„Das ist das Problem, das hinzukriegen, dass es so klingt, als hätt’ es ein Native Speaker geschrieben.“ Wissenschaftliches Schreiben und Publizieren in der Fremdsprache Englisch

Abstract

The predominant use of English in scientific publications is a well-documented fact. As a consequence, anglophony is the communicative norm in almost all scientific disciplines. Sincejournal publications in English have become the essential indicator for research performance and assessment internationally, it seems obvious that non-native researchers have to cope with an additional problem, namely the linguistic-communicative challenge, a fact which very often puts them at a communicative and a concomitant research disadvantage. The main research questions dealt with in this article focus on the problems, problem-solving strategies and attitudes of German-speaking scientists publishing in English. The empirical part of the research is presently based on 24 interviews conducted with researchers from four disciplines (biology, mechanical engineering, German linguistics, history) at different universities in Germany, and eight interviews with journal editors of the same subjects (two of each discipline). The paper starts out by marizing the current state of research, the aims, design and methodology used in the study and further elaborates on the main research questions. This is followed by an exemplary case study analyzing a natural scientist’s attitudes and reactions to the use of English as an international language of science. The analysis is enriched by observations on non-native speakers’ use of resources when writing in English and by the different perceptions of the functions of language in the natural sciences as opposed to the humanities. The article concludes with a summary and some perspectives for future research.