Academia in English-speaking countries has gradually become more and more international, regularly recruiting PhD students and postdoctoral researchers from abroad. This has led to complaints that non-native speakers (NNS from hereon) of English are disadvantaged and/or experience discrimination with regard to their academic standing.
In our discipline, this claim of “linguistic injustice” has culminated in the Barcelona Principles (2021), initiated by Filippo Contesi. I have previously commented on the Barcelona Principles here. In the following, I will speak as a philosopher, rather than pronounce on other subjects in the humanities or in STEM. The authors of the Barcelona Principles highlight the structural inequalities between native and non-native speakers of English, pleading that such disadvantages should be mitigated or removed. One of their demands is:
“To evaluate, as a rule, publications, presentations, proposals and submissions without giving undue weight to their authors’ linguistic style, fluency or accent.”
Common sense would support such a demand. If a scholar from abroad deviates (slightly) from the norms of English, but can still successfully communicate their message, then such differences should not affect the evaluation of their scholarship.
But, regardless of how well you speak another language, bigots, national chauvinists, and racists do exist in and outside of academia. I recall that Agatha Christie’s fictional detective, Hercule Poirot, once exposed a miscreant who then abused him thus: “You, little, foreigner!” But such sentiments are common all over the world—not just in English-speaking countries.
Recently, three Catalan speakers complained in a blog: “those who happen to speak English as a first language benefit from a bias that disadvantages and discriminates against those who happen to speak English as an additional language.” Note that “additional language speaker” is a euphemism for “non-native speaker,” trying to soften the perceived hierarchy between native and non-native speakers.
This claim is too general, and it wrongly suggests that an injustice is done when we exclude some people (i.e. non-native speakers) from certain roles. It isn’t always bias that closes off opportunities for non-native speakers.
Why should the Spanish government employ me as a high school philosophy teacher, for example, considering that I only learned the language for three years when I myself was in high school all those years ago? And my Spanish hasn’t improved much since then, because I have only occasionally used it when visiting Spain as a tourist; it is still at a rudimentary level.
In order to perform a role in a different language you need to achieve a certain level of proficiency in that language. The proficiency is tied to the particular role: consider what linguistic skills are required from a traffic warden and what level of linguistic proficiency would be appropriate for a philosopher. This has nothing to do with bias or discrimination, this is a matter of common sense, and it equally applies in other countries like France, Germany, or Italy. Who would want to be treated by a medical doctor who doesn’t fully comprehend what the patient is saying?
I keep reading job ads from other countries, and they all say something like this: ‘It is expected that the candidate will be able to teach in Swedish, Spanish, Hebrew, etc. within two years of appointment. I find this astonishing. But in the Anglo-American sphere, there isn’t even a time limit; the candidates are expected to teach in English from the start. This might work well in STEM subjects, but in philosophy, experiments are not central. It is our thoughts and how they are reflected in language which constitute the tools and the task of philosophy. There are two realms where thought and language are so tightly intertwined that they form ‘black holes’: literature (particularly poetry) and philosophy. So, if you want to teach philosophy, you need to have a very good grasp of the language of instruction.
The notion of the “native speaker,” who has an excellent grasp of the language, is not a device for the oppression of NNS; it is an ideal and a guide, representing the norms of grammar, semantics, and pronunciation. Without this ideal communication would be less efficient. This doesn’t mean that we should endorse nativespeakerism when assessing the scholarship of NNS; it only means that NNS must be able to get their ideas across through a clear and concise use of the language (here: English), and linguistic norms will help them in doing so.
I agree that the scholarship of NNS should not be denigrated and that fighting for this is a worthy cause. However, neither the Barcelona Principles nor the authors of the blog post address the real issue, which is a structural problem in academia.
As I have intimated at the beginning of this blog article, academia in the English-speaking world has succumbed to neoliberal principles. One of these is the belief that junior academics can be easily replaced and shuffled around. Furthermore, university administrators believe that a lot of the teaching can be done by graduate students or postdocs. This might be the result of having recruited administrators in the 80s and 90s who came armed with MBAs. These administrators were faced with constantly rising student numbers and a rise in expenditure. The easiest solution was not to recruit more TT faculty, but to apply market forces: employ cheap labor. Around this time another neoliberal blessing entered academia: the idea that researchers should provide their own funding; this turns researchers into salespeople.
