Abstract
The predominance of English in scholarly publications, recently defined as linguistic imperialism, is no longer considered a threat for multilingual scholars, but a shared linguistic code essential in creating and communicating knowledge. A more significant threat for Russian scholars is the Russian tradition of scholarly writing, which originates from the Soviet period and affects the quality of their national and international publications, especially in humanities and social sciences. The solution is seen in developing writing for academic and research publication purposes in both English and Russian within the umbrella framework of academic literacy. The pioneering role in overcoming the resistance of the deeply rooted tradition and promoting academic writing as a discipline, Russian university writing centers, recently united into the National Consortium, play the central role. Explicit bilingual programmes are especially effective in countries with low level of English, and can be applied to various cultural contexts. They can be further developed into trilingual programmes in post-Soviet states, who experience similar difficulties and for whom Russian remains the lingua franca of academic communication.
Highlights
In the 1990s, the dominance of English as the language of international scholarly publications became a major concern for multilingual scholars
The threats of linguistic imperialism for Russian scholars are discussed in the Integration of Education by Natalia Popova and Thomas Beavitt, who consider its manifestations in formal, cliché-based writing provoked by the spread of the IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion) format, the diminishing role of the Russian language in higher education due to the spread of CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), and the spread of the anglophone tradition of writing through establishing university writing centers by the US model [7]
The study provides a consistent argument on the matters of the formalized use of English by Russian scientists, which is supported by the research implemented within the corpus of chemistry papers, and a critical insight into teaching disciplines in English through CLIL, the authors only briefly refer to English for specific purposes (ESP) and English for academic purposes (EAP), and do not consider the issues of academic writing, academic literacy and English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP, the recent branch of EAP [8]), which are essential in discussing the issue
Summary
In the 1990s, the dominance of English as the language of international scholarly publications became a major concern for multilingual scholars. This makes the idea of linguistic imperialism disputable, and the focus of research is shifting towards the issues of international academic writing and publishing conventions, and ways of assisting multilingual scholars in international publishing Investigating these issues can shed light on the trends in the global academic communication and specify the problems of multilingual scholars so that they can be properly addressed within national contexts, such as Russia, where the level of English is generally low. Unlike STEM sciences, which have always been of immediate mutual interest between Russia and the West, social sciences and humanities (especially education and pedagogy) endured a long period of isolation in the Soviet era and developed their own rhetorical and publishing traditions that formed within highly ideological environment These traditions contradict the international rhetorical and publishing conventions, but create enormous impediments for Russian scholars when they start writing for international journals. Russian: Titles are often wordy, too general or ambiguous; abstracts are sometimes too short, written formally before submission and only prompt at results
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