ELF and Publishing in English: A corpus-driven analysis of Economics Academic Discourse

Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia D

Corso di Laurea Magistrale in

LINGUE PER LA COMUNICAZIONE NELL ’ IMPRESA E NELLE ORGANIZZAZIONI INTERNAZIONALI

ELF and Publishing in English:

A corpus-driven analysis of Economics Academic Discourse

Prova finale di:

Francesca Vitali Relatore:

Prof.ssa Marina Bondi

Correlatore

Prof.ssa Silvia Cavalieri

Anno Accademico 2017/2018

ABSTRACT

English

The introduction of innovative technologies coupled with the implementation of new international macroeconomic policies enabled greater commercial and cultural exchange during the second half of the 20^th century. It is in this scenario that the English language became the official language of international business, diplomacy, international organizations and so forth. Nowadays, English is recognized as the Global Lingua Franca, and scholars coined the acronym ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) to broadly refer to the range of varieties of the English language arising nowadays in many fields for international communication purposes.

The paper focuses primarily on the role of English within the academic realm with an emphasis on how it is influencing the work of academics. Given the importance awarded to English in the academia, it is not surprising that the majority of scholars now aim at having their work published in international English-medium specialized journals, which have come to be regarded as the most prestigious and influential ones. Before publication all written academic work goes through a series of editing and proofreading processes which often go unnoticed. However, the intervention of third parties, here referred to as literacy brokers, have an impact on texts and on their final outcome.

Therefore, it is of great interest to get a better understanding of how literacy brokering activities are now contributing to shaping English academic discourse.

The first chapter of the thesis opens with an overview of the processes which led English to acquire its present role and introduces the fundamental concepts of community of practice and discourse communities. The central part of the chapter explores the core concept of academic discourse, the primary object of study of this thesis, and how it has been examined so far. The last section draws attention to the publishing practices adopted by academics working in a global academic environment, describing the challenges non-native speakers face when aiming at international outlets, and the role of literacy brokers in the text production process.

The second chapter is dedicated to the methodology and the rationale of the study. The first sections introduce discourse analysis and outline the main approaches to the study of discourse, continuing with the description of the core concept of corpus-based discourse analysis, which constitutes the basis of the methodological approach adopted. The study examines two corpora of economic journal articles, respectively comprising unpublished journal articles written by English non-native speakers and published journal articles collected from twelve highly ranked economic academic journals and supposedly written by English non-native speakers. The corpora were analysed using Dr. Laurence Anthony's software Antconc. The main objective of the study of the two corpora is hypothesizing the

communicative purpose of specific language choices and identifying a set of defining features of published English for international academic purposes.

The final chapters present the results emerged from the comparison of the two reference corpora. The linguistic aspects analysed have been selected according to quantitative and qualitative criteria, i.e.

frequency of use, keyword lists, concordances and collocations, and are examined from the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic perspectives. To further test the validity of the hypothesis formulated, the first corpus of unpublished journal articles is compared with a third corpus comprising the retrievable corresponding published versions of some of the unpublished articles included in the first corpus.

Italiano

Nella seconda metà del XX secolo, l'introduzione di tecnologie innovative insieme all'implementazione di nuove politiche macroeconomiche internazionali hanno permesso un incremento degli scambi commerciali e culturali. È in questo scenario che la lingua inglese è diventa la lingua ufficiale degli affari, delle organizzazioni internazionali, della diplomazia, etc. Oggigiorno, l’inglese è riconosciuto come lingua franca mondiale e gli studiosi hanno coniato l'acronimo ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) per fare riferimento alle varianti della lingua inglese sviluppate in vari ambiti per comunicare efficacemente a livello internazionale.

La tesi si concentra principalmente sul ruolo dell'inglese applicato all’ambito accademico, focalizzando l’attenzione su come questo stia influenzando il lavoro degli accademici. Data l'importanza attribuita alla lingua inglese, non sorprende che la maggior parte degli studiosi ora aspiri ad ottenere la pubblicazione del proprio lavoro in riviste internazionali specializzate pubblicate in lingua inglese, oggi riconosciute come le più prestigiose e influenti. La pubblicazione di un testo è solitamente preceduta da processi di correzione delle bozze e di editing che spesso passano inosservati. Tuttavia, l'intervento di figure professionali dell’editoria ha un impatto sul testo e ne influenzano l’esito finale. Pertanto, è importante acquisire una maggiore comprensione di come le attività di traduzione, revisione, editing, etc. stiano contribuendo a plasmare il linguaggio accademico specializzato.

Il primo capitolo della tesi si apre con una panoramica dei processi che hanno portato l'inglese ad acquisire il suo ruolo attuale e introduce i concetti fondamentali di community of practice e discourse community. La parte centrale del capitolo riguarda l’oggetto principale dello studio, si concentra cioè sulle caratteristiche fondamentali del linguaggio accademico specializzato, per finire con la descrizione delle pratiche editoriali attuali adottate dagli accademici e il ruolo di editori, revisori, curatori, etc. nel processo di produzione di un testo.

Il secondo capitolo è dedicato alla metodologia e al materiale analizzato. Qui viene introdotto il concetto di analisi del discorso e vengono delineati i principali approcci a questo tipo di studio, continuando con la descrizione dei concetti di corpus e linguistica dei corpus. Lo studio presentato esamina due corpora di articoli di ambito economico scritti in inglese, rispettivamente costituiti da articoli inediti scritti da non-madrelingua e articoli pubblicati presumibilmente scritti da non- madrelingua estratti da dodici riviste accademiche di prestigio. I corpora sono stati analizzati utilizzando il software di analisi testuale Antconc creato dal Prof. Laurence Anthony. L'obiettivo principale dello studio dei due corpora è formulare ipotesi riguardo allo scopo comunicativo di determinate scelte linguistiche e identificare alcune peculiarità della lingua inglese in testi destinati alla pubblicazione internazionale.

