Attitudes of Taiwanese scholars toward English and Chinese as languages of publication

Abstract

Under the influence of globalization, English has almost become the default language in scientific academia. While the culture-independent nature of scientific research may result in scholars' preference for using one common language, over-reliance on English may shape non-English-speaking scholars' negative attitudes toward their national languages and may constrain their use of these languages in the domain of scientific publication. Therefore, this study investigated the attitudes of Taiwanese science scholars toward English and Chinese as languages of publication. The findings indicated that it is not “English” itself but its “pragmatic value” (which is accrued through publishing in international indexed journals) that drives the choice of English over Chinese. However, this choice has led to an early sign of diglossia and the minimal use of Chinese in scientific publication. To mitigate this problem, it is believed that stakeholders in both international indexed journals and local universities should make efforts to value different languages as well as local journals published in other languages.