Academic Publishing in English: Exploring Linguistic Privilege and Scholars’ Trajectories

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the trajectories of six young academics (early-stage researchers) currently active in the context of Swedish academia in two different fields: English Linguistics and Political Science. Through a series of narrative interviews, the analysis investigates the development of their scholarly work, the relationship with their texts, and the negotiation of their position as contributors to their academic field. The paper discusses issues of language attitudinal and ideological nature, emphasising the need to focus on writers, rather than texts. The discussion revolves around the role of access to scholarly networks and to quality publication outlets as some of the key factors in shaping their development as young scholars and enabling opportunities to publish in highly-ranked journals. The goal of the article is to contextualise and problematize the notion of “privilege” that is customarily attributed to L1 English-speaking scholars, and to provide a more nuanced understanding of how young academics tackle the publishing enterprise.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic publishing
• early-stage researchers
• L2 writing
• linguistic privilege
• trajectories

Introduction

In light of the dominant position of English today as the language of academic publications (Lillis & Curry, 2013), it was perhaps only natural to believe that L1 speakers of the language are privileged vis-à-vis L2 speakers. However, more recently and in the context of critical readings of the notion of the native speaker (Davies, 2003; Doerr, 2009), and of the ideology of Native Speakerism (cf. Holliday, 2005; Houghton, Rivers, & Hashimoto, 2018), the idea of linguistic privilege has become open for discussion also in academic publishing. Yet the debate is more difficult to disentangle than it would seem at first. The argument seems divided between those who award language a privileging role in shaping scholars experience in academic publishing (e.g., Cho, 2009; Hanauer & Englander, 2011; Politzer-Ahles, Holliday, Girolamo, Spychalska, & Harper Berkson, 2016, among others) and those who place more emphasis on non-linguistic factors such as access to material resources, academic experience, degree of seniority, and one’s professional network (e.g., Canagarajah, 2002; Hyland, 2016). Notwithstanding these two seemingly well-defined positions, the debate is far from clear-cut. In fact, and perhaps unsurprisingly, authors from both camps arrive at the same conclusion: more research is needed in order to push the debate forward, trying to measure how and to what extent linguistic privilege exists in the domain of academic publishing, and to disentangle all the intrinsically related factors that influence the publishing practices and experiences of scholars from different L1 backgrounds.

Taking up this call for further research on such important topic, in this article I propose to investigate the trajectories of six young academics, recently graduate doctors in two fields: three scholars in English Linguistics (EL) and three in Political Science (PS), all of them currently active in the context of Swedish academia. Through a series of narrative interviews, the paper explores their academic trajectories, specifically focusing on the relationship with their texts and their self-perceived evolution as academic writers and contributors in their field. In line with the overall “destabilizing” idea of the thematic issue, the goal of the article is to look further into the notion of linguistic privilege that, as already noted, is customarily attributed to L1 English-speaking scholars, and to provide a more nuanced understanding of how young academics tackle the entire publishing enterprise, negotiating the use of different languages for their academic output.

