A few years ago, Gereon Wolters initiated public discussion among philosophers of science about the "ever increasing use of the English language also in the humanities, and here particularly in disciplines like logic and philosophy of science." (I am quoting from his 2013 paper, which refers back to the discussion on the HOPOS list in 2011. [The discussion has been renewed by Gabriele Contessa and my friends at philosopherscocoon.]) Given the grant and reward structure(s) in Europe, there are lots of incentives for publishing in English in internationally recognized journals. (Such incentives exist elsewhere, too, but I will restrict my observations to Europe.) This generates barriers to entry to non-native English speakers. Think about it for a second: philosophy is difficult as such; yes, really; now add linguistic hurdles, and, then add, say, tacit biases that make us treat sub-standard English as inferior. (Linguistic snobbery is not limited to the French, really!)
The incentives to publish in English in international journals have also generated a culture in which publications that are not in English are often assumed (a priori) to be inferior than the ones published in English. This inference is not silly--Europe is full of 'in-house-journals' with extremely intellectually-nepotistic publication practices that publish papers of, let's say, parochial interest. For this reason alone, I would be willing to defend the general claim that encouraging publication in English in international journals (etc.) has probably raised average quality of European philosophy (but I am about to qualify this claim). Simultaneously with the move toward English as the lingua franca of European philosophy, there has been (not surprisingly) an influx of young scholars trained in, or returning from, the USA/UK/Canada/Australia--many of these scholars automatically privilege the work they are familiar with. These scholars flourish in the increasingly common grant environment in Europe; their CVs are of the right sort: publications in English in the right sort of journals, etc. [These remarks are autobiographical, of course.] If they are like me, they also have a built-in-bias against the parochialism, in-crowd, be generous to the Chair-culture so common in much of the European academy.
Above I said that I would be willing to defend the claim that average quality of European philosophy has increased by encouraging publication in English in international journals. But it does not follow that all the work not in English is bad. In particular, a claim about averages is compatible with the further thought that (a) there can be quite a bit of excellent work not in English, and (b) that raising average quality also means encouraging a lot of 'me 2 research' by which I mean 'the Nth publication' on a topic that works on other people's epicycles, especially those people producing work at leading Anglophone departments. That is to say, average quality can go up while the work becomes more derivative. Even if the reader distrusts my use of 'quality' and 'derivative,' you may note that encouraging publishing in English tends to homogenize the philosophical landscape.
In fact, we should expect more 'me 2 research' if publication in English is encouraged by folk who do not work at the centers of professional philosophy (put in your favorite measure). For, if you are relying on journal articles and other publications to figure out what to work on, you are essentially tracking a dated picture of research innovation. Even though submission to print times have been shortened by (a) archiving and (b) electronic print, and there is a lot of international networking, what people are talking about has moved on to some degree since a paper has appeared in public. That is to say, there are first-mover-advantages, and these tend to be centralized in the Anglophone world (which also supplies many of the gatekeepers). I think the exceptions -- recent European analytical philosophy has been more hospitable to logic and formal philosophy -- help prove the rule. There are parochialisms everywhere, after all. And while journal editors are looking for original research -- incentives being what they are --, they are also very inclusive of work that cites existing research.
So, I disagree with the inference of bias offered by Politi:
if a paper or a book by a non-native English speaker is published by an int ernational peer-reviewed journal or publisher, it means that it is indeed a good piece of philosophical work which meets all the standards of the (anglophone-dominated) international publications. (It also means that the author is not *that* disadvantaged with respect to the native English speakers when it come to linguistic skills.) So why do people with non-Anglophone names get cited less than their more obviously Anglophone colleagues? Vincenzo Politi at Philosopherscocoon.
For, another possible explanation of low citation rates of non-Anglophone philosophers writing in English is that it is possible quite a bit of it is 'me 2 research.' In fact, given that in Europe one can increasingly obtain appointments, promotions, and grants with only overworked journal referees reading your work (as opposed to the grant proposals, which are read by committees), it is doubtful one can make it in the system by doing work that is not 'me 2 research' unless one has some kind of first-mover advantage. This is not to deny that other biases, including biases against less connected scholars who write less clean (non-idiomatic) prose, are not also at work. But in my view the problem with the general trend toward English as lingua franca is not so much bias (let's stipulate it exists), but a flattening of what the very best philosophy might be.
If I understand you, your claim is that distance from what one takes to be the centre predicts derivative research, and it is this, not English facility, that explains low citation rates. That account predicts that Australians will have lower citation rates than Europeans, since the distance to the centres is greater from Australia than from Europe. Is that borne out by the data? I'd be surprised if that were true. Myself, I've never felt cut off from the centre, partly because my work is eccentric (literally), and partly because so much philosophical discussion takes place on blogs and Facebook today.
Posted by: Neil Levy | 10/18/2014 at 03:24 AM
It seems to me there is just as much reason to speculate that work done by non-native speakers is more original than work done by native speakers (because, say, their research is less likely to be influenced by existing dominant lines of research), than there is to speculate that non-native speakers do more me too research than natives. More probably, in fact, neither speculation is true.
Citation rates can very well be influenced by biases in the way that Politi suggests.
Posted by: Filippo Contesi | 10/18/2014 at 09:05 PM
There might be an easy way to begin to test some of the hypotheses made in that Cocoon post: are there more papers by non-native speakers in formal philosophy journals as opposed to all other philosophy journals?
Posted by: Enzo Rossi | 10/19/2014 at 08:07 PM
Neil, I missed your comment before (apologies for slow response). In philosophy Australia stopped being in the periphery in the period that David Lewis found his second (intellectual) home there. So, I would expect/predict that citation rates for Australians would have converged since. But, yes, there might be ways to test empirical hypotheses in the vicinity of my claim by cleverly using data from both English and non-English speaking countries.
Posted by: Eric Schliesser | 10/22/2014 at 08:14 AM
As a former editor of a non-English language scientific journal, I can tell that a lot of what gets published in such journals is "me-too" research, though useful to students because it gets through the language barrier.
Posted by: Michael Kochin | 04/21/2015 at 04:47 AM