Gli ultimi capitoli sono dedicati alla presentazione dei risultati emersi dalla comparazione dei due corpora di riferimento. Gli elementi testuali oggetto di analisi sono stati selezionati secondo criteri quantitativi e qualitativi, i.e. la frequenza d’uso, l’osservazione dell’utilizzo delle parole chiave in contesto e delle relative collocazioni, ed esaminati dal punto di vista semantico, sintattico e pragmatico. Per testare ulteriormente la validità dei risultati, il primo corpus è stato messo a confronto con un terzo costituito dalle pubblicazioni di alcuni degli articoli inediti inclusi nel primo corpu

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction………..……1

PART A: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. ELF AND THE IMPACT ON THE ACADEMIC COMMUNITY………..…..3

1.1 Introduction………..……..3

1.2 English as a Global Language………..…..4

1.3 Communities of Speakers………..…….8

1.4 Academic Discourse……….….12

1.4.1 Research into Academic Discourse………..……….13

1.5 Publishing in English in a global context……….…….14

1.6 Literacy mediation and the impact of literacy brokers in English-medium text production………21

1.7 Conclusions………..…………..25

2. DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND CORPUS DESIGN: AN OVERVIEW………27

2.1 Introduction………27

2.2 An introduction to discourse analysis………27

2.2.1 Forms of discourse analysis……….………..…………...…29

2.3 Corpus discourse analysis………....……..32

2.3.1 What is a corpus………....…………32

2.3.1.1 Types of corpora………34

2.3.2 What is corpus linguistics?...36

2.4 Designing a corpus……….39

2.4.1 Sampling the material………..………...………40

2.4.2 Defining the size………..….43

2.4.3 Balance and representativeness………45

2.5 Conclusions………48

3. CORPORA COMPOSITION AND METHODOLOGY………..50

3.1 Introduction………50

3.2 Corpora composition and data collection………...51

3.2.1 SciELF – Economics……….……51

3.2.2 Corpus of Published Economics Research Articles………..55

3.2.3 Published SciELF – Economics………57

3.2.4 Remarks……….60

3.3 Methodological approach………...60

3.4 Conclusions………62

4. RESEARCH FINDINGS……….63

4.1 Introduction………..……..63

4.2 The notion of metadiscourse………..63

4.2.1 The interactional model………...……..65

4.3 Texts and methods………..66

4.4 Positive keywords: features of unedited final drafts of research articles………...67

4.4.1 Interactive resources………..68

4.4.1.1 Evidentials………...68

4.4.1.2 Frame markers……….69

4.4.1.3 Endophoric markers……….71

4.4.2 Interactional resources………..……72

4.4.2.1 Hedges……….72

4.4.2.2 Attitude markers……….….73

4.4.2.3 Self-mentions………..……….74

4.4.3 Summary……….………..76

4.5 Negative keywords: features of published economics research articles…………...……….76

4.5.1 Interactive resource……….…..77

4.5.1.1 Transitional markers………77

4.5.1.2 Endophoric markers………....….78

4.5.1.3 Evidential markers………...…………79

4.5.2 Interactional resources……….……….80

4.5.2.1 Hedging devices………...…...80

4.5.2.2 Boosters………...………81

4.5.2.3 Self-mentions……….………….82

4.5.3 Summary………...84

4.6. Published SciELF – Economics: a further examination of economic academic published discourse………..………...…………85

4.6.1 Texts and methods……….……85

4.6.2 Positive keywords analysis from a metadiscursive perspective………....85

4.6.3 Summary………87

Conclusions……….……..88

Bibliography……….……….…90

Sitography……….94

1 Introduction

During the past decades, the process of globalisation affected almost every aspect of the world we now live in, and the communication field is no exception. With a considerable increase in international business exchange, the launching of new more streamlined means of communication, and the introduction of international academic programs promoting knowledge exchange within the academic community, a new need for a common language arose. It is in this context that the English language gained its recognised role of Global Lingua Franca, commonly referred to as ELF.

Nowadays it the language learnt and spoke by the vast majority of the world population, the most being non-native speakers, who learn it to be able to communicate across their national boundaries for countless reasons. Of course, given its status, English has also become the international language of academic communication. Moreover, English-medium specialised academic journals are now regarded as the most prestigious outlets. Therefore, all scholars who aspire to introduce new theories and share their research findings with the international academic community by having their work published on the most highly ranked academic journals are tacitly forced to write and publish their work in English. This poses new challenges to non-native English users, whose command of the English language might not be equivalent to that of a native speaker. Therefore, to ensure their work meets the high standards of international academic journals, scholars increasingly seek the support of literacy brokers (Lillis and Curry 2010), namely editors, proofreaders, reviewers and English native- speaking professionals, who instead might have the skills to edit the work of scholars to make it more

‘publishable’.

This paper aims at investigating the impact of the work of these figures on the outcome of research articles, in this particular case of economics and business-related journal articles. To identify the aspects on which literacy brokers intervene, we compared two corpora, the SciELF – Economics corpus of unedited final drafts of unpublished research articles written by English non-native users, and the Corpus of Economics Published Research Article (CPERA), which includes published research articles retrieved from the online versions of some of the most influential international academic journals of the business and economics domain. To highlight the most salient differences between the corpora and consequently elaborate hypotheses regarding the impact of literacy brokers, we examined a keywords list elaborated through AntConc 3.5.7 and searched for metadiscursive elements pointing out the relevant differences between the two corpora under scrutiny. To further validate our findings, we decided to introduce a third smaller corpus, the Published SciELF – Economics corpus composed by the available published versions of some of the texts included in the SciELF – Economics corpus.

2 This paper is divided into two main sections. The first one (Chapters 1 and 2), titled "Literature Review", provides an overview of the existing literature concerning ELF, the notions of discourse and speech community, discourse analysis and corpus linguistics with the aim of providing a theoretical framework to research project. The second section (Chapters 3 and 4), named

"Methodology and Analysis" focuses on the practical aspects of this research project and represents the core of the dissertation. In this section, we present the materials, the methodology adopted for conducting the analysis, and we discuss our findings.

