Use the current lingua franca, please
Two months ago I praised John Harley Warner’s and Jim Edmonson’s book Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in America, 1880-1930.
As Kirsten Jungersen points out in a comment, one of our former staff members here at Medical Museion, Mikkel Jessen, wrote about dissection as a rite-of-passage in an article in the journal Bibliotek for Læger already in September 2002 (pp. 260-69).
Mikkel’s is a short but excellent article on four different ways in which dissection has been displayed: Rembrandt’s ‘De anatomishe les’, Hogarth’s ‘The four stages of cruelty’, Simonet’s ‘La autopsia’, and a photo of a staged dissection at the Royal Academy of Surgeons in Copenhagen, where the medical students are trained in ‘the necessary kind of inhumanity’.
What triggered this post, however, is that Mikkel’s article is yet another example of how the work of young scholars in small countries remain largely unread outside the small national circle (Bibliotek for Læger publishes in Danish only). Had Mikkel written his piece in English it would have been recognized several years before John and Jim published their excellent book. I mean, he could have been recruited as a PhD-student at Yale, where John works, or whatever.
So Mikkel’s article reminds me how many good opportunities are lost because too many young Danish (Swedish, Norwegian, Estonian etc.) scholars restrict themselves to writing in their mothertongues. Use the current lingua franca, please!
30 Jul 2009 Thomas
I see your point, Thomas. Usual objections to it, though, are that 1) good research skills and good English skills don’t necessarly coincide, and 2) because there is a current English hegemony in science, this creates unequal (eurocentric and reminiscent imperialistic) terms for scientists. Non-native-speakers have a disadvantage on the international scene, so to speak.
Then again, I agree that there is value in being able to communicate your research to a broader audience – and to a broader scientific community who can comment on it etc. So it’s not an easy question. In a research network on men and masculinities, I’m involved in (www.nemm.dk), there is a recurring discussion about what language the conferences should be held in. The network has a strong nordic focus and the Danish, Swedish, Islandic and Norwegian researchers understand each others native languages fairly well – but not so with the Finish researchers. And some excellent Scandinavian researchers don’t feel able to write or give presentations in a satisfactory English, which causes the recurring discussion. It usually ends with an unsatisfactory compromise of partly English, partly Scandinavian presentations.
So my point is, that English as the lingua franca can have both an inclusive and an excluding effect. On one hand there is the benefit of a larger scientific community and the possible broader scope of local science. On the other hand good researchers can feel or be viewed as incompetent because of a lack of English skills. So how to handle it?