Disciplinary responses to the rise of English in metrics-driven social sciences and humanities

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper draws upon 123 interviews with Polish scholars, analysing their disciplinary-based views on the rise of English as a publishing medium in an increasingly metrics-driven set of social sciences and humanities disciplines. Those included in the paper are history, philosophy, economics, and law. The paper argues that the participants can be divided into three classes (internationalists, multilinguals, localists), depending on their responses to research evaluation reforms that encouraged publishing in prestigious English-language venues. Disciplinary differences are also explored. The results are discussed in the context of three academic discourses (internationalisation, Englishisation, multilingualism) on the rise of English in scholarly publishing, and in the context of the neo-nationalist movement’s current influence on global academia. A key finding is that the traditions of the social sciences and humanities may work as heterogenising forces against evaluative and linguistic homogeneity.