Linguistic privilege in L2 academic publishing: Language and identity concerns

The challenges facing English as an Additional Language (EAL) writers in publishing in English-medium academic outlets are not a new topic in applied linguistic research, and discussions have been going on since at least the 1980s (e.g., St. John, 1987). However, as already explained, whether EAL writers are disadvantaged vis-à-vis L1 English writers because of linguistic reasons remains an unresolved question. According to Hyland (2016), this is the case because much of the research aiming to investigate this question suffers from two, in his view, problematic assumptions: (a) the Native/non-Native divide; and (b) the primacy of language. Hyland responds to these two assumptions by noting that: (a) academic writing is a skill characterised by complex rhetoric and conventional forms that both L1 and L2 speakers need to learn to master, i.e. it is not a naturally given talent that L1 speakers possess and L2 speakers have to acquire; and (b) factors other than language may play an even greater role in determining writers’ publication opportunities. These other factors may include access to material resources in text production and to key networks in one’s field of specialisation. On the former argument, Hyland seems to reason alongside Bourdieu, Passeron, and De Saint Martin (1994) who, in discussing the French education system, point out that “academic language is a dead language for the majority of French people, and is no one’s mother tongue, not even that of children of cultivated classes” (p. 8). On the latter argument, Hyland concurs with scholars who have highlighted the importance of so-called “non-discursive” factors in academic publishing before (e.g., Canagarajah, 2002; Curry & Lillis, 2010; Lillis & Curry, 2010). Indeed, working from “off-network” positions, geographically and/or socio-politically, may represent an added burden for authors to successfully publish in key academic outlets (Belcher, 2007), a burden investigated for scholars in a range of contexts across the different continents (cf. Cho, 2004, 2009; ElMalik & Nesi, 2008; Lillis & Curry, 2010; Salager-Meyer, 2008).

Responding to Hyland, Politzer-Ahles et al. (2016) place emphasis on the idea of linguistic privilege, a privilege that L1 English writers enjoy based on their linguistic membership. Privilege, according to them, “refers to social advantages conferred upon an individual or group not as a result of merit but as a result of fortuitous group membership” (p. 3). This does not mean, they clarify, that everything is easier for a member of a privileged group, or that such members do not earn what they achieve; rather, it means that a person enjoys some benefits or avoids some challenges in a given social situation, benefits or challenges they would not have enjoyed or avoided had they not been a member of a privileged group (p. 4). In view of this, Politzer-Ahles et al. present two privileges which, according to them, L1 English academic writers enjoy: (1) publishing may require less time and effort for them than for EAL writers; and (2) publishing may be biased in favour of L1 English writers. Much like Hyland, Politzer-Ahles et al. are not alone in their claims. Indeed, the idea that EAL writers require more time and effort to craft and publish their work has been argued by previous studies and for some time already (Gosden, 1995; St. John, 1987). Overall, there certainly is a body of work that emphasises the privileged position of L1 English scholars vis-à-vis L2 speakers of the language.

Regardless of the two sides of the debate, both Hyland and Politzer-Ahles et al. arrive at the same conclusion, as noted above: more research is needed in order to find out the extent to which linguistic privilege exists in academic publishing, and to uncover its underlying mechanisms. In that respect, Hyland (2016) emphasises that “authorial agency and individual experience, too often ignored in these debates, are key dynamics” (p. 66), adding that regardless of the context where they operate, authors do always possess a degree of agentive power that may allow them to overcome the structural limits of their context. Such a position might be debatable, but it importantly highlights the relevance of individual identity in the debate on academic publishing, something that has already been long acknowledged in discussions on academic writing more generally (cf. Casanave, 1998; Ivanić, 1998). In L2 writing, crafting a voice for oneself is a complicated process, whether as students or professionals (Hirvela & Belcher, 2001; Jwa, 2018; Kaufhold, 2018), a process that entails an amount of negotiation and challenges. Such challenges, of course, are not unsurmountable. While a certain degree of stress and anxiety is granted in the participants in previous studies (see Cho, 2004; Englander, 2009; Starfield, 2002), it is well documented that L2 writers can certainly be successful in their publishing efforts, a success that is not infrequently tied to one’s lived experience and individual trajectory (Martínez-Roldán & Quiñones, 2016). As such, it seems important to dig deeper into writers’ accounts of their publication experiences in order to find out more about the sense of their position in their field of specialisation and the sense of their agentive power in order to produce academic texts and successfully have them published in key outlets. This is precisely the goal of the present study, of which more details are given in the following section.

