Language and the Ingenuity Gap

Over the past centuries, first Latin and then French, German, and Russian, have receded in perceived importance as languages of science. Other powerful languages, with extensive internal scientific discourse, such as Japanese and Chinese, have always been largely excluded. The dominance of English, brought on by the economic power first of the UK (in the 18th and 19th centuries) and then of the USA (in the 20th and 21st), has elevated the reputation of English-language universities and advantaged native speakers of English by creating a self-reinforcing loop of language flow. Abstracting services insist on English-language abstracts; citation indexes often include only English-language citations; thus English appears to dominate scientific discourse, and English-speaking universities invariably head the lists of leading scientific institutions. The inexact assumption appears to be that, with enough pressure, others will simply be forced to learn English in order to compete. In fact, language frequently limits their participation ...