English Specialised Discourse in the Academia: Publishing Practices by Spanish Scholars in Chemistry and Business

• Autores: María Pilar Mur Dueñas, Rosa Lorés Sanz, Jesús Rey Rocha, Ana I. Moreno Fernández
• Localización: Discourses in co(n)text: the many faces of specialised discourse / Magdalena Zabielska (ed. lit.), Emilia Wasikiewicz-Firlej (ed. lit.), Anna Szcezepaniak-Kozak (ed. lit.), 2015, ISBN 978-1-4438-7419-9, págs. 305-327
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • English is currently used as a lingua franca for communication among speakers of varied linguacultural contexts in many professional fields, and the academic one is not an exception. Scholars are required- to a different extent across disciplinary fields- to disseminate the results of their research in English-medium publications, which allows them to enter international debates and research networks. In this context, non-native academics, for whom English was not their language of instruction and who have lacked specific training in developing written academic literacies, find quite a lot of difficulties. This situation has generated a lot of research in English for Academic Purposes taking an intercultural rhetoric perspective, comparing writing conventions and discursive features in research articles and other academic genres, in English published internationally and in parallel texts published locally in other languages. More recently, research has also looked at variations in genres written in English by scholars from different language and cultural backgrounds, mainly Anglophones vs. non-Anglophones. In addition, research has also been carried out into the extent of use of English in several academic contexts and the scholars' attitudes, perceptions and views towards its international role (e.g. , Pelersen and Shaw 2002; Duszak and Lekowicz 2008; Flowerdew and Li 2009). Several such studies have also been recently undertaken in the Spanish context (e.g., Fernandez Polo and Cal Varela 2009; Perez-Llantada et al. 2010; Ferguson et al. 2011).

    The research presented in this chapter contributes to the exploration of current practices of Spanish scholars when publishing their research outcomes internationally in English. In particular, we seek to unveil the most commonly reported problems and strategies used by Spanish scholars in the writing processes towards publication when working in two fields: Chemistry and Business. The research is based on data drawn from the ENEIDA database, obtained through an online survey (Moreno et af. 2013) answered by 1,717 Spanish scholars atfive Spanish institutions.

    We will focus on the results obtained from questions enquiring about their beliefs about the effect of their mother tongue on the evaluation of their texts, their particular experiences in publishing international research articles in English, particular difficulties in the drafting of their texts, the writing strategies used- particularly in terms of the "literacy brokers" (Lillis and Curry 2010) they resort to-the effort they put into it and the satisfaction gained as a result, and their perceived needs in the development of strategies to improve their academic writing skills.

    The two disciplines can be considered rather internationalised in that a great deal of research is produced and consumed in English, although to varying degrees in each of them. Whereas Business Spanish scholars still publish research in Spanish with a more local readership in mind, Spanish Chemistry scholars consider that all research has to be necessarily reported in English. This different degree of internationalisation of the fields of study brings with it different rhythms in the enculturation processes for international communication in English and also different difficulties and uses of writing strategies. The results obtained from the survey have important pedagogical implications with regard to the needs of Spanish scholars in the two fields. Also, implications regarding the progressive consolidation of English as a lingua franca in different disciplinary contexts will be considered.