3

CHAPTER 1

ELF AND THE IMPACT ON THE ACADEMIC COMMUNITY

1.1 Introduction

By the end of the 20^th century, the world was going through the second wave of globalization, which had first started in the 18^th century and interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. The post-World War II age was a time of significant change and progress in many fields, especially business and technology. In wealthier countries, businesses grew from local to global thanks to the enforcement of new commercial agreements between nations. The implementation of new international macroeconomic policies also benefited more deprived areas of the world, in the long run, thus paving the way for the emergence of new players in the global economy, for example, China, India, and Brazil. Of course, the expansion of the economy to a global scale did not occur without posing new challenges to those engaging in international commercial exchange. The introduction of advanced communication and information technologies undoubtedly contributed to making communication more streamlined, and the world feel smaller. Computers, emails and instant messaging programs allowed real-time interactions between people from opposite sides of the world. However, traders were experiencing the need to communicate with people with whom they did not share the same cultural background, and most importantly the same language. How could they efficiently conduct business without fully understanding their interlocutors and vice versa? It is in this scenario that English acquired the role of Global Lingua Franca, becoming the language learned by and known to the vast majority of people. Not only it was adopted as the language of business, but it also spread to almost every other sector, such as transportation, diplomacy, and higher education. The first sections of this chapter explore the factors which led to the English language becoming the most used Lingua Franca all over the globe. Later, the attention shifts to the specific uses of ELF according to its field of application, focusing mainly on the academic context, and how the current status of the English language has affected the process of knowledge dissemination and the work of academics, especially concerning publication activities. It goes without saying that the academic world is no exception when it comes to the recognition awarded to the English language. Not only a growing number of non- Anglophone universities are introducing degrees taught in English entirely, but also English-medium academic journals are now recognized as the most influential ones. Therefore, it is not surprising that scholars are increasingly pressured to write in English and submit their work for publication in highly ranked academic journals. But how are scholars managing their work within this new scenario, especially multilingual academics coming from non-Anglophone countries? The final sections of this

4 chapter are dedicated to analysing the challenges scholars face when writing for international publication, to whom they reach out to for having their text proofread before its submission or publication, and how the intervention of third parties influences the text production process and its outcome.

1.2 English as a Global Language

In the last century, the world of communication has changed in many aspects. Not too long ago, people could only rely on telephones and letters to stay in touch with those who lived too far. Thanks to the significant accomplishments in the field of technology in the past decades, the concept of distance has been revolutionized, and the process of communicating has been greatly streamlined.

For instance, letters took days, weeks, or even months to be delivered, while emails take just a few seconds. People are now able to communicate across the globe at any time of day and in real time.

The development of the means of communication brought together communities, cultures, markets leading to the creation of the globalized world we live in.

The introduction of new technologies coupled with that of modern political and economic strategies allowed the overcoming of barriers creating new possibilities and openness. Everything happens on a global scale, and at a faster pace now. People travel across the globe; companies can build subsidiaries in foreign countries boosting the global economy, students and researchers have the chance to share their knowledge and collaborate to reach further accomplishments in every field of research. These are only a few of the effects of the unprecedented phenomenon experts labelled with the term Globalization. However, with change comes challenge. How to deal with an inconvenient when traveling abroad? How to do business with foreigners? How to share a breakthrough in research? Globalization brought about the need for a shared communicative code, a language spoken and understood by a significant portion of the global population. This tool was identified in the English language, which now people recognized as the global language.

The role of the English language, and how it acquired its status has been the focus of research and debates. Scholars have concluded that nothing about the English language could have led to predicting that it would become the most widely spoken language, and they pointed out that its popularity does not derive from a linguistic superiority regarding advantages and disadvantages.

Instead, researchers explained its predominance as the result of a combination of historical, political and economic factors.

5 The main reason behind the spread of the English language lies behind the activities of its native speakers over the centuries. To begin with, the Pilgrim Fathers who sailed off the British shore were the ones who first introduced the English language on the American soil in the seventeenth century.

This historical event could be considered the milestone in the spread of the English language across the globe. By 1640, New England was home to 25,000 English speakers. Nowadays, hundreds of millions of people use English as their first language across the world. However, the British colonialism is not the only contributor to the spread of English. Trading activities also brought it to areas where there were no significant settlements, but where English soon became an essential means of communication among traders and sailors. It resulted in the rise of pidgins and new varieties of the English language. In most of these regions, English is still used as a second language today, and the new types are now referred to as ‘outer circle¹ varieties', ‘New Englishes' or ‘World Englishes' (Mauranen & Ranta 2009, p. 1). Therefore, it could be said that the British Empire led the foundations for the English language to become a global lingua franca. In the twentieth century, the development of the US industry, technology and science, the role of the Americans in winning the Second World War, and the increasing attractiveness of the US culture gave a further impulse to the spread of the English language which became even more present and widely known. It is currently applied in many sectors as the primary language, such as air-traffic control, diplomacy, technology and academic research (Melchers & Show 2011, p. 6). Despite English being the official language of several countries across the world, the majority of its users are non-native speakers. To them, English is a tool to communicate with people with whom they do not share their mother tongue. In this context, it is important to touch on the two different settings in which the English language is put to use:

foreign language or lingua franca situations, respectively where it is employed to speak mainly with native speakers or where it is the only language interlocutors from different linguistic backgrounds share. Nowadays, English has become the default lingua franca, and it is used mainly in lingua franca situations. It has become the language known to most people, and those who have learned it as a foreign language have by far outnumbered the native-speaking population (Mauranen 2012, p. 2). In this new scenario, new questions arose regarding how these changes are affecting the English language or whether non-native speakers will reshape it in the long run. The emergence of English as a global language has only recently become the focus of investigations aimed at shedding light on

1 This definition was first introduced by Kachru when devising his model to describe the spread of English. He elaborated a classification based on three concentric circles: the Inner Circle (representing the countries where English is the official language), the Outer Circle (representing the countries where English became the second language) and the Expanding Circle (representing the countries where English is a foreign language). Despite the first appreciation, Kachru’s model was later criticized because it did not recognize language ownership to specific groups of English speakers.

