Problematizing Linguistic Entrepreneurship in Academic Publishing: Insights From Chinese Visiting Scholars at a U.S. University

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: Cross-Cultural Explorations in Language and Literacies

Abstract

Influenced by enterprise culture, scholars from peripheral non-Western countries face mounting pressure to publish in English (Curry and Lillis 2017). Local Chinese scholars, in particular, are increasingly encouraged to publish in internationally-indexed journals and to engage in international academic exchange and cooperation arrangements. Given this emergent phenomenon, this ethnographic case study explores how Chinese visiting scholars, driven by an ethical imperative to enhance human capital at “neoliberal universities” (Holborow 2013), exploited language-related resources available to them to succeed in academic publishing. Findings from my two focal participants revealed that under mounting expectations to publish in English-dominated SSCI journals to secure a job promotion, they enacted linguistic entrepreneurial (De Costa, Park & Wee, 2016, 2019) practices in creative and constructive ways.

Author

• Peter Ignatius De Costa, Michigan State University