The Hidden Costs of Being a Non-Native English Speaker in Philosophy (guest post)
Last year, a group of scholars launched an international survey of philosophers on the dominant language of philosophy today—“academic English”—and the challenges faced by native and non-native speakers of everyday English as they work in this language.
The survey was completed, and the results of their study were published yesterday in Review of Philosophy and Psychology as “Epistemic Challenges Faced by Non-native English Speakers in Philosophy: Evidence from an International Survey“.
In the guest post, below, a subset of the researchers involved in the study share and discuss their findings. The authors are Uwe Peters (Utrecht University, Netherlands), Kiichi Inarimori (Hiroshima University, Japan), Sitian Liu (Guangxi University, China), and Juan Samuel Santos-Castro (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia).
[photos from the series, “Have You Seen My Language?” by Matt Keegan]
The Hidden Costs of Being a Non-Native English Speaker in Philosophy
by Uwe Peters, Kiichi Inarimori, Sitian Liu, and Juan Samuel Santos-Castro
Using academic English in philosophy is now almost inevitable. And in many ways, it’s great. It allows us to share ideas and collaborate across borders and languages. It makes a global philosophical conversation possible.
But academic English is no one’s native language. It involves a style, register, and formality that can be hard to master—for non-native English speakers (NNES) as well as for native English speakers (NES). So how do both groups fare in practice? Do they struggle equally when writing papers, reading texts, or giving presentations in academic English? Are they equally likely to avoid asking questions at English-language events, or get negative teaching feedback related to their English use?
To find out, last year, we, an international team of ten researchers, including NES and NNES, conducted a large-scale survey of people working in philosophy. Many of you here may have taken it—thanks to Justin’s help in sharing the survey.
We received over 1,600 responses from NES and NNES philosophers from around the world, providing us with intriguing, and disconcerting, insights into the experience of being a NES and NNES in philosophy. The survey results have just been published in Review of Philosophy and Psychology.
NNES Work Harder, Speak Less
Controlling for English proficiency, career stage, and regional context, we found that the time NNES reported needing to read English-language papers was twice as long as the time reported by NES. For preparing English presentations, it was nearly twice as long as well. Moreover, even among highly proficient NNES (C1–C2 level), about 60% reported having avoided asking questions at events due to concerns about their English (compared to 16% of NES). Nearly 50% of these NNES said they had at some point felt ridiculed for their English (e.g., because of their accent or pronunciation).
This isn’t just a personal or practical inconvenience. It’s perhaps a collective ethical and epistemic problem: When NNES (or NES) philosophers hesitate to participate or are subtly discouraged from doing so, the whole philosophical community may pay the price. Valuable insights may go unspoken. Important objections may not be raised.
And the impact is not just immediate.
A Lingering Loss
Surprisingly, almost 90% of NNES respondents also said that frequent use of English in academia had interfered with their ability to do philosophy in their own language.
I (Uwe) can relate. I’m a German (originally from East Berlin). After almost a decade of doing philosophy in English-speaking countries (e.g., New Zealand, Canada, the UK), I now struggle to explain my research in German. All I know in philosophy is ‘encoded’ in English in my mind. When German-speaking colleagues ask what I work on, I often freeze because I don’t know how to say it in German. Reaching a certain NNES proficiency may come at the cost of fluency in one’s native language—a loss that may be subtle but deeply felt.
Native Speakers Struggle, Too
Interestingly, many NES respondents also reported challenges with academic English. Several noted that coming from a working-class or “first-gen” background, or speaking with a regional (e.g., US, British, Scottish, etc.) or rural accent, made it harder to feel at ease at conferences or to write confidently in academic prose. Academic English, then, is not just a language barrier. It can act as a class marker and a gatekeeper within English-speaking countries for NES too. We couldn’t fully explore these dynamics, but they are an important direction for future work.
Perspectives from Colombia, China, and Japan
Juan Santos (Bogota, Colombia):
Picking up on social class issues, I think in many countries where English isn’t the dominant language, English education often also signals wealth and status. Here in Colombia, for example, NNES from higher socio-economic backgrounds typically have access to formal English training and better opportunities to refine their language skills, opportunities that poorer students may lack. So, it’s not just being a NNES that matters. Socio-economic class and ‘academic socialization’ (e.g., where one got one’s degree) are crucial too.