Consequently, Kachru proposed a revised model to replace the concentric circles with vertical ovals with the aim of stressing an idea of mobility (Poppi 2012).

6 the aspects mentioned above, its linguistic features and its application in different social and cultural contexts.

In a world where the English language is the primary medium of international communication, it is fundamental to understand how it works, to identify its mutations, to grasp how it adapts to different settings. It is clear that ELF is a vast and yet unexplored subject. Of course, there are several possible approaches to the study of this current topic depending on the research purpose. Some researchers approached the issue from a cultural perspective focusing on how L1s influence the way non-native users communicate in lingua franca situations, others have drawn their attention to the linguistic aspects of ELF, and conducted research to identify phonetic, phonological, lexical and syntactic trends. Others took another route instead and focused on the use of ELF in different communicative settings. With this perspective in mind, scholars devised the acronym ESP, which stands for English for Specific Purposes, to refer to the English language taught and learned as a second language with the aim of using it in a specific domain. In the early days, the need to communicate across languages concerned mainly the commerce and technology, but with the rapid spread of English across the globe, it expanded to other fields (Paltridge & Starfield 2013, p. 23).

In 1997, David Graddol had already identified twelve major international domains of use of English (Graddol 1997, p. 8):

▪ Working language of international organizations and conferences

▪ Scientific publication

▪ International banking, economic affairs, and trade

▪ Advertising for global brands

▪ Audio-visual cultural products

▪ International tourism

▪ Tertiary education

▪ International safety

▪ International law

▪ As a ‘relay language’ in interpretation and translation

▪ Technology transfer

▪ Internet communication

7 English is now the primary medium of communication in most of the domains listed above. Over the years, the use of English as the working language has considerably expanded, same as the number of people using it in their workplace on a daily basis. Given the number of contexts in which English functions as a lingua franca, scholars identified as many varieties of ELF. For instance, Louhiala- Salminen coined the acronym BELF² (Business English as a Lingua Franca) to refer to ELF as the shared language of the business community used solely to establish communication, conduct business, and achieve corporate goals (Poppi 2012, p. 130). Nowadays, English has also become the unquestionable lingua franca of academic communication. More and more often, a considerable number of academics choose to redact papers and reports of national and international interest in English, and an increasing number of universities are adopting English as the preferred language of teaching as well. These choices not only allow a more significant flow of information but also it makes knowledge available on a global scale.

Business and academia are two of the most productive and researched realms of use of ELF due to the high frequency of exchanges between professionals from all over the world. However, for this paper, the focus will be on ELF in the academic context. The use of ELF in academia is a field of research that began to attract scholars’ attention after the ELFA³ project was launched in 2001. The work of Nordic universities later followed that of the University of Helsinki. The growing scholarly interest in the subject is mainly due to a process of internationalization of higher education institutions which has seen English becoming the preferred language for communicating in higher education institutions. Given this wave of change in the academic world, researchers felt the need to investigate the effects of this recent phenomenon on language policies and practices.

It is important to remind that universities have always been international to a certain extent.

Researchers and students have been traveling and sharing knowledge since the Middle Ages. For centuries, they relied on Latin which functioned as the lingua franca of the scientific and academic communities. In the late nineteenth century, education became accessible to a broader portion of the population, and the number of universities increased after the end of the Second World War. National tongues were then the official languages of higher education, mirroring the growing power of nation-

2 In this context, it is essential to bear in mind the difference between BELF and IBE (International Business English).

Despite both belonging to the business area, there is a substantial distinction to point out. The former is shaped by its users and has the sole purpose to function as a shared communicative code to allow communication, while the latter was devised as the native-speakers specialized language for business (Poppi 2012, pp. 128-130).

3 The project English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings (ELFA) of the University of Helsinki provides the basis for researching and understanding this new variety of the English language. It is composed of the ELFA corpus project and the SELF-project (Studying in English as a Lingua Franca).

8 states. In this scenario, scholars turned their interest towards learning modern languages to keep being able to participate in international research activities and keeping up with the latest breakthroughs.

Nowadays, the scenery has considerably changed. The percentage of young people involved in higher education is unprecedentedly high, and many of them choose to either take their degree outside their home country or participate in exchange programmes promoted by universities and international organizations, such as the ERASMUS funded by the European Union. Students and teachers have now countless opportunities to gain international academic experience. For this reason, the use of a lingua franca has become even more fundamental. It goes without saying that the preferred language for teaching and academic communication is now English. Not only it is the chosen language of the majority of scientific publications, but also it has become the leading language of instruction in a large number of departments and faculties in non-English speaking countries. Master’s programmes are more often entirely taught in English to provide degrees with global value, and research projects usually involve international teams who adopt English as the primary medium of communication even when there are no native speakers among the participants.

Therefore, it is clear that the global status of the English language is influencing the work of academics in the way they produce and exchange knowledge all over the world. The interest in how students, professors, and researchers communicate both verbally and in writing is increasing, and extensive research is being conducted to respond to the needs of the growing academic community of English users by providing detailed insights into academic discourse in the era of globalization.

1.3 Communities of Speakers

Before moving on to discussing the concept of academic discourse, it is essential to provide an overview of the notion of language community. This term has been introduced to refer to ‘social units that regulate linguistic stability and change and provide a home to all language use’ (Mauranen 2012, p. 17). The concept of community is of great importance when it comes to describing a language.

However, the use of this word is controversial, as it carries an idea of ‘homogeneity and idealization’

which is rather misleading (Lillis & Curry 2010, p. 39). The traditional idea of community-based on

‘location and low mobility' (Mauranen 2012, p. 19) has become unsuitable to describe the global and transient communities of the 21^st century. Therefore, new non-local models must be adopted to define new language communities successfully. In this research context, the concepts of community of practice and discourse community are of high relevance.