The study: Theoretical background, data and methodology

The analysis presented below draws on social-constructivist and situated learning theories (Lave & Wenger, 1991). As Flowerdew (2013, p. 307) explains, this framework is frequently invoked in ERPP studies as it usefully highlights the situated nature of academic writing and academic publishing, an activity whose social and political situatedness allows novice scholars to progressively gain insider status in their respective communities of practice (Hyland, 2007, p. 88). Indeed, it is in these communities of practice where identity construction as a professional scholar can take place, a process that is negotiated between self and others amongst and by (self-)ascribing and (self-)positioning individuals. In either face-to-face or online communication, individuals are both shaped by the socio-political and economic structures of the contexts in which they operate, structures that they at the same time agentively shape and recreate (Block, 2015, p. 527). The negotiated nature of identity construction can certainly be conflictive and ambivalent, given the multiple layers and scales of identity belonging (see Rudolph et al., this volume). What is important to highlight, as Block notes in following Bourdieu (1984), is that in all the different contexts and social milieus where individuals are embedded, not everyone is equally legitimated to have access to, control over, and to use of different capitals (economic, cultural, and social) (Block, 2015, p. 528), something that naturally can have consequences in terms of affordances and limitations of identity (self-)construction (Hyland, 2010).

In connection to writing for publication purposes in Sweden, both McGrath (2014) and Salö (2015) find that Swedish scholars use languages strategically in crafting their texts, and while English does dominate as the language of end-product texts, Swedish is not marginal in the process of text production, sometimes quite the contrary (Salö, 2015); in outreach publications, moreover, it appears to take a dominant position over English (McGrath, 2014). In terms of attitudes and perceptions, Bolton and Kuteeva (2012) find that at a large university in Sweden, scholars do not report feeling disadvantaged by the use of English in academia; the authors asked their respondents if they felt personally at a disadvantage, and the responses were negative, in their majority. Similar findings are reported by Kuteeva and McGrath (2014), in this case with a more in-depth analysis of 15 scholars from the fields of Linguistics, History, and Anthropology. Although some senior scholars in their study do report some degree of difficulty when writing in English, a frequently recurring theme in their study was that English did not pose an important challenge to their participants. In fact, some even reported to feel more comfortable writing and publishing in English than in their L1, as English had become their default language for their academic and professional practices (Kuteeva & McGrath, 2014) (similar findings from the current study will be reported below).

The bulk of the data that furnishes the present study comes from a set of in-depth interviews with six scholars, as already explained, early-stage researchers (ESRs) in English Linguistics (EL) and Political Science (PS). Table 1 provides more details and information about the informants and their demolinguistic background.¹ Two of the informants in EL were approached from the existing network of contacts of the researcher, the rest of them were contacted through snow-ball technique and contacts of other colleagues. Regardless of this relative degree of randomness in collecting informants, it was a deliberate decision to recruit participants who were at an early stage of their careers (defined here as scholars within 5 years maximum after completion of their doctorate), and who were active in Swedish academia at the moment of the interviews. Focusing on ESRs was felt to be important, as researchers may well be at a stage of their careers were important decisions may need to be made and where the pressure to publish more and more may be even harsher than in other periods in order to secure tenure-track or permanent positions, positions that may allow them to stay in academia. Oddly enough, however, it seems that this specific group of scholars has remained rather underexamined, especially in the context of the academic publishing debate outlined above. Studies have focused either on doctoral students (e.g., Langum & Sullivan, 2017) or on faculty members, without differentiating too much on the levels of seniority of the latter, leaving those at this liminal stage (i.e. after doctoral studies and before tenure) to one side (but see Habibie & Hyland, 2019; also, Lillis & Curry, 2010; McGrath, 2014,; Kuteeva & McGrath, 2014 do include some ESRs in their studies). Finally, a decision was made to include scholars from at least two different areas in the broadly defined Social Sciences and Humanities, one where English may have a pervasively dominant position (EL) and one where the local language (in this case Swedish) might play a relevant role, together with English (PS).

Table 1. Demolinguistic background of the six participants.