Some NNES reported trouble speaking in public and networking due to their lack of common language fluidity or familiarity with cultural references. For NNES (and even for some NES) from lower socio-economic backgrounds this means that there is an additional layer of difficulty as the academia has traditionally belonged to the privileged class.
I experienced this in my professional life. Becoming an academic meant for me becoming a member of a different socio-economic class. It meant learning to use a different language (i.e., English) and learning the conventions, mores and biases of a different socio-economic classes both in my own country and abroad.
NNES from privileged backgrounds may have more resources to “outsource” proofreading or editing work, helping them produce publishable drafts faster than possibly even some NES (as some trends in our data may suggest). Those same privileged NNES may also have fewer incentives to challenge the status quo, potentially perpetuating both intra-national and global injustices in academic philosophy. If philosophy is concerned with justice and equity, this should worry us as well.
Sitian (Nanning, China):
For many Chinese people working in philosophy, academic English is both a passport and a burden. It grants access to international publication and recognition but imposes cognitive and emotional strain. Even highly skilled English users often hesitate to speak in seminars, not because they lack ideas, but because formulating them in “appropriate” English takes time. That delay can be costly.
Reading in English also creates insecurity. If a Chinese text is unclear, we might blame the author. If an English one is, we often blame ourselves. This self-doubt can lead to self-censorship, and real-time discussion becomes stressful or even paralyzing.
The stylistic gap between Chinese and English academic writing adds another layer of complexity. Chinese journals tend to favor a neutral, detached tone, whereas English ones encourage first-person, assertive argumentation (Liu, 2009; Loi & Evans, 2010).
Perhaps most telling is the fact that some people consider adopting an English name or inserting a Western-sounding middle name when submitting papers, in hopes of subtly improving their chances of publication. That such strategies are considered reveals the structural inequality embedded in academic English. It doesn’t just affect how we communicate, it silently governs who feels entitled to speak, and who remains hesitant, no matter how much they have to say.
Kiichi (Higashi-Hiroshima, Japan):
For native Japanese speakers, mastering English is particularly difficult. Although most people study English for at least six years, many still struggle with basic conversation, let alone academic writing. Japanese philosophers, in particular, often find it challenging to write papers in proper English without assistance (e.g., proofreading services). Most national journals require an English abstract, and in many cases, proofreading by a native speaker is mandatory. Authors are even asked to submit certificates confirming this (see, e.g., here or here).
Several factors make English difficult for Japanese speakers. The two languages differ significantly in grammar and vocabulary, with little overlap. Unlike European languages, Japanese shares no linguistic roots with English. Moreover, because of Japan’s long-standing translation culture since the Meiji era, philosophy is typically taught in Japanese. This has made Western philosophy more accessible domestically. But it has also limited exposure to English-language academic discourse.
While I am now relatively comfortable writing in English (as I am doing here) speaking is much harder, especially in academic discussions. Unlike writing, it requires quickly following the flow of conversation and responding in real time. I recall attending a summer school in Europe during my first year as a PhD student. Though I was considered a strong English speaker at my university, I soon realized I was the least fluent participant.
Fortunately, advances in AI tools like ChatGPT have made English writing and speaking practice far more accessible. Some schools in Japan are beginning to use such technologies in education. These developments may help reduce the epistemic barriers Japanese scholars face in global academia.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Our study highlights that while English can unite philosophers across continents (as we’ve done for this project), it may also divide, by imposing different kinds of challenges on NES and NNES, or emphasizing class, regional, or other social differences. Academic English is not neutral. It privileges certain voices, disadvantages others, and may leave many NNES less able to do philosophy in their own mother tongue(s).
If we want philosophy to be genuinely global, just, and conducive to the pursuit of truth, we need to be more aware of the invisible labor that many NNES philosophers invest to be heard, and more willing to challenge the structures that may keep them quiet. Acknowledging this imbalance may not be enough. But it’s a promising place to start.
Oh well, I suspect the prestige of academia in the English-speaking western countries banks on this “hidden cost” (I don’t think it’s all that hidden). In comparison to Europe, Asia, and more.
There are awful lot of formidable intellects out of this rich sphere who lacks the proper opportunities, like the reported shadow writers in Kenya who help write papers for elite school students. (Though this case isn’t about language barriers.)
The language barrier serves a purpose. If all philosophy should be done in French or Japanese, then even if we translate all the American journals into these languages, the perception of their quality might well change.