9 In 1991, Jean Lave, anthropologist, and Etienne Wenger, computer scientist, introduced the notion of community of practice in relation with the idea of situated learning. They maintained that learning is a situated activity as well as a social process, and learners are members of communities of practitioners which possess their own distinctive set of sociocultural practices. In other words, learning should not be viewed as an abstract process taking place in the learners’ minds, but rather as an activity interconnected with the socio-cultural environment in which learners act. Etienne Wenger focused his research on the notion of community of practice. In article published in 2015, he defined communities of practice as ‘groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.' (Wenger-Trayner, E. & Wenger-Trayner B. 2015). Later on, Penelope Eckert provided a more general definition putting a particular stress on the idea of group activity rather than on common passion or shared interest. She defines a community of practice as ‘a collection of people who engage on an ongoing basis in some common endeavour’

(Eckert 2006, pp. 683-685). Her conception of the notion of community of practice is based neither on common abstract attributes, such as gender or class to, nor on mere copresence, but rather on

‘shared practice’ as Eckert writes (Ibid.). The members of community of practice develop procedures, principles, viewpoints, conventions of expression, and each one of them takes on these practices depending on their position within the group, and on the role the community holds in the larger social scene. Communities of practice constitute one of the most suitable contexts to analyse the situational use of language, language changes, and the process of its standardization within the community. With regard to the latter point, Eckert points out two conditions she considers fundamental in the development of communal social meaning: shared experience and commitment to mutual understanding. All members of a community of practice cooperate in constructing ‘mutual sense- making' regarding their shared activity, their ways of participating and so on, and in positioning themselves as a community in respect to the surrounding environment (Ibid.). In comparison with the first definition of the notion of community of practice, Eckert’s poses fewer limitations, thus making it applicable to language communities. For the sake of understanding the concept of community of practice in all of its aspects, it is also important to highlight that the ideas of geographical location or long-term stability are not defining traits of a community of practice. Instead, face-to-face interaction is a fundamental condition for a community of practice to exist. Given these determinants, groupings in the academic or business fields can therefore be labelled as communities of practice. A suitable example to better understand the nature of a community of practice could be the community of ELF users. They start interacting when they are part of a working team, a student group or a task force to name a few contexts which require ELF speakers to come together. These groups are most often temporary, but in some cases, they might last for years. In this context, it is necessary to wonder

10 whether the common language used to communicate is shaped by its users and especially how. It goes without saying that the effects on language varies according to the life of the group. On one hand, short-term groups are likely to work towards simply obtaining the necessary level of mutual understanding, but on the other hand long-term ones are more likely to reach the point of even establishing language group norms. Group norms are not strictly related to group members, meaning that changing in the group formation will not affect the participants' way of speaking within the group.

However, when participants transfer from one group to another may apply the same language norms to similar contexts, thus spreading the norms further, and becoming ‘agents of diffusing linguistic innovation’ (Mauranen 2012, p. 20). The conceptualization of community of practice offered a new perspective, allowing scholars to focus on the relationship between general linguistic practices and the meaning that speakers begin associating to them in the community’s context of language use. It allowed understanding that linguistic conventions do not precede language use and that the latter is an ongoing learning process (Eckert 2006, pp. 683-685) given ever-changing nature of the surrounding environment.

The notion of community of practice is connected to that of discourse communities which was first conceptualized by John Swales in 1990 to respond to the many controversies scholars had previously raised regarding this topic. The concept of discourse community was introduced to identify the relationship between textual genres and social contexts in the academic environment (Mauranen 2012). Swales’ work provided a solution to the vague definitions that scholars elaborated over the years and a list of criteria which would help to identify discourse communities. Before discussing the defining criteria of discourse communities, it is important to recall Swales’ distinction between discourse communities and speech communities. The concept of speech community has been the object of debate for a long time. Initially, it was identified as a group of people sharing linguistic norms, which would, therefore, imply that all speakers of a given language would be part of the same speech community. Later on, some scholars adopted a different point of view focusing on usage standards rather than on linguistic norms only, while others proposed a mixed set of defining criteria.

Dell Hymes (Swales 1990, p. 23) is one of the latter’s, and he defines a speech community as ‘a community sharing knowledge of rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech. Such sharing comprises knowledge of at least one form of speech, and knowledge also of its patterns of use. Both conditions are necessary’. Hymes puts forward the idea of speech community as a group of people sharing both linguistic and functional norms regarding the performance and interpretation of speech in whichever form it might be produced. In his research output, Swales argues whether discourse communities are therefore to be considered a subcategory of speech communities, and he maintains that a distinction ought to be made. He puts forward three main reasons to justify his position. First

11 of all, Swales believes writing to be a stronger modifier of the way people communicate being them often engaged in this literary activity, for it brings communication beyond the local and parochial dimension. Secondly, he emphasizes the distinction between a ‘sociolinguistic grouping' and a

‘sociorhetorical' one. While in a sociolinguistic community the principal factors influencing language use are mainly social, in a socio-rhetorical community they are mainly functional, meaning that the members of a discourse community unite around common objectives which have priority over socialization or solidarity. Therefore, in this case, the conventional ways of expression are primarily shaped by the necessities posed by the discourse community's shared objective. Last but not least, Swales brings in the structure of society to further validate his point. He defines speech communities as ‘centripetal' and discourse communities as ‘centrifugal'. According to him, a speech community

‘inherits its membership by birth, accident or adoption.' On the contrary, a discourse community acquires members ‘by persuasion, training or relevant qualification,' which means it divides people into groups according to their occupation or their interests, rather than absorbing its members indistinctively as in the case of speech communities (Swales 1990, pp. 23-24).

To further clarify his conception of the notion of discourse community, Swales identified six defining traits characterizing discourse communities (Ibid., pp. 24-27):

▪ A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.

This first criterion is quite straightforward and constitutes one of the central prerogatives of discourse communities which is the existence of a shared goal.

▪ A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among their members.

Members have to be able to gather, and use communication tools to interact with one another, and share information.

▪ A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.

The main scope of communication for members of a discourse community is sharing knowledge and opinions related to the common objective.

▪ A discourse community utilizes and possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.

Members typically agree on one or more forms and modes to share information and on a set of conventions of expression.

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▪ In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis.

Each discourse community develops its unique jargon to facilitate communication among its members.

