English for research publication and dissemination in bi-/multiliterate environments: The case of Romanian academics

Over the past decade, the use of a shared language in research communication has brought about a rich scholarly debate on the advancement of English as the common language for research publication and dissemination. This paper seeks to further the debate by reporting on the research communication practices and attitudes towards the role of English among social sciences scholars in Romania, a Central-Eastern European context that has received little research attention from this perspective. As a pilot empirical study, we examine a local scholarly community (the Bucharest University of Economic Studies) in which different uses are allocated to English, to the local (national) language and to other foreign languages and, therefore, linguistic imperialism is only a partially but not totally convincing explanatory framework. Our findings further reveal ambivalent attitudes. Although almost half of the subjects feel the dominance of English gives an unfair advantage to English native-speaking academics, almost all acknowledge the need for a shared language of research and personally feel more advantaged in their work by the use of English as a shared research language. We contrast the reported attitudes with other bi-/multiliterate research contexts and suggest policy implications at a university level. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.