The welcoming of market forces into academia, rather than being guided by educational criteria, set the scene for worse to come (e.g. the erosion of the tenure track model). Foreign researchers were a welcome pawn in this development because they increase the pool of willing junior academics who could be employed at low pay and on short-term contracts. By a happy coincidence many other countries (particularly in Europe) adopted the idea that in order to get a permanent job in academia it is necessary to either do a PhD or postdoctoral work in the Anglo-American sphere. This move has created the linguistically related problems which the Barcelona Principles try to address: being forced to teach in a foreign language, trying to learn that language under pressure (i.e. the pressure of performing your job well), trying to publish in that language, applying for external funding, etc.
The orientation towards analytic philosophy is so pervasive that in some countries promotion and other opportunities are tied to having published in ‘international journals’; in practice, this means Anglo-American journals.
We need to keep in mind that the current expectation that junior researchers from abroad should do some teaching is fairly recent. In my time as a philosophy student in Germany, a PhD student from Britain might have run a tutorial on reading J.S. Mill’s ‘On Liberty’ in English, and a visitor from France might have run a class on Descartes’ short text ‘Discours de la Méthode’ in French. At that time (late 70s—early 80s) it wouldn’t have occurred to any Dean at a German university that a PhD student who isn’t a native speaker of German should run a class on Kant, Schopenhauer, or Nietzsche. And I dare say, the same would hold for philosophy departments in France, Italy, or Spain.
The internationalization of our discipline is commendable, but the idea that analytic philosophy is central and/or that cutting-edge philosophy is only happening in English-speaking countries, is the result of the hegemony of English in the academic world. In reality, it says nothing about the quality of philosophy in other regions. Countries requiring junior academics to go abroad and spend time at Anglo-American universities undermine the importance of their own philosophical traditions. As a result, these traditions will weaken over time. This also reduces the perspectives on offer in our discipline, which is a loss to philosophy.
But it turns out that neoliberalism can help NNS overcome some of the linguistic injustices they might experience. There are now companies providing “editing, translation and publication support for scholars.” Of course, it is in their commercial interest to suggest to these junior academics from abroad that the reason why their journal submissions, book proposals, and grant applications are not successful is a matter of language. One such proposes:
“The language you use to express yourself, your form and style of communication, and even the examples you use have a direct impact on how your research is perceived in your field and adopted among your peers. But what if breakthrough and innovative research is being rejected by reviewers simply because it isn’t written in standard English?”
The editing companies promise to make all these problems go away—if you are able to pay for their services. The real injustice lies in the fact that these junior scholars are on precarious contracts and can hardly afford to pay these fees. Some journals and book publishers are now offering author services—for a fee. And some are partnering with editing companies. A much more obvious solution for NNS would be to ask colleagues/mentors for help with polishing their writing.
After having lived and worked in an English-speaking country for a while, there will be many researchers whose language skills are at a level where they can write a research paper or a research proposal without linguistic help from others. But such autonomy would make them immune to the pull of market forces. In an essay, published in the Philosophers’ Magazine, we are given another reason why these papers might be rejected (rejection is actually a common experience for all researchers, whether native speaker or not): what they lack is the ability to ‘display flair, or elegance, or vivacity in the writing.’ Note that two of the three authors have ties to companies offering editing services and thus have a vested interest in promoting such ideas.
Of course, this is a confected problem; the high rejection rates of “prestigious” journals explain why even excellent papers don’t make it into print. Furthermore, the promise of literary flair by editing companies is a chimera. Attaining a good grasp of a foreign language is possible for most people by living in the country for some time. But the ability to ‘display flair, or elegance, or vivacity’ in your writing is a tall order. Why? Because not even native speakers manage to achieve this. Thus, many young researchers, even though their writing skills are at the right level (i.e., adequate to the task), are made to believe that it is necessary to jazz up their papers. But even if the author services firm could add this kind of ‘spice’ to the essay, it will most likely be shot down by the reviewers, because analytic philosophy nowadays favors uniformity in writing style, instead of literary flair.
Rather than helping to ease or remove the structural problems in philosophy, the Barcelona Principles function merely as a sticking plaster, helping to entrench the neoliberal grip in academia. What is needed is a rethink of the influence of market forces in academia and in philosophy.
Miroslav Imbrisevic
Miroslav Imbrišević teaches philosophy at the University of London and at the Open University/UK. He works in political and legal philosophy, in philosophy of religion, and in philosophy of sport. He is the editor of Sport, Law and Philosophy: The Jurisprudence of Sport, due to be published this summer.
