Can Scholarly Communication Be Multilingual? A Glance at Language Use in US Classical Archaeology

Abstract

Classical archaeology is one of the few humanities in which several European languages, above all English, German, French and Italian, are used for specialized communication, in particular for scholarly publications. From previous research, it appears that non-English speaking archaeologists tend to feel a certain discomfort at the lack of impact of publications written in languages other than English. This article aims to analyze the attitudes of US classical archaeologists towards multilingualism and reception of non-English research publications. A survey of US university archaeologists was conducted, which demonstrates that they are convinced that scholarly communication in the field must remain multilingual, thus showing an attitude similar to that of their European colleagues. As for reception of non-English archaeological literature, language barriers seem to be growing, both in teaching and research, due to current US language and library policies.

Keywords

• multilingualism
• language use in humanities
• scholarly communication
• LSP
• classical archaeology