▪ A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.

A discourse community exists when there is a certain number of participants considered necessary for it to exist. Also, all of its members ought to possess adequate expertise and knowledge of the shared objective.

As previously stated, the concepts of discourse communities and communities of practice show a degree of commonality indeed. Firstly, it is possible to pinpoint membership criteria in both cases.

Secondly, both are also ‘self-regulated' (Mauranen 2012, p. 20), for its members choose to be part of the community and to comply with internal rules. All members collaborate in building a set of shared linguistic standards and social meanings. Both concepts offer the possibility of focusing on the study of situated language use, and the correlation between social and linguistic variations. However, there is a fundamental difference between communities of practice and discourse communities. The former emphasizes the activities associated with a specific group and how its member take part in them, while the latter is useful to highlight the connection between discourse and a particular community.

Also, they differ in the role played by direct interaction. While face-to-face interaction between participants is a necessary prerequisite for the definition of a community of practice as such, discourse communities exist even though their members do not gather in person. It is for this reason that it is therefore appropriate to talk about academic discourse communities, a central concept to introduce that of academic discourse which is the object of the following section.

1.4 Academic Discourse

Ken Hyland defines academic discourse as ‘the ways of thinking and using language which exists in the academy' (Hyland 2009, p. 1). Teaching students, creating knowledge and spreading new concepts are all academic tasks which heavily rely on language to be successfully performed, given that books, journal articles, papers, conferences, and lectures, to name a few, are the principal means of knowledge construction and diffusion in the academia. However, academic discourse not only enables carrying out these central tasks, but also it contributes to the establishment of roles and relationships within educational institutions which constitute the backbone of universities, disciplines,

13 and the construction of information. Language is the instrument for identifying, understanding and writing about issues, and as previously explained, each community develops its own. This process contributes to the creation of different realities and identities. Hyland quotes Gee (Ibid., p. 1) to explain the close relationship between context and discourse. One cannot exist without the other.

Discourse is a broader concept than that of language. The role of language within a given social environment becomes clearer by emphasizing on discourse rather than on language. Discourse is therefore as a series of manifestations of specific functions within specific groups of individuals. It is the way academics interact, how they build knowledge, how they transmit it to novices and so on.

However, academic discourse should not be understood as a static set of practices. First of all, discourses differ between disciplines, forms of knowledge, methods, and argumentations, and second, they are of course influenced by their socio-political context. Therefore, in-depth study of this complicated subject matter is of high importance to fully understand it in all its facets and to gain a better a greater insight into the practices of the academic society.

1.4.1 Research into Academic Discourse

Research interest in the study of academic discourse has increased considerably during the last decades. A more practical one replaced the initial intuitive approach to the subject a more practical one, and attention was drawn to the actual use of language. Over the years, scholarly interest slowly moved towards specific genres first, then towards genres associated with particular disciplines, and finally, it turned to study of the ‘communicative purposes of spoken and written texts (Hyland 2009).

According to Hyland (Ibid., pp. 3-4), there are three main factors behind the growth of the interest towards academic discourse.

First is the increasing diversity of students in terms of age, social class and cultural background attending higher education institutions nowadays as a result of the implementation of new access policies. Many countries across Europe, Australia and Asia have registered a considerable expansion in the Higher Education sector over the past decades thanks to new social integration policies. A more culturally and socially diverse environment means that students bring a variety of identities, perceptions, and meanings to a greater variety of topics. These changes in the university student community affect the work of the teaching staff in the sense that now teachers cannot assume all students will have the literacy skills usually required to attend university courses due to a potential lack of the expected learning experiences. Therefore, professors are now facing the challenge of adjusting their teaching methods to respond to the changes in the student community. The second phenomenon Hyland identifies is the growing interest in teaching practices and learning processes of

14 funding councils. Over the years, universities have evolved into corporate institutions. Student fees have considerably risen and are now one of the significant sources of income, students resemble customers, and competition international recognition has acquired more relevance. As a consequence, there is more pressure to update curricula, to pay more attention to teaching and learning methods, and to allocate financial resources to train and accredit teaching staff. Last but not least, Hyland brings into the equation the spread of the English language within the academic context and its new status of international lingua franca of scholarship as a trigger of the research into academic discourse.

English has now become a necessary academic skill. A large number of university students attend universities abroad and take courses entirely taught in English. Also, the majority of Ph.D. students complete their doctoral studies abroad and choose to write their dissertations in English more and more often. All of the above affects the academic publishing practices of course. The vast majority of scientific journal articles are now published in English. This trend is spreading especially to countries where English is taught and learned as a foreign language, which means that academics are pressured to write and publish in English more than ever. It is clear that the affirmation of English as a global language has strongly influenced the work of academics in all of its aspects, including the production and distribution of knowledge. However, these recent phenomena are not the only possible explanations. They are to be coupled with more permanent factors to get a complete picture. When dealing with academic discourse, we cannot forget that it has always been associated with universally accepted knowledge and approved approaches to discussing it. In this regard, Hyland points out that the language of higher education institutions has now spread to other spheres of the reality we live in, such as bureaucracy and advertising to name a couple. That is because the language of science has always been regarded as a carrier of competence and prestige, and it is still perceived as a sign of recognition of the knowledgeable ones (Hyland 2009, pp. 4-5).

Having described briefly the main factors that have given an impulse to research academic discourse, it would be worth discussing the notion of discourse analysis and their different analytical approaches to the study of academic discourse. However, it will be the main topic of the next chapter. Before moving on to the more technical side of this work, it is fundamental for this paper to discuss in detail the impact of English as a global language on knowledge production practices, and the role of literacy brokers in the publishing process.