I find your last point interesting. Surely, it is speculation, but it helps to note the tendency to assume that if a research is done in English, it must have been done by someone with proper academic credentials, if only because had their work published in English. In a way, we are falling for the fallacy of using English as a marker of academic quality instead of using academic quiality as a marker of academic quality.
I have paid thousands of Euros for professional proofreading of my papers from my personal money as a PhD student, postdoc, and assistant professor. (Now that I have enough money to afford it, I have third-party funding to pay for it.) I was extremely lucky to have that money. Those who are not that lucky have probably had considerably fewer chances. LLMs will hopefully help here in the future.
I think that it would be very good if referees keep this in mind.
I second this, and think it’s worth emphasizing (that the post does not, but the article does) how high the economic burden actually is. I was fortunate enough to have opportunities for funding proofreading most of the time, but that is both something that requires additional administrative work (applying for funding, seeking further opportunities, etc.) and something that many people lack access to.
Thanks so much for sharing this, Leo!
I agree the potential financial costs should be highlighted more, as it brings in the socio-economic dimension. I think one of our respondents also wrote that even after paying for a native English proof-reader, he’d still always need to check the proof-read version, because proof-readers also make mistakes. So it’s not just the money, but also the added time, stress, etc. of cross-checking your own work later. Maybe some native English speakers who struggle with academic English (e.g., due to dyslexia, etc.) face similar challenges. I wish we had included some questions on these issues in the survey!
In your case, if you’re an NNES, do the financial costs lead you to publish more in your mother tongue then?
Thanks, Uwe! This is an important topic for NNES in my community, and I’m glad you’re highlighting it.
I am NNES myself, but I have published almost exclusively in English. It seems to me that ethicists in Germany started publishing more frequently in English around 10–15 years ago, and I followed their example.
I fully agree that even if one can afford a proofreader it’s not just about the money. Recently, a referee criticised my paper for its ‘chatty’ tone (they made it clear that this was a side note). I had no idea that my writing was ‘chatty’ and I’m still not sure what to think about it.
I think it’s worth pointing out that linguistic disadvantage in philosophy isn’t just a matter of non-native speakers. Even within the Anglophone world, UK English carries its own burden (at least when it comes to philosophical writing). Here American English often has the edge it’s on the whole more direct, more economical, and less encumbered by stylistic hedges. UK philosophical writing (with some exceptions) often seems to, rather annoyingly, take the scenic route—getting to the point slowly, sometimes circling it rather than stating it. Add to that the reliance on archaisms like “betwixt” (and other words that seem like they come from Dickens!) or even everyday oddities like “learnt,” and the effect can strike readers as oddly formal and pretentious. None of this means British philosophers can’t write clearly, of course, but there’s a cultural tendency that shapes prose style. And when philosophy is already hard enough, unnecessary stylistic obstacles matter. In this sense, UK English can be a disadvantage all its own.
Great you mention this. I wonder if there’s a difference between analytic vs. continental philosophy writing in that respect, independently of the difference between UK vs. US English?
I think the style/clarity point might also to some extent carry over to differences between languages. E.g., I’m German, but I got more out of reading Kant’s Third Critique in English (in NZ) than when I studied it in Germany in the original German: the English translator had to streamline and simplify the (Kantian) convoluted German style, making it much more accessible.
More direct feels here like a synonym for lifeless. Frankly, I find the British writers better. Oten academic English feels like a crutch for people who cannot write, since “clarity” demands they write with no sense of style.
Every time I assign papers from “top journals” in a grad seminar, I get a raft of complaints that they are a slog as the writing is so stilted and dull. And it doesn’t have to be this way; Russell was a great writer.
I grant the point about Russell, he got to the point quickly. But the circuitousness of stuffy indirectness of so much philosophical writing in UK English really is a barrier to reception in the US, where (frankly, and for better or worse) most referees at top journals reside. Elsewhere in this thread David Wallace says that ‘learnt’ is simply the British English way of saying ‘learned’; I suppose I agree, and that’s the problem — ‘learnt’, ‘mixt’ ‘betwixt’ ‘fortnight’ ‘outwith’ ‘whilstsoever’ — I’m not blaming the Brits but these words (especially when in the service of some stuffy circuitous point) just sounds plain awful to the American ear. My main advice here is simply: for those who must write in UK English, they’d be well advised to tone some of this archaic stuff down and just get to the point clearly.
