Multilingual Scholars and the Imperative to Publish in English: Negotiating Interests, Demands, and Rewards

This article examines how multilingual scholars who work outside English-speaking countries negotiate the demand to publish in English alongside their broader academic and publishing interests. Based on our ethnographic study of the academic writing and publishing practices of 16 psychology scholars in Hungary, Slovakia and Spain, we characterize the range of communities for whom the scholars are writing, drawing on notions of discourse community, community of practice and speech community. We discuss the differential value attached to publications for different communities and how such value is sustained through the rewards systems in which scholars work. We offer brief profiles of three scholars from the study to illustrate how they negotiate academic and professional interests. We explain implications of the findings to TESOL, particularly for curriculum and pedagogy in English for academic purposes.