Pseudonym	Specialization	L1	Other Ls	Ls pub
Sandra	English Ling	Italian	English, Swedish, Spanish, Japanese and German (last 3 beginner)	English and Italian
Yun	English Ling	Chinese	English, Swedish (beginner level)	English
Hans	English Ling	Swedish	English, German, Spanish and Italian (last 2 beginner)	English
Peter	Pol Science	Swedish	English, French (beginner level)	English
Lena	Pol Science	Swedish	English	English and Swedish
Raoul	Pol Science	Swedish	English, French (beginner level)	English and Swedish

There were two narrative interviews (Barkhuizen, 2015) conducted with each of the participants, the first one in late autumn 2017 and early winter of 2018, and the second one in spring 2018. In the first interview, the goal was to obtain a general outline of the life-story of each of the informants in connection to their experience with academic publishing; the follow-up interview was designed to delve deeper into the issues touched upon in the first interview and to expand on potentially key moments or experiences that the informants had explained in the first meeting. This may explain why the second interview was in all cases longer than the first one; first-time interviews lasted for an average of thirty minutes, whereas second-time interviews lasted from forty-five minutes to one hour. Only in one case, with Lena, a second interview was not possible to be scheduled.

In line with the narrative approach of the study, the interviews followed a semi-structured design, with a few questions and points to cover prepared by the researcher beforehand but allowing for plenty of room for the participants to elaborate on different topics. In analysing the transcribed material, narrative techniques were used in order to first of all, extract the main themes from each of the interviews and to subsequently try and connect the narratives to the broader political, social, and economic structures that underlie the production of such narratives. This is in line with what is recommended for narrative studies of this type (cf. Pavlenko, 2007). However, this being an essentially exploratory investigation, as noted already, the article relies primarily on the initial thematic analysis. This is not to suggest the analysis is simplistic or superficial (cf. Reissman, 2008), but rather that it represents a first approach to the experiences in academic publishing of the six participants in the study, and as such, it aims at offering a first overview of their life-stories in this area.

Findings: The voices of six early-stage researchers in Swedish academia

Starting with a general overview of the six scholars that took part in the study and elaborating further on the information in Table 1, we can note that all six of them are bi-/multilingual researchers who have published academically mostly (but not exclusively) in English. All of them gained experience in publishing already before they completed their doctorate. They had all completed their doctorate at a major university in the country, except for Sandra, who obtained her degree at an institution in the USA. In the rich conversations held with all of them, a number of topics and key themes emerged. In a nutshell, these themes can be summarized as follows and they are presented below in the following order:

1. the situated nature of academic publishing (departmental, disciplinary, and linguistic);

2. the challenges facing ESR scholars in their efforts to publish their work and the strategies to overcome these obstacles; and

3. the awareness of their structured agency, their capacity to be in control and use both material and symbolic resources in the process of academic publishing.

The situated nature of academic publishing

Departmental expectations on doctoral students can be different depending on the department students are conducting their work at, which can have an impact on students’ publishing experiences. This was clearly the case for both Sandra and Yun, who completed a monograph instead of completing their dissertation with a compilation of journal articles as the rest did. In the case of Sandra, she explained that in her US context, there was the expectation that one had to start looking for a job even before finishing one’s degree “and so, there was this urgency of, you know, you have to submit something, no matter, you know, no matter the states of it. Just submit.” Yun, by contrast, explained that at her department in Sweden, the taken-for-granted assumption was different. In her case, it was assumed that a PhD had to be completed in the form of a monograph, and that publishing was something you should worry about after defending your thesis. This institutional stance posed a conflict with her individual interests, whereby she wanted to focus on getting things published already before completing her degree. So, even though both of them wrote monographs, for Sandra publishing was encouraged while writing her thesis, whereas for Yun, this was not so actively encouraged.

