After two MAs and one Ph.D. it is possible to complain about three topics related to academia for me. The first one is related to the language issue. The second is related to the language issue and the third is related to the language issue.
So I will start from the first one, first of all, most of the academics do some copy and paste and rephrase and combine the sentences and then they write the most independent part: their research and its analysis. But unfortunately in general, most of the articles written as such are boring and they do not know the curves in the brain of a human being but they seem to be a flat two-dimensional text. This text without imagination, creation written without any literary concerns or the concern of the reader turns the article into a one-dimensional and dry reading. You just take the article in your hand and you start to think: maybe academia is not for me. Maybe this is too much. In fact, what I have observed is that those academics whose writing I like the most are the most accomplished professors who write in a freer style or those who are independent academicians, those who do not work in an institution but still keeping the formal language they say what they want to say in a precise, nice, clear manner.
The second issue is related to language again as I have mentioned. ENGLISH ENGLISH ENGLISH. I find it now easier to think in English but writing English takes time, takes patience, takes expertise, takes a dictionary, constantly looking at the words-synonyms-academic words, etc.... it is not easy for me despite years of education in English to write a scholarly article in English without making any mistakes. And this problem is not only related to the fact that grammar rules are not obeyed perfectly by those whose second language is English. The main issue is the structure of the sentences and the structure of thinking: I cannot express the things I express in my article written in English in Turkish and I cannot express my ideas in Turkish translating them perfectly to English because if I have to choose the second option I have to spend hours and hours to write an article. And this is almost impossible. I do neither have the time nor the patience for it. So, therefore, a language that is broken, devoid of creative ideas, without having the flexibilities and the richness of the mother tongue also containing grammatical mistakes comes to the fore and makes me feel even more mediocre.
The third issue is again the language: People whose English are better write better and correct better and even if the ideas belong to another author whose main language is not English, the English author will have more leverage to say things, not only because she or he is more experienced but because this constructed superiority and the idea of universal language means that you are born with it or not. I do not suggest that we should write all our articles in Turkish, Chinese, Jamaican, French, Tanzanian, etc. but maybe the production pace of the articles should be slower and the works should be translated more into national languages so that what is achieved by the scientists can be digested by the readers, too. These readers are not necessarily the people who are experts in your area but they can be workers, they can be artists, lawyers, actors, poets, writers themselves... they can be anyone who is not academic but who is interested.
I find these impediments seriously dangerous to writing better, expressing opinions better and structuring the ideas in a better format in a scholarly article. I think that we should think once more how much we are losing by speaking, writing and thinking only in English. English should be a language of collaboration and sharing, not a language of domination and benefiting from this superior condition.
So I will start from the first one, first of all, most of the academics do some copy and paste and rephrase and combine the sentences and then they write the most independent part: their research and its analysis. But unfortunately in general, most of the articles written as such are boring and they do not know the curves in the brain of a human being but they seem to be a flat two-dimensional text. This text without imagination, creation written without any literary concerns or the concern of the reader turns the article into a one-dimensional and dry reading. You just take the article in your hand and you start to think: maybe academia is not for me. Maybe this is too much. In fact, what I have observed is that those academics whose writing I like the most are the most accomplished professors who write in a freer style or those who are independent academicians, those who do not work in an institution but still keeping the formal language they say what they want to say in a precise, nice, clear manner.
The second issue is related to language again as I have mentioned. ENGLISH ENGLISH ENGLISH. I find it now easier to think in English but writing English takes time, takes patience, takes expertise, takes a dictionary, constantly looking at the words-synonyms-academic words, etc.... it is not easy for me despite years of education in English to write a scholarly article in English without making any mistakes. And this problem is not only related to the fact that grammar rules are not obeyed perfectly by those whose second language is English. The main issue is the structure of the sentences and the structure of thinking: I cannot express the things I express in my article written in English in Turkish and I cannot express my ideas in Turkish translating them perfectly to English because if I have to choose the second option I have to spend hours and hours to write an article. And this is almost impossible. I do neither have the time nor the patience for it. So, therefore, a language that is broken, devoid of creative ideas, without having the flexibilities and the richness of the mother tongue also containing grammatical mistakes comes to the fore and makes me feel even more mediocre.
The third issue is again the language: People whose English are better write better and correct better and even if the ideas belong to another author whose main language is not English, the English author will have more leverage to say things, not only because she or he is more experienced but because this constructed superiority and the idea of universal language means that you are born with it or not. I do not suggest that we should write all our articles in Turkish, Chinese, Jamaican, French, Tanzanian, etc. but maybe the production pace of the articles should be slower and the works should be translated more into national languages so that what is achieved by the scientists can be digested by the readers, too. These readers are not necessarily the people who are experts in your area but they can be workers, they can be artists, lawyers, actors, poets, writers themselves... they can be anyone who is not academic but who is interested.
I find these impediments seriously dangerous to writing better, expressing opinions better and structuring the ideas in a better format in a scholarly article. I think that we should think once more how much we are losing by speaking, writing and thinking only in English. English should be a language of collaboration and sharing, not a language of domination and benefiting from this superior condition.
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