Is this language imperialism?

Weekender
LANGUAGE

English is the language of science

In these monthly discussions we answer one question about language in PNG and beyond. This month we are looking at the dominant role of English as the language of science and ask ourselves if this is a kind of language imperialism.

PAPUA New Guinean scientists are lucky because they are educated in English. Papua New Guinean scientists are unlucky because they are educated in English. There is truth in both of these statements. How can that be?
In the past hundred years—the years that have seen the development of a modern education system in PNG—English has become the most widely used language in science. In some fields of study, 90 per cent of all published articles and books worldwide are now written and published in English.
This is particularly so in the physical sciences and medicine. But it was not always so. In the Middle Ages Latin, Arabic, and Chinese were the vehicles of scientific writing, while in the 1700s and 1800s, German and French were more useful than English in many academic subjects.

English becomes important
But as Great Britain spread its language with its empire and the United States became a home for scientists from around the world in and after World War II, English became more important.
Today many scientists even in western Europe prefer to publish in English rather than in their own languages.
The advantage to having one common language is obvious— scientists in Germany can write an article and know that their colleagues in Japan or Brazil will be able to read it. Moreover, academics from around the world can work on a project together or attend a conference without needing interpreters.
But there are drawbacks as well. Using English as the common language of science means that people who grow up with English as their mother tongue have an obvious advantage. For them, writing a scientific article or giving a lecture means concentrating on the content they want to deliver.
For the majority of people who are not native speakers of English, besides the content, using correct English wording or avoiding English grammar mistakes needs just as much concentration. Often this causes much stress, especially if the person normally uses another language at work.
Moreover, not everyone is good with foreign languages. I have often felt sorry for students who have obvious talent in science, but who just are not good at learning another language. If they are native English speakers growing up in an English-speaking country, this is not a problem, but if they are not native English speakers, their language difficulties may make it impossible for them ever to succeed in their chosen field.

The advantage to having one common language is obvious— scientists in Germany can write an article and know that their colleagues in Japan or Brazil will be able to read it.
In Our Language- a journal of Pacific research in Pacific languages.

English speakers become lazy
Having English as the default language also makes English speakers lazy at learning languages. In some Australian universities it is now possible to get even a PhD without showing any proof that one can read scientific articles in any language other than English. This makes English-speaking researchers tend to ignore scientific writing in other languages.
Sometimes this can be dangerous. Some years ago, Chinese scientists found out that pigs were being infected with bird flu so that this disease had the potential to infect other mammals, including humans. This critical finding was ignored by scientists in English-speaking countries because it was published in Chinese, a language few of them were reading. Bird flu spread further around the world because of this linguistic illiteracy.
If scientists do all their work in English, they can sometimes find it difficult to express their ideas in their own language. I remember a conversation I had with a younger university colleague exchanging ideas for a new research project. We were speaking in the tok ples we both speak. At the end of our hour-long conversation, she asked if I could email her a summary of our conversation in English so that she could analyse it further. Even though we were speaking in her native language, she found it easier to organise her thoughts about an academic project in English than in her ancestral language.
When scientists get used to writing up their findings in English and not in the language of the community, ordinary people with limited English skills find it difficult to access that knowledge.

Pacific scholars stand up
Recognising this, Pacific scholars in New Zealand recently started In Our Language, an online journal (at https://iol.ac.nz/iol/index), where translations of scientific articles about the Pacific will be published in Pacific languages, including Tok Pisin.
The first article has already appeared, an article translated into Fijian about — appropriately — kava.
This desire to connect community and academic research has led many Màori scholars in recent years to present their PhD dissertations in Màori, not English. This has the advantage of bringing research back to the community, but means that without translation into English, their findings are silent for the rest of the world.
Perhaps a better method was that followed by pioneer PNG historian Professor John Waiko, who wrote his PhD dissertation in his native Binandere language, but with an English translation as an appendix so that others could benefit from his research.
There is no easy answer to the question of the language of our research. All ethical researchers need to balance the need to share their research and to communicate their findings to their community. Similarly, there is no easy answer as to whether PNG scientists are lucky or unlucky to have had their education in English.
In the end, they are both.

  • Professor Volker is a linguist living in New Ireland, and an Adjunct Professor in The Cairns Institute, James Cook University in Australia. He welcomes your language questions for this monthly discussion at http://[email protected]. Or continue the discussion on the Facebook Language Toktok page.