Another feature of the situated nature of academic publishing that can have an impact on scholars’ publishing experiences has to do with disciplinary differences, i.e. different areas can conceive of language and of academic writing differently (cf. Kuteeva & McGrath, 2014). In that sense, the three ESRs in PS noted that for them, one important challenge was the intrinsically interdisciplinary nature of their work. Such interdisciplinarity has actually led two of them, Lena and Raoul, to have strong ties with other departments and to even take on temporary researcher positions outside the Social Sciences faculty. For them, working at the boundary of different disciplines presented additional challenges that perhaps were less marked for the scholars in EL, especially when trying to get their work published. As Raoul remarked,

Raoul: my main lesson that I’ve learned since I am, sort of, at the intersection between different disciplines, it’s a bit tricky to, uhm, to publish in journals that are firmly in, in either discipline.

Raoul went on to explain an experience he had with one of his pieces that went full-circle: he submitted it to a political science journal and obtained feedback saying he should send it to an economics journal; the latter recommended him to submit it to a social psychology journal, which recommended to send it to a health behaviour journal, which in turn suggested a political science journal.

Finally, one last element that highlights the situated character of academic publishing is the linguistic one. For all six ESRs, there was no doubt that English was the default language they used in order to publish their academic work. Even though Sandra, Lena, and Raoul had used other languages sporadically for publication purposes, the six of them remarked there was not much a choice, since they aimed at being read by an international audience. Peter explained that out of the 40 PhD students at their department, only one of them was writing their thesis in Swedish, and that was because he was writing on a Swedish history related topic, Peter noted. Furthermore, in line with Kuteeva and McGrath’s (2014) findings reported above, Yun added that in her case, it would even be more difficult to write articles in her L1 Chinese:

Yun: I would need help, yeah. Because the terminology you don’t know. … That’s one thing, and also the conventions, how, you know, uhm, an article is structured, because I don’t read Chinese articles … there’s no way I could do that.

For all three ESRs in EL, choosing English was also related to the fact that this was the object of their research. Unsurprisingly, then, Sandra and Yun showed rather pragmatic orientations to the use of English in their academic publishing: “this is just part of my job,” the two of them noted. However, ESRs in PS indicated a bit more of an ambivalent attitude towards English, something that may be connected to the disciplinary divide presented above. Peter explained that he had always been of the idea to

try to defend the Swedish language … I think there’s a need to discuss our research in Swedish, not only for reaching out to society, but also because I can’t express myself as good in English as I can in Swedish.

This would seem that writing in English takes away some agentive power from the scholars. However, Lena added an important nuance in that respect, and explained that in her case, she felt she was making up words in English to explain something from Swedish society:

Lena: I wrote about Swedish eldercare, which is really, you know, uhm, Sweden focused dissertation, and sometimes it feels like you are making up words in English to explain something Swedish.

That may again have to do with a disciplinary feature of political science work and its more locally grounded nature. Lena explained that at the beginning, she worried that she would not be able to write her dissertation in English, but

when you know what you want to do, it’s not … that difficult to write in English, when you have, sort of decided, but to discuss it and to frame it together with others in English might be more difficult.

Language-related dilemmas seemed to have to do more with the activity of public outreach, something that again affected more the three ESRs in PS than the three in EL. The idea of aiming at different audiences was certainly an issue for Lena and Raoul, in Lena’s case, because that is what she saw her supervisor did, and she got inspired by her capacity to lead this double-sided activity (something Lena saw as challenging but rewarding). In Raoul’s case, he had actually been contacted toward the end of his doctorate by a news agency in the country to comment, in Swedish, on a topic related to his work that had emerged as a newsworthy phenomenon in Sweden, and he was asked to give an expert opinion on it. Raoul admitted he had not thought to what extent this shaped his professional identity as a scholar, but he acknowledged this was an important question, related to the role of universities in influencing public debates.

