Regulating the language of research writing: disciplinary and institutional mechanisms

Abstract

This paper concerns the regulation of second language research writing, particularly from the point of view of how English language writing is managed and intervened in. We approach the topic through a case study conducted at a computer science department in a large Nordic university. Drawing on interviews with researchers and administrative staff working in the setting, as well as document data, we explore (1) what kinds of institutional, top-down mechanisms can be identified which regulate English language research writing and (2) how regulation is enacted in the form of interventions into research texts as part of the writing practices of research groups. The analysis draws on the Academic Literacies paradigm and the sociolinguistics of writing. We analyse both the way in which research writing is affected by disciplinary conventions and expectations and the way in which institutional constraints and affordances impact writing. The findings show a lack of top-down mechanisms regulating writing; disciplinary pressures seemed to matter more to writers than institutional ones.

Keywords:

• Language regulation
• language brokering
• academic discourse
• academic literacy
• sociolinguistics of writing

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Kone Foundation under grant number 088787. We thank our research participants for sharing their views with us, as well as Hanna-Mari Pienimäki, the editor Rita Elaine Silver and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this article. Any shortcomings remain our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The interviewee is here referring to the so-called article-based dissertation, which consists of a summarising report and published articles. This was the typical form of doctoral dissertations in the computer science department.

2 We refer to this person with the term ‘in-house language editor’ in order to distinguish her services from the university-external services, which the researchers also used.

3 While we use the term ‘language revision’, our interviewees also used other terms such as ‘proofreading’ to refer to the process where a language editor intervenes in a research text.