By Aikerim Bektemirova
In academia, we are all familiar with the pressure to ‘publish or perish’. But for many scholars in non-Anglophone contexts, this pressure is compounded by an additional linguistic barrier, as one Kazakhstani faculty member describes the difficulties they encounter in the publishing process:
“So, you write an article and somehow try to publish it in an international journal… and if it does not get accepted, you then send it to another journal. It gets rejected too, so you live in hope that it will be accepted and published somewhere, you know…” [10].
Usually the dominant narrative is that publishing in English is quite challenging for non-Anglophone scholars. But this experience of rejection and frustration is just the empirical tip of the iceberg, the immediate, observable phenomenon of mismatch and miscommunication. So, a common, or ‘flat ontology’, explanation would be simple: the scholar “doesn’t know English well enough”, which means they just “need more training”. But this ‘reductionist’ explanation ignores why their writing, which is considered perfectly clear and rigorous in their home institutions, fails to land with an Anglophone reviewer. It treats rhetoric as universal, when, in fact, it differs across cultures (Kaplan, 1966). While “the English language and its related thought patterns have evolved out of the Anglo-European cultural pattern” (ibid. p.3), the rhetorical traditions “other than those normally regarded as desirable in English do exist” (ibid. p.16), though they may not be “so well established, or perhaps only not so well known to speakers of English” (ibid. p.13). Thus, it is important to note that the conventions of written discourse are shaped by the linguistic, cultural and educational traditions where the writers were socialised. Therefore, the existence of major cross-cultural peculiarities in the conventions of academic writing, which followed specific developmental paths in post-Soviet countries such as Kazakhstan, deserves close attention. This challenge is well illustrated by a Kazakhstani faculty member, who points out the difficulty to adapt to unfamiliar rhetorical traditions:
“That is, when we talk about international publications, this is the English language, publications in those journals means that the researcher has to follow a completely different kind of writing tradition…and it is difficult…well, because they are foreign to us” (19).
In my doctoral research, drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews with faculty members representing 10 universities across Kazakhstan, I explored how national policies on research productivity influenced academic work and publication practices. Special attention was paid to the context conditioned by the requirement to publish in indexed, English-medium international journals (The Rules for awarding academic titles (associate professor (docent), professor, 2011).
Worthy of note is one of the findings on shared frustration expressed by respondents regarding the “mismatch” between their writing and the expectations of Western journals. In particular, the respondents repeatedly pointed out the “unfamiliarity” with the Anglophone conventions of academic writing accepted in international English-language journals. In this regard, rather than following a “skills deficit” explanation, the present blog post proposes the application of a Critical Realist (CR) framework, which allows to reveal the deeper generative mechanisms standing behind this situation.
Beyond the Empirical
For understanding this mismatch, it is necessary to look beyond “what people experience” and turn to the actual domain. This domain encompasses the writing practices, academic conventions, as well as institutional norms, which condition the writing process of a scholar. For faculty in Kazakhstan, this domain is heavily influenced by a Soviet academic legacy, a tradition respondents described as far more familiar:
“Well, we have our own, Soviet tradition of writing scientific works… And we do not face the stylistics problems there…” (19).
Although efforts were undertaken to strengthen the status of the Kazakh language after the collapse of the Soviet Union (Dave, 1996), and English was being actively prioritised through publishing policy requirements, Russian retained a relatively strong position in academic publishing. So, during the period from 1991 to 2013, most research publications in Kazakhstan were published in Russian-language journals (Kuzhabekova, 2017, p.122). Hence, the academic conventions were also often based on the rhetorical norms and traditions of the Russian language, which differed significantly from those of the English language in terms of structure, argument development and even style. For instance, this included: a different structure for argumentation, where the main point may be built up gradually rather than stated explicitly in the introduction (Petrić, 2005; Yakhontova, 2006); or a style of “opaque writing” intended for a specialised internal audience—a result of “strict control over the dissemination of scientific knowledge” (Korotkina, 2021).
“And, you know, the conventions of writing is very different… They are completely different things. In the Western tradition, it is the responsibility of the writer to explain, whereas in the Eastern traditions, it is the responsibility of the reader to understand, and it’s very different. And, you know, how difficult it is to write in English, when you think that a person should get it already, but you have to explain it anyway. Yeah, those conventions of writing are very different” [9].