The publishing related challenges for ESRs

Moving on to the second theme that emerged during the interviews, much of the discussion revolved around the challenges the six scholars had faced in their experience in academic publishing. The most common of them, and the one that yielded lengthier discussions, was the impact of reviewers’ comments and editors’ feedback, something that has been detected as a key element in moulding doctoral students into scholarly writers (Caffarella & Barnett, 2000) and that may affect EAL authors more deeply (Englander, 2009). Even when first publishing experiences had been smooth, out of invitations to contribute to special issues or edited volumes, such as in the case of Hans, they all acknowledged having received harsh criticism about their work. With time, the six of them have become used to the unpleasant style of reviewers, their skin has thickened, as Sandra explained, but in some cases, this first negative experience was one that they clearly remembered. Frequently, turning to their supervisors proved to be helpful in managing the criticism received. Sandra herself explained that after she showed her supervisor the reviewers’ report she received from her first article submission, he told her “ah, whatever, you know, it’s normal, and half of the times they don’t even know what they are talking about, whatever, so don’t worry.”

In some other cases, in addition to being almost rude and perceived to be unfair, reviewers’ comments were simply mistaken. In connection to this, Peter explained his experience with one of his first articles, which he had to submit three times before having it published. The first time, he recounted, the article was rejected for good reasons; in the second time, however, the reviewer who was most critical of his piece had missed the point of his analysis, but Peter was not given the chance to revise and resubmit as the editor decided to reject his paper on the basis of this critical review, so Peter had to try a different journal. In the third time, the same dismissive reviewer happened to be asked to assess his article, but this time the editor did give Peter the chance to revise and resubmit, and he was able to explain how and why the reviewer was mistaken, and the article got published. So, even though all six ESRs received harsh criticism and feedback from reviewers, it is not all that clear that this was linguistically motivated, or that reviewers were biased and language was a prompt to criticise these scholars’ writing (cf. Englander, 2009; Flowerdew, 2001).

Peter’s example goes to highlight one of the biggest challenges in academic publishing, something that may affect ESRs more deeply: overcoming gatekeeping obstacles. One of the strategies that many of the participants had adopted in order to overcome that challenge was co-authoring. For Lena, although it is annoying to receive a rejection decision,

Lena: if you work together with someone else it’s easier to sort of sit down and discuss how you want to, uh, go further with this, so the publication process is better if I do it together with others, or it’s more fun.

In addition to easing the process, working with others makes it possible to find out about the intricacies of academic publishing (see Cho, 2004). Hans explained, for example, that thanks to co-authoring, he realised how important it is to write a cover letter to the editor when submitting an article, something he took from his collaborator. Perhaps this seems a minuscule detail, but the addition of many details like this can have an impact in knowing better the publication game, Hans explained. Another strategy that had helped all of them know more about the publication process was to act as a reviewer themselves. All six of them reported having been invited to review journal articles more than once already, which allowed them to see the “behind the scenes” of peer review. In several cases, invitations came from journal editors that they knew already or if not, it was clear to them that they had been recommended to the editor by some of their senior colleagues. All in all, both co-authoring and acting as a reviewer can help navigate the publication process, particularly in terms of how to respond to the sometimes harshness of peer review. Yet these two strategies did not come about automatically, they highly depended on scholars’ capacity to network. This brings us to the final and third theme/topic to be highlighted from the interviews: participants’ sense of their position in their field and the sense of their possibilities to act on it.

