以外語進行學術寫作與表達時的問題

Problems in academics when writing and presenting in a foreign language

在德國及世界各地，英語逐漸成為學術界的主流語言，此趨勢有其優、缺點，本文主要探討後者。首先，筆者將英語成為學術界主流語言的缺點分為三個面向。一、關於「語言地位」：描述新的科學及學術發展的新詞彙將主要以英語傳達，因此降低個人對於正確地掌握母語（非英語）的緊迫感與壓力（「地位」）。進一步導致非英語的語言在語義上未能充分地「更新」，以該語言所表達的世界觀也隨之消失（part 1a）。

 

其次（part 1b）是逐漸喪失傳統，尤其是人文領域的傳統。人文學科的主要功用之一就是不斷地適應及調整過去的成就，而這些成就只沉積在特殊的語義學裡。如果這種永久的再適應過程被削弱，即充分地將這種歷史語義學轉化為發展中的現代術語的能力被削弱，那麼非英語文化與其過去的聯繫就會愈發鬆散；該語言細微特徵在「全球語」（globalese）的祭壇上慢慢地被犧牲。此外，非母語人士在感知上 採取更務實的方式使用英語，這在描述科學現象時可能對智力上的危害較小；他們遵循亞里士多德語言模式。然而，在涉及 較語言敏感的人文科目時，這種模式的後果更為嚴重。在此，亞里士多德語言模式僅限在某些條件下使用。最後（part 2），在出版刊物、會議簡報及就業上必須與母語人士競爭時，非母語人士常處於劣勢。學術界裡「美國化」的全球化過程並非總是促進全球性的公平競爭。

 

In Germany and elsewhere English has gradually become the dominant language within academia. This trend has advantages and disadvantages. This paper is about the latter. The disadvantages can be put into three categories. First, with respect to the ‘status of language’: New terms describing new scientific and scholarly developments will be communicated mainly in English, reducing thereby urgency and pressure (‘status’) of properly mastering one’s own (non-Anglophone) mother tongue. As a further result, non-English languages are not sufficiently semantically ‘refreshed’, drying out also the world expressed in that language (part 1a).

 

Another consequence (part 1b) is the gradual loss of tradition, especially within the field of humanities. One of the major functions of the humanities namely is the permanent re-adaptation of past accomplishments which are often only available in the form of special semantics sedimented there. If this permanent process of re-adaptation – i.e. the ability to adequately transfer such historical semantics into a developing modern terminology – is weakened, then the link to a non-Anglophone culture’s own past would be increasingly loosened; its linguistic nuances are slowly being sacrificed on the altar of ‘globalese’. Moreover, non-native speakers perceivably adopt a more pragmatic usage of English which may be intellectually less harmful when describing scientific phenomena; they follow an Aristotelian model of language. But consequences are more serious when dealing with the more language-sensitive subjects of the humanities; here, the Aristotelian language model is applicable only with reservations.

 

Yet another consequence (part 2) is that non-native speakers often face disadvantages when having to compete with native speakers with respect to publications, presentations, and jobs. The global process of the ‘Americanization’ within the academic world is not always contributing to global fairness.