1.5 Publishing in English in a global context

The phenomenon of globalization has affected most of the aspects of our reality. Of course, the academic realm is no exception. Nowadays, all research, writing or publishing activity is strongly

15 related to new global practices and policies which now have a substantial impact on text production and knowledge dissemination. Lillis and Curry put forward the idea of academic writing as a social practice (Lillis & Curry 2010, p. 19). Here the word ‘practices’ functions as a link between specific occurrences of written language used by a writer and their situational and cultural context. This relationship exists on three different levels. Firstly, practice indicates that all instances of language use vary according to the actions of individuals within the social context. Secondly, practices become part of the identity of people and institutions. Thirdly, the concept of practice is useful to link conventional procedures and habits of producing and reading texts with the social framework they are part of, and which they also contribute to mold. In this framework, literacy acquires the status of social practice in all respects, and this conception is the core of the work of New Literacy Studies⁴ (NLS), a discipline focused on examining literacy practices in a variety of contexts, from an academic environment to locations such as prisons and places of employment. One of the strongest supporters of this approach is Brian Street, whose approach is discussed by Collins and Blot (2003). Street argues that specific reading and writing practices and their meanings within the social context can only be identified when applying a situated analytical approach. In other words, he believes that no literate practice can be considered separately from the social context to which it belongs (Collins & Blot 2003, p. 53). In Street’s perspective, the sociocultural environment in which literacy practices are embedded also becomes an ideological context. Therefore, Street conceptualizes an ‘ideological model of literacy’ (Ibid.) with the following characteristics:

▪ The meaning of literacy practices is conditioned by the social institution in which they take place.

▪ The forms of literacy we are familiar with are those which already have political and ideological meaning, and therefore, they cannot be devised separately from that significance and approached as autonomous notions.

▪ The teaching of a specific reading or writing practice interweaves with aspects such as social class division and the role of academic institutions.

▪ The teaching process of reading and writing determine the meaning of such practices for those who apply them.

▪ The plural ‘literacies’ is more suitable than the singular form ‘literacy' in this framework.

4 A group of literacy scholars put forward the new movement of New Literacy Studies (NLS) to better answer the need of understanding the new complexity of the process of meaning-making in the present world of multimodal and technologically-driven communication.

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▪ Scholars who adopt this model are aware of the problematic relationship between the study of

‘autonomous⁵’ features of literacy practices and that of the ‘ideological and political’ ones.

Street's work is just a small portion of the research that has been conducted about literacy practices and their social meaning. However, his study reveals an important point: all assumptions concerning the functions and the uses of literacy do not match the social significance of reading and writing practices because it varies according to time, culture, or context of use, as stated by Heath (Collins &

Blot 2003, p. 65).

This brief explanation of the ideological model served as an introduction to the concept of academic literacy/ies. Research about this topic draws on New Literacy Studies and understands scholarly text production as an activity influenced by particular cultural traditions, knowledge construction modes, and power connections. It involves issues related to unbalanced access to resources, as much as to cultural identity. Therefore, an academic literacy approach is not just the study of the relationship between academic texts and the context in which they are produced, but rather a method focusing also on the text production process, who writes the text, and following consequences. This research approach diverges from the traditional textual one and moves towards the analysis of academic writing produced by English non-native speakers (Lillis and Curry 2010, p. 21). The application of the social practice approach to understanding the factors involved in professional academic writing for publication entails bringing the notions of literacy mediation into the picture and taking into account the global role of the English in knowledge making.

Before going into a more detailed description of what literacy mediation means, it is important to first discuss the impact of the status of the English language on academic writing. This topic has unexpectedly received little attention so far. Most of the discussions regarding this matter focused on the status of English as a Lingua Franca, especially in the academic realm. As stated in the first paragraphs of this paper, it has been observed that currently, the majority of English users are non- native speakers, and learn it as a second, third or even fourth language. The favored role of the English language spoken by native speakers in contrast with the varieties of many English users is still an object of debate. Nevertheless, there are other relevant points which should be appropriately addressed, and which are often overlooked instead, such as the framework in which English-medium academic texts are redacted, distributed and assessed, or the evaluation policies which guarantee the

5 The autonomous notion of literacy entails the conception of literacy as a stand-alone phenomenon. In other words, the autonomous model of literacy recognizes reading and writing practices as independent from their sociocultural context (Collins & Blot 2003; Lillis & Curry 2010).

17 appropriate assessment of English-medium text production to name a few. Educational institutions recently started applying formal evaluating procedures to examine scholars’ academic productivity given the importance for academics to achieve the publication of their work in books or influential international journals (Ibid., p. 23). Nowadays, publishing is a fundamental achievement for academic professionals of all nationalities and fields of specialization. The twenty-first century has been a time of growth for the academic publishing industry. The amount of scientific publications gradually increased over the years, and English slowly became the primary medium of publication in several areas of study. Because of this relatively recent trend, scholars from non-Anglophone countries are now faced with the decision of selecting the linguistic medium of their work, something that professionals for whom English is their mother tongue take for granted. A central question to ask in this context is for whom scholars are writing. In addition to the extremely competitive academic marketplace, academic professionals have to deal with a much broader range of audiences. To better describe the complexity of this scenario, Lillis and Curry bring the attention to the previously discussed concepts of community of practice, discourse communities and the more limited speech community. They maintain that the notion of community of practice emphasizes the practices of a specific group and how its members engage in them, while that of discourse community stresses the connection between discourse and a given disciplinary community. Instead, the concept of speech community proves to be useful to underline the relationship between individuals and their sociolinguistic context (Ibid., p 40). Drawing on these definitions, they identify seven communities for which academic professionals write. They based their classification along three dimensions:

disciplinary, geolinguistic and applied vs theoretical (Ibid., p. 42).

▪ National academic community in the local national language

The national academic community is usually the main audience academic authors aspire to reach, and to do so they usually choose to write in the official national language, or languages when applicable. This choice is explicable by considering their wish to contribute to local research (Ibid.)

▪ National applied community in the local national language

The expression ‘applied community' in Lillis and Curry work (Ibid.) is used to refer to writing activity addressed to practitioners, in other words, those who could potentially put scholars' work into practice. The choice of turning to the practical realm and aiming publications at local applied audiences is dictated by the hope of improving the quality of practices in a given field in the national context through publication (Ibid., pp. 42-43).