ESRs’ awareness of their structured agency

When discussing the importance of accessing and using both material and symbolic resources (e.g., access to well-sourced libraries, or funds to travel to conferences and progressively build up one’s research network), they all agreed that these were key in shaping their publication opportunities. All of them retold having no problems whatsoever in accessing the relevant literature they needed to conduct their studies. Support was available also for other key activities during their doctoral studies, including traveling to relevant conferences and workshops, with the exception of Sandra, who in the US had to self-finance some of those trips herself. However, in Sandra’s case, her supervisor did a very good job at introducing her to other key scholars in her field, something that later on she could draw on in working on her publications. In one case, a top-rank journal in her field asked her to further justify her methodological approach, something she felt was unwarranted, as many other authors had published in that journal before using the exact same methodology, so she wondered why she was asked to provide that justification. Sandra then contacted several key scholars in her network, who helped her with that task, and she was able to overcome that obstacle. So, rather than a language-related barrier, it was clear for all of them that being able to count on key contacts in their field was important, and although for some (e.g., Hans, Yun, and Peter) this entailed some personality traits that did not come easy for them (e.g., socialising at conferences), they all agreed that networking is central in shaping one’s position in one’s field and in having an impact on one’s writing and publication opportunities (see Lillis & Curry, 2010). Sandra summed this up as follows:

Sandra: I mean, maybe what has changed with time is that, you know, when you write the literature review, uhm, you feel that you belong to a community more. Because at the beginning, you have all these names without a face attached to them, it’s just authors, people you have to read, and now it’s basically your friends that you are reading or, you know. … And so you feel like you are more belonging to the community, and that also kind of gives you more confidence.

Discussion and conclusions

The six scholars that participated in this exploratory study are highly knowledgeable of the publication playfield in which they operate, having progressively gained insider status in their research communities (Hyland, 2007) and accumulated experience in their trajectory as scholars in their respective fields. The knowledge they gained during their doctoral degree and their socialisation in their communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) allowed them to become familiarised with the publication process and to adopt strategies in order to overcome some of the key obstacles in the journey to have their research published. As we have seen, some of these strategies entail a relative degree of control over and use of material and symbolic resources, something that is contingent upon the situatedness of academic writing for publication (Lillis & Curry, 2010).

What does the experience of these six scholars tell us in connection to the debate about the linguistic privilege and its associated injustices in academic publishing (cf. Hyland, 2016; Politzer-Ahles et al., 2016)? First of all, all six of them chose to write and publish their work in English for several reasons, including being read by their relevant peers and progressively joining their research communities. Certainly, they were all concerned with the fact that they had to publish more and more, ideally in top-ranked journals, in order to seize a permanent position for themselves. Of course, such journals operate in English, particularly those in the higher level tiers of key indexing databases, but that was not perceived to be a problem for the six scholars in this study; in fact, for several of them, writing for publication in English was perceived as more comfortable or straightforward than if they would have to do it in their L1 (see Kuteeva & McGrath, 2014). Acting from relatively well-sourced positions, these six scholars were capable, to a good extent, of creating the optimal conditions for themselves in order to construct a successful track of publications. Importantly, this goes for all scholars in the study, regardless of L1 background, area of specialisation, or even country where they obtained their PhD, whether they completed it in the USA (a prototypically “centre” country) or Sweden (a more “periphery” country). In line with the “destabilizing” idea of the special issue, this goes to show that, as we know, binaries portrayed as polar opposites are problematic, whether it is the native-non-native dichotomy, or the centre-periphery divide, both of which are normally referred to in ERPP discussions (cf. Canagarajah, 2002; Lillis & Curry, 2010). The point to take from this is that working from the “centre” or from the “periphery” has become nowadays less geographically tied, and is more contingent on other factors, including access to key resources, both material and symbolic ones. Similarly, linguistic privilege because of L1 status needs to be further nuanced.

There is some truth in saying that academic language is no one’s mother tongue, as Bourdieu et al. (1994) aptly noted, and as Hyland (2016) emphasises in the case of writing for publication purposes. However, importantly, even if it is no one’s mother tongue, Bourdieu et al. (1994) add that “it is very unequally distant from the language actually spoken by the different social classes” (p. 8). So, once again, it is one’s position in a given social field (a position that is also sociolinguistically shaped) that may determine one’s chances to act upon that field. Perhaps, in the end, it is only a matter of emphasis, with some wanting to see language as a primary factor in determining one’s position, and others wanting to see extralinguistic factors as the key issues to consider. Some of the arguments raised by the six informants that participated in this study do resonate with previous work investigating the linguistic grievances felt by EAL authors in their attempt to publish academically. These include, first of all, the idea that they cannot express themselves as fluently in English as in their L1 (cf. Hanauer & Englander, 2011); secondly, the need to deal with harsh feedback from journal peer-reviews (cf. Englander, 2009); and thirdly, the perceived requirement to present in a relevant manner a locally connected topic to an international audience (cf. Cho, 2009).

