English as an International Language and Language Policies in Economics Journals

• Autor(a) principal: Henshall, Ann C.
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/7974
• topic: English as an international language; Language policy; Economics journals; Scientific publication

English is often claimed to be the international language of science and research. Indeed Svartvik and Leech (156) include such a variety — international standard English or world standard English — in their model of Englishes. In their conception they disregard the spelling and style conventions imposed by journals. Given growing pressure for academics from around the world to publish in certain English-medium journals, the journal submission guidelines offer important information for authors. Yet, while there is increasing awareness of the burden imposed on EAL scholars in having to write scientific articles in English, little attention has been paid to the language policies of the international journals. The aim of this article is to synthesise the language policies of the economics journals referenced on the Institute for Scientific Information’s (ISI) Journal of Citation Reports (JCR) and re-examine two models of World Englishes in light of these policies. The overview shows that many journals operate on unstated assumptions of English and normative views prevail. The ensuing discussion raises issues related to intelligibility and standard, identity, prescriptivism and hegemony.