A cross-disciplinary study of scholars' multilingual research-oriented literacies

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION among academics in higher education has been reported to be primarily in English, no matter academics’ native language backgrounds (Jenkins, 2014; Plo and Pérez-Llantada 2015). This paper seeks to demonstrate that, even if English plays a prevailing role in international communication, there exists linguistic diversity if we take a closer look at ‘localized communities of practice’ (Becher and Trowler 2001, King 2005). Following Dörnyei (2007) a survey on research-oriented practices was administered to scholars in two disciplinary communities based at a traditionally monolingual university. Similarities regarding language use and language choice were identified in the two groups of scholars. Consistent with the literature, English was the preferred choice for reading and writing research-oriented activities. However, when it comes to oral communication, language choice appears to be determined by discipline-specific practices and very much driven by the particular ethos of each discipline.