Domination of English and its impact on the Arabic System of Scholarly Communication

Abstract

While English, supported by technological development and the advent of networked information, has overwhelmingly played a dominating force in the world–wide system of scholarly communication, it has created a deficiency in local scholarly communication systems; the Arabic scholarly communication system is no exception. This paper investigates the impact of English language on the Arab academics’ practices in and attitudes towards research and scholarly communication. It also assesses the challenges facing the future of Arabic scholarship, in particular the crisis regarding the use of the Arabic language in the academic networked environment. A qualitative approach containing semi-structured interviews was utilized to collect rich data about the academics’ practices and attitudes on their choice of language for research and scholarly communication and whether the dominant use of English, especially in science disciplines, hinders the potential of Arabic scholarship to contribute in the development of Arabic as a scholarly language.

Keywords

• Scholarly communication, Networked Information, linguistic divide, Arabic language, Arab World, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman