curry & Lillis, 2004;
Benfield & Feak, 2006; Ives & Obenchain, 2007). The interview data has also allowed us to identify several
areas where further research could be of benefit. These would include the whole domain of spoken interaction
in academic settings; the interactions scholars have with ‘language brokers’; the role played by senior academ-
ics in the linguistic socialisation of junior colleagues; the use of translation as a L2 writing strategy; and also
textual analysis of successive drafts of papers written for publication to diagnose specific linguistic difficulties
that could be addressed in instructional programmes.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the scholars who participated in this research for their kindness and interest in our study.
This paper is a contribution to national research project FFI2009-09792, funded by the Spanish Ministry of
Education.
References
Ammon, U. (2007). Global scientific communication. Open questions and policy suggestions. AILA Review, 20, 123–133.
Belcher, D. (2007). Seeking acceptance in an English-only research world. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16(1), 1–22.
Benfield, J., & Feak, C. (2006). How authors can cope with the burden of English as an international language. Chest, 129,
1728–1730.
Bennet, K. (2007). Epistemicide! The tale of a predatory discourse. The Translator, 13(2), 151–169.
Berg, E., Hult, F., & King, K. (2001). Shaping the climate for language shift? English in Sweden’s elite domains. World Englishes, 20(3),
305–319.
Bhatia, V. (2004). Worlds of written discourse. London: Continuum.
Burrough-Boenisch, J. (2006). Negotiable acceptability: Reflections on the interactions between language professionals in Europe and
NNS scientists wishing to publish in English. Current Issues in Language Planning, 7(1), 31–44.
Curry, M. J., & Lillis, T. (2004). Multilingual scholars and the imperative to publish in English: Negotiating interests, demands, and
rewards. TESOL Quarterly, 38, 666–688.
Dı́az, M., Asensio, B., Llorente Moreno, E., Montori, A., Palomares, F., et al. (2001). El futuro de las revistas cientı́ficas españolas: Un
esfuerzo cientı́fico, social e institucional. Revista Española de Documentación Cientı́fica, 24(3), 306–314.
Dudley-Evans, T., & St. John, M. J. (1998). Developments in English for specific purposes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ferguson, G., Pérez-Llantada, C., & Plo, R. (2009). English as an international language of scientific publication: A study of attitudes.
World Englishes (in press).
Fernández Polo, F. J., & Cal Varela, M. (2009). English for research purposes at the University of Santiago de Compostela: A survey.
Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8(3), 152–164.
Flowerdew, J. (1999). Writing for scholarly publication in English: The case of Hong Kong. Journal of Second Language Writing, 8(2),
123–145.
Flowerdew, J. (2000). Discourse community, legitimate peripheral participation, and the nonnative-English-speaking scholar. TESOL
Quarterly, 34(1), 127–150.
Flowerdew, J. (2001). Attitudes of journal editors to non-native-speaker contributions: An interview study. TESOL Quarterly, 35,
121–150.
Flowerdew, J. (2007). Scholarly writers who use English as an additional language: What can Goffman’s Stigma tell us. Journal of English
for Academic Purposes, 7(2), 77–86.
Giannoni, D. S. (2008). Medical writing at the periphery: The case of Italian journal editorials. Journal of English for Academic Purposes,
7(2), 97–107.
Gosden, H. (1992). Research writing and NNS: From the editors. Journal of Second Language Writing, 1, 123–140.
Gunnarsson, B-L. (2001). Swedish, English, French or German – The language situation at Swedish Universities. In U. Ammon (Ed.), The
dominance of English as a language of science (pp. 267–315). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Haarman, H., & Holman, E. (2001). The impact of English as a language of science in Finland and its role for the transition to
network society. In U. Ammon (Ed.), The dominance of English as a language of science (pp. 229–260). Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Ives, B., & Obenchain, K. M. (2007). Scholarly publication: Focus on research. Synergy, 3(1), 7–15.
Kaplan, R., & Baldauf, R. (2005). Editing contributed scholarly articles from a language management perspective. Journal of Second
Language Writing, 14, 47–62.
j.esp.2010.05.001
Li, Y. (2002). Writing for international publication: The perception of Chinese doctoral researchers. Asian Journal of English Language
Teaching, 12, 179–193.
Lillis, T., & Curry, M. J. (2006). Professional academic writing by multilingual scholars: Interactions with literacy brokers in the
production of English-medium texts. Written Communication, 23(1), 3–35.
Medgyes, P., & Kaplan, R. (1992). Discourse in a foreign language: The example of Hungarian scholars. International Journal of the
Sociology of Language, 98, 67–100.
Moreno, A. (2010). Researching into English for research publication purposes from an applied intercultural perspective. In M. Ruiz, J.-C.
Palmer, & I. Fortanet. English for professional and academic purposes (pp. 57–71). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Ortiz, A. (2009). Bibliometric assessment of cancer research in Puerto Rico, 1903–2005. Revista Panamericana de Salud Pública, 25(4),
353–361.
Pérez-Llantada, C. (2007). Native and non-native English scholars publishing research internationally: A small-scale study on authorial
(in)visibility. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4(2), 217–238.
Preisler, B. (2005). Deconstructing ‘the domain of science’ as a sociolinguistic entity in EFL societies: The relationship between English
and Danish in higher education and research. In B. Preisler et al. (Eds.), The consequences of mobility (pp. 238–248). Roskilde: Roskilde
University.
Salager-Meyer, F. (2008). Scientific publishing in developing countries: Challenges for the future. Journal of English for Academic
Purposes, 7, 121–132.
St. John, M. J. (1987). Writing processes of Spanish scientists publishing in English. English for Specific Purposes, 6(2), 113–120.
Tardy, C. (2005). “It’s like a story”: Rhetorical knowledge development in advanced academic literacy. Journal of English for Academic
Purposes, 4, 325–338.
University of Oslo. (2006). In the next hundred years: the University of Oslo and language in that age of internationalisation.
Recommendation of the Committee on Language Policy at the University of Oslo. Retrieved from <http://www.uio.no/om_uio/
innstillinger/06/sprakpolitikk/report.pdf>.
Uzuner, S. (2008). Multilingual scholars’ participation in core/global academic communities: A literature review. Journal of English for
Academic Purposes, 7, 250–263.
j.esp.2010.05.001
View publication stats

Perceptions and practices of senior Spanish academics regarding research dissemination in English

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Perceptions and practices of senior Spanish academics regarding research dissemination in English

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

Article in English for Specific Purposes · January 2011

Carmen Pérez-Llantada Ramón Plo

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

English in Europe View project

Sci-Dis (Scientific Dissemination) View project

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

1.1. The Spanish academic context

3. Findings and discussion

3.1. Attitudes to English as an international language of academic publication

3.2. Interviewees’ writing/pre-publication practices

3.2.1. Use of translation and ‘language brokers’

3.3. Interviewees’ linguistic diﬃculties

3.4. Views on language support for university staﬀ

View publication stats

You might also like