Flammie A Pirinen on github pages
WIP
Academic English is an idea that there is very specific style of English that is appropriate for all the academic writing. It still has a lot of support in academic community: Universities have courses on academic English, some very prominent academics are supporting it strongly, etc., etc. It only has one problem. It’s an elitistic shibboleth, a code that you will be native in if you have grown up and/or been educated in larger more expensive Western schools. It has nothing to do with readability or any measurable good style. And it is very strongly used to keep non-native English speakers out, especially minorities and underrepresented peoples.
What's the best reason why you've had a paper rejected?
— Troy Heffernan (@troyheff) August 13, 2020
I'll go first:
'There's a split-infinitive on page 6. As the paper has been so poorly proofread it's not worth my time reviewing'.
There are a number of silly rules that people have learnt on academic English courses and meticulously recite in their reviews, and rank down the papers based on it. Some of them are the basic language rule booking that people tend to do when they don’t understand linguistics but have been taught somethings, in English this usually amounts to stuff like “prepositions should not be at the end of the sentence” or “split infinitives” or even worse things like “passive voice should not be used”. Some are more absurd superstitions like “if there’s a germanic and latinate term for same concept you must use the latinate one”. A good one that has been recently popping up in twitter is “you must always use we even if it’s single writer paper”.