Abstract：Since the 1970s when the “open door” policy was adopted in China, a large number of new research products published in English have been introduced to Chinese readers. Such introductions not only have promoted the development of the discipline concerned, but also have greatly increased new academic terms in Chinese. Meanwhile, Chinese scholars have not been aware of the fact that the English-based conceptual system underlying the new research products has directed their academic thinking, research and course teaching. The language-based academic concept is the smallest unit in the academic discourse system. Once the thinking of Chinese scholars has been dominated by the English-based concepts, it would be extremely difficult for them to develop an innovative academic discourse system with Chinese features. Recently when discussing the roles of language in the international academic discourse, the languages employed in the academic products are usually examined with almost no attention paid to the language used in a scholar’s thinking which, however, plays an essential role in academic innovations. In order to resolve this problem, a new concept of “language in academic thinking” is proposed in this paper in contrast to “language in academic communication”. The latter refers to the language used in oral and written output while the former, to the language exhibited in the scholar’s academic thinking. In regards to language in academic communication, English has still remained predominantly powerful. The issue of how to break English-dominance in the academic world has been extensively discussed with two feasible policies being proposed. The first is to encourage English-Chinese dual publication and the second is to publish research in Chinese before in English. In order to demonstrate the advantages and disadvantages of language in academic thinking, the paper takes the author’s own experiences as an example to demonstrate how her academic thinking process has been changed in terms of the language, while reflect its positive and negative roles of English in her academic thinking process. The author studied overseas theoretical linguistics in the 1980s and applied linguistics in the 1990s. As a result, the author had established English-based linguistic conceptual systems. On the positive side, such systems enabled her to gain frontier knowledge; on the negative side, such systems almost controlled her academic thinking, teaching and research. Once having fully realized its negative effects, she has made conscientious efforts in freeing herself from shackles of the English-based conceptual system. Based on her own practice, she has proposed a balanced system in which Chinese and English are interactive in both thinking and communication. This balanced system, the author believes, can promote Chinese scholars’ academic innovations and facilitate the internationalization of Chinese academic research.
文秋芳. 论外在学术语言和内在学术语言——兼及中国特色学术话语体系构建[J]. 语言战略研究, 2022, 7(5): 14-24.
Wen Qiufang. On the Roles of Languages in Academic Communication and Thinking: How to Develop an Academic Discourse System with Chinese Features. , 2022, 7(5): 14-24.