These are not ‘worse’ conventions; they are simply different from the Anglo-American academic writing that tends to be thesis-driven, linear, and explicitly argumentative (Connor, 1996). The problem arises when these established, local practices—the actual—clash with the taken-for-granted norms of global, Anglophone-centric publishing.
This legacy of Soviet-era academic writing still persists in the actual practices of Kazakhstani universities today. Although there was a lack of formal writing instruction at Soviet HEIs, as academic writing was generally regarded as “a matter of individual practice and talent”(Korotkina, 2021), Kazakhstani universities now include academic writing as one of the core competencies and basic disciplines in the structure of postgraduate programs (On approval of state compulsory educational standards for higher and postgraduate education, 2022). However, in many Kazakhstani universities, academic-writing instruction is conducted in Kazakh or Russian — reflecting the dominant languages of instruction (Kucherbayeva & Smagulova, 2023)— rather than being primarily tailored to English academic-writing conventions. Where English-medium programs exist, support for academic English and genre transfer is often uneven. Naturally, the Kazakhstani scholars rely on the academic writing conventions and discourse patterns accepted in Russian and Kazakh, which constitute the basis of their academic training, when writing in English.
Thus, we observe a situation when scholars are trained in one rhetorical tradition but are expected to publish in a completely different one. In this regard, this mismatch between training and English-language publishing expectations carries a systemic character and cannot be resolved by individual effort alone.
Uncovering the ‘Real’ Structures
Here is exactly where CR allows to uncover the root causes. It encourages asking: what real, underlying, and often invisible structures (cultural, historical, linguistic mechanisms) condition this mismatch? What generative mechanisms produce the difficulties with publishing and frustration we see in the empirical domain?
We can identify at least two major ones:
- Historical/Linguistic Legacies: The Soviet system was not just a political structure; it was an epistemic infrastructure (Gordin, 2015; Graham, 1972) that cultivated a specific ‘habitus’ for its scholars (e.g. using “authoritative discourse” (complex, standardised, heavy language) rather than simple, direct one (Yurchak, 2006); relying on ‘spiral’ or ‘frame’ structure in argument development instead of the ‘linear’ one) (Yakhontova, 2006). These Soviet linguistic traditions and academic legacies endure long after the political structure has dissolved, continuing to shape the actual practices of writing in Kazakhstan today.
- Global Anglophone Hegemony: The English language and Anglophone writing conventions have acquired the status of de facto “global standard”. These norms possess the capacity to validate some forms of knowledge and rhetoric while disqualifying others, frequently under the pretext of ‘quality’ or ‘clarity’. In this connection, these standards perform the role of a powerful “gatekeeping” mechanism in academic publishing, privileging some scholarly voices while marginalising others (Lillis & Curry, 2010; Curry & Lillis, 2017; Tardy, 2004).
The Value of the CR Perspective
The application of a CR framework allows us to reveal the deep, enduring mechanisms, demonstrating the inadequacy of empirical-level solutions. The latter place the entire burden of adaptation on the individual scholar (a personal failure of skill), leaving the power structures unchanged. On the contrary, a CR-informed approach implies interventions at a deeper level:
- At the level of ‘Actual’ (Institutional): Universities could organise translingual writing support (Canagarajah, 2013) or bilingual academic writing programs (Gentil, 2011). Unlike the ‘traditional’ approaches, these would not simply ‘correct’ English, but promote the deeper understanding of the difference between rhetorical patterns in the native language and Anglophone academic norms, actively using the scholar’s native rhetorical knowledge to deconstruct and explain the Anglophone conventions.
- At the level of ‘Real’ (Structural): It appears necessary to sensitise the journal publishers and reviewers, so that they can recognise the rhetorical diversity (Flowerdew, 2001) and value different logics of argumentation (Bennett, 2014). The aim here is a more equitable and diverse academic publishing world that calls into question the ‘gatekeeping’ norms, which condition power relations within global knowledge production, and perpetuate inequalities.
Summing up, the shift of focus from the empirical (journal rejection and scholar’s frustration) to the actual (writing practices, writing instruction) and, finally, to the real (historical and hegemonic structures) provides a significantly deeper understanding of the problem than the simplistic “lack of skill”. In this sense, CR helps us to avoid reductionism: it is not about saying “they just don’t know English well enough,” but instead pointing to structural and historical mechanisms that explain how they shape outcomes and why this persists.
References
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