However, a strong case can also be made for these six scholars not feeling at a disadvantage when having to write in English for publication purposes. The six of them did not feel that reviewers’ criticisms targeted their language, or that non-native language features were highlighted and used as a cue in order to dismiss their papers. Instead, it was felt that the criticism they received targeted their arguments and their analyses, and so they felt the need to keep developing a thicker skin when dealing with reviewers’ comments. Finally, it was also perceived that with time and with the accumulation of experience it was possible for authors to develop a voice and a sense of legitimacy in their research community (Hirvela & Belcher, 2001). Importantly, it was through non-discursive means (seeking support from their networks of peers and senior colleagues) that they indicated they could overcome these important challenges. Previous work has emphasised the important role played by literacy brokers (Lillis & Curry, 2006) in helping multilingual authors bring their texts to publication standards. However, it seems as though the actual shapers of EAL articles are beyond language professionals and include members of the authors’ research communities, their closely connected peers and senior scholars (see Burrough-Boenisch, 2003).

My sense is that, in trying to push the debate further, it might be possible to suggest that more clarity is needed in order to differentiate between the activity of academic publishing from the activity of academic writing, if only for the sake of the argument. Naturally, the two of them are intrinsically related, so I am ready to admit that this differentiation is somewhat artificial. However, not infrequently, contributors conflate all too easily the debate about publishing with the activity of academic writing, and place the weight of the injustice argument on linguistic or non-linguistic factors depending on what they may wish to highlight. Instead, rather than seeing it as an “either or” situation, either linguistic privilege exists or non-discursive factors are more relevant, it should be possible to consider it as a “both and” situation. Indeed, it might be that in academic writing, an emphasis on the primacy of language may be more granted, while in academic publishing, it is non-discursive, extralinguistic factors that may play a bigger role. One thing is how authors learn and master e.g. idiomatic expressions, turns of phrase, use of prepositions and other fine-grained linguistic details, and another is how they manage to put their texts in circulation in key academic outputs; in connection to the former, L1 status might be more relevant, whereas in connection to the latter, experience and networking might be more crucial. Moreover, the study presented here, although exploratory in nature and thus limited in scope, indicates that in the route towards publishing, access to symbolic resources (e.g. research networks) and material means (e.g. funding to travel to conferences) seems to be highly relevant; English does seem to play a central role as one such resource, but it does need to be analysed in connection to this web of resources rather than in the abstract, named language, form (Curry & Lillis, 2010). Needless to say, the analysis presented here is limited to the narratives provided by the six participants, and further research will need to continue to dig deeper into the nature of such key material and symbolic resources, and into authors’ access and availability of them.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Nathanael Rudolph, Ali Fuad Selvi, and Bedrettin Yazan, guest editors of this special issue, for their continued support during the production of this article. An earlier version of it was presented at the English Language Seminar series of Stockholm University (8^th October 2018). Thanks go to colleagues there for their comments and suggestions during the seminar, and particularly to James Thomson, Kathrin Kaufhold, and Maria Kuteeva, for their detailed written feedback. I also thank the two blind reviewers for their comments and recommendations on earlier versions of the article, which helped improve it. Remaining mistakes or shortcomings are, of course, only my own.

Notes

1. Informed consent was obtained from all participants in the study. A final version of the article was shared with all of them, and all agreed to how their data were presented and handled in the text.