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▪ National academic community in English medium

The practice of publishing in English in local national journals have always been quite common in the field of natural sciences. Now it is spreading to other areas, for example, social sciences and humanities. The primary factor for choosing to publish in an English-medium national journal is to reach a wider audience, something particularly relevant for scholars whose national language is only spoken within the national borders. In some cases, national journals published in English serve as ‘exchange capital’ where there are insufficient funds to purchase foreign academic journals. However, the primary determining factor of choosing to publish in an English-medium national journal is the number of speakers of the national language. For instance, scholars from Finland might prefer publishing in English given that Finnish has a relatively small number of native speakers. It would be different for scholars from Spain, given that Spanish is the language with the most substantial number of native speakers. Therefore, they are more likely to address their writings to the national community and choose national Spanish-medium journals for publishing their work. This way, they would still be able to reach both national and international audiences (Ibid., p. 44).

▪ ‘International’ academic community in the local national language

In smaller countries which official languages share linguistic features with that of other countries, scholars opt for writing in their national language, but with the aim of seeking publication opportunities across national borders to reach a wider audience. It is the case of Portuguese academic professionals for instance, for whom Brazilian journals represent possible outlets.

Hence, overseas communities become new transnational audiences thanks to a common language (Ibid, p. 45).

▪ Intranational academic community in English medium

In this context, the word intranational refers to the ‘use of English as a medium of communication within formally demarcated political/geographical boundaries, […] but also informal boundaries, […]’ (Ibid.). For instance, the first scenario is the case of the European Union. Theoretically, any national language recognized by the European Union institutions can be used to redact reports and articles, but the majority of scholars choose English instead.

▪ Other national academic community in national languages

Multilingual scholars might choose to publish in their second or third language and address their work to academic communities outside their national context. This choice is the result of many factors. First of all, the wish to contribute the knowledge production processes particularly

19 relevant to their field of specialization. Second, historical relations between nations which could mean that scholars from a particular country could be familiar with the language and customs of another one due to a history of colonization, for instance. Last but not least, journals might also invite researchers to make a contribution, or to publish a translation of their work (Ibid, p. 46).

▪ ‘International’ academic community in English

This last category includes all English-medium publications, produced mainly in English- speaking countries, notably the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The majority of scholars aspire to have their work published in these international specialized journals for several reasons. First of all, Anglo-American journals enjoy high prestige. Second, having an article published in these specialized journals represents a significant accomplishment. And third, scholars wish to reach a wider audience and contribute to international research developments (Ibid.).

The emerging picture reveals that basically scholars are pressured to publish in English for both personal and professional reasons. Their choice is also influenced by external factors, primarily by rewarding systems in which English-medium publications are accorded higher value than releases in any other national language. Nowadays, higher education institutions place greater importance on

‘international’ publications and less on the ‘national publications in the medium of local language’, which are usually addressed to a smaller national readership. The word ‘international’ now is usually associated with any English-medium publication outside the national context, or in some cases to journals which are included in Anglophone-center indices⁶ (Lillis & Curry 2010, p. 48-49). The topic of indices is not less relevant than the role of English when dealing with publishing practices. One could perhaps argue that they are closely related. Nowadays, journal rankings have acquired great relevance within higher education institutions. They now play a crucial role in determining which publication outlets should be regarded as more useful for pursuing career objectives and obtaining research funding. It goes without saying that in the globalized academic environment scholars now operate in, English-medium publications are undeniably more valued than those in any other national language. They are most highly ranked and receive the majority of institutional awards. Therefore, it

6 Eugene Garfield, creator of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), firstly introduced Indices. He devised an evaluating system to identify which journals were more relevant in the field of the natural sciences, which was later applied also to the social sciences and the humanities. The IF was intended as ‘the ratio of the amount of citations from a source in a given journal in a one-year span to the number of articles appeared in the same journal over the previous two years. The result is revised each year for updating ISI reports. Garfield theorized the Impact Factor (IF) first to accurately select the journals for his indexes, the Science Citation Index (SCI), the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI).

20 could be said that everything points towards an implicit bias towards English-medium specialized journals.

The prestige deriving from obtaining a publication in an ‘international’ English-medium journal affects scholars career also on a practical level. Such achievements increase the chances of receiving promotion and salary awards, and most importantly of developing broader research networks and obtaining research funding from higher education institutions, but also from both national or international governmental organizations. Grants from agencies outside the national context, for instance, European Union funding programs allow scholars to take part in research projects involving scholars from several European countries. Therefore, it is not surprising that a growing number of scholars feel pressured to publish in English rather than in their national language. Besides, English has acquired a certain degree of importance in the funding management and research review systems.

In some cases, research evaluation processes involve international scholars, here intended as scholars from outside national boundaries, who are very likely unfamiliar with the official national language.

Hence, the international nature of the evaluation committee necessarily entails the use of English as primary medium of communication. It enables them to appropriately evaluate the efficiency of the funded research facilities and the research output. In such cases, all reports ought to be submitted in English. Scholars work is therefore influenced greatly by the shift towards an ‘international’

evaluation system (Ibid., pp. 56-59).

In conclusion, English-medium publications seem to offer more concrete opportunities for scholars’

career development, together with the potential growth of departments’ reputation. With no doubt, this trend encourages scholars to engage in English-medium writing but it also introduces new obstacles for English non-native speakers. They might experience difficulties in getting the intended message across to the audience, or in adopting the appropriate style to make the text appear well written to the eyes of an English native speaker (Ventola & Mauranen 1991, p. 459). However, language proficiency is only one of the struggles multilingual scholars experience, especially if working in non-Anglophone contexts. Not only writing in a second or third language can be a mentally challenging and time-consuming activity, but also, in some cases, scholars might have limited access to resources or lack the possibility of improving their language skills to achieve a more proficient command of the English language. Of course, all of the mentioned difficulties are unknown to Anglophone-center scholars, who often take their native-speaker status for granted. In addition to the lack of confidence in English-medium writing, multilingual scholars are urged to maintain a certain level of academic activity in the local national language. Therefore, it is clear that scholars working outside Anglo-center contexts experience more significant internal and external pressures to