Language Re-use among Chinese Apprentice Scientists Writing for Publication

Plagiarism has been a topic of considerable discussion in Applied Linguistics. In the literature on plagiarism a distinction can be found between the taking of the ideas of others and the taking of others’ words. In this paper the focus is on the latter, which is referred to as ‘language re-use’. Specifically, the study focuses on the practices and beliefs of a group of doctoral science students at a major university in China regarding language re-use in writing for publication in English. Examples are presented illustrating the students’ strategies of language re-use in each section of the prototypical IMRD (Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion) structure of the genre of scientific research articles, along with the writers’ justifications for such writing practices. It can be seen that the students’ language re-use goes well beyond formulaic expressions and technical terminology which are characteristics of the scientific research article, yet the students believe that their textual practices do not constitute plagiarism, which, to them, primarily means the stealing of others’ work. For English for Academic Purposes (EAP) instruction targeted at novice scientists, the paper calls for a pedagogy that acknowledges and exploits the formulaicity of scientific writing as well as discusses the relationship between ‘form’ (language) and ‘content’ (the work reported) in natural sciences.