I’m sure it’s unintentional, but this is getting irritating.
If you just want to advise speakers of British English to do philosophy in American English rather than British English, that’s fine; probably it’s good advice. (Certainly I mostly write in American English now, even though I grew up in the UK.)
But there’s no sense in which ‘fortnight’ or ‘learnt’ are ‘archaic’. They are standard, colloquial, words in a modern language that is extremely closely related to American English but is not actually the same language.
(‘betwixt’ really is archaic in British English; ‘outwith’ is borderline.)
It’s condescending not to recognize that these are just (slightly) different languages, with (slightly) different grammar and vocabulary; just as condescending as the common habit among British people of critici(s/z)ing Americans for not speaking English properly.
I disagree. On the whole, I don’t see a major difference between UK and American philosophical writing, none at least that affects my reception of their work. There are differences surely, but I wouldn’t consider them significant, nor favouring one style over the other; indeed, to the extent that British authors “rely on archaisms” and “circle the point rather than state it”, the American ones can be described as crass and prone to overstate the contribution of their paper.
This is running two issues together. There are certainly stylistic differences between how UK philosophers and US philosophers tend to write (and for all I know those are partly due to subtle language differences, though I think it’s more likely to be the outsize influence of Oxford). But “learnt” isn’t an “everyday oddity”: it’s the standard, non-archaic past-tense form of ‘learn’ in British English. It just happens not to be correct in US English. (And I was today years old when I
learntlearned that.)I guess I’m going to address the elephant in the room here as it were. If American philosophers don’t wish to speak the Queen’s English (now the King’s English I suppose) that is their prerogative. But the above post I feel risks a kind of Americo-centric hijacking of a language whose very name bears its origin – an origin a long way I dare say from Texas. If you say philosophical writing sounds odd in British English (and recall, chairs had already been established at Oxford University in Philosophy prior to the founding of the United States) then so be it, but consider that perhaps a Neapolitan pizza tastes slighly off to those weaned on bloody Pizza Hut. Good day to you chap!
I wonder if you would be similarly condescending towards all extra-Oxford dialects. And, for what it’s worth, your illustrious tongue did not spring spontaneously from the heath. It evolved, just like every language. The fact that American English is significantly younger than ‘the King’s’ means absolutely nothing. Languages change, dialects rise and fall in prominence, conventions shift. You sound like a Roman aristocrat grousing about those damnable Gauls.
Among the communicative issues between speakers of American and British English is that British irony doesn’t always translate well, doubly so in written form.
If, as I take you to be implying, the thrust of the above comment is softened by a proper grasp of ‘British irony’, then could you explain how?
The implicature of the following passage seems particularly clear: “But the above post I feel risks a kind of Americo-centric hijacking of a language whose very name bears its origin – an origin a long way I dare say from Texas.” It is this subtle valorization of proximity to ‘origin’ to which I object, as though the age of a dialect somehow works out to it being more legitimate or worthy of defen(s/c)e. What am I missing here?
Surely we can all agree that Canadian English is superior to both American and British English. It’s the only sensible way to spell.
Consider that sentence in the context of the final sentence of the same passage (“but consider that perhaps a Neapolitan pizza tastes slightly off to those weaned on bloody Pizza Hut”). This is also, at face value, something to do with distance from an origin. But presumably it is a case with implicitly lower stakes than language (though also characterized by there being some very ardent voices, Italian cultures famously taking very seriously their local cuisine heritage, hence the wit of the analogy).
On my take, what’s going on here is a comedic put down of America(ns) that focuses on differences in upbringing/education leading to differences in taste. So too, there are differences in upbringing/education that yield different tastes concerning language as there are concerning pizza preference. The passage as a whole is therefore an ironic way of expressing that the interlocutor is unduly privileging one taste at the expense of another, *and that it is not as if they have some claim to primacy, should that even matter*.
Tickety-boo sport – I’d say, that’s the ticket!
“On my take, what’s going on here is a comedic put down of America(ns) that focuses on differences in upbringing/education leading to differences in taste.”
Fantastic. Now take a second look at that and tell me there’s not a strong undercurrent of indignant snobbery.
I think you’re conflating what is intended to signal the fact that humor is the vehicle for the passage’s that the writer believes, were the message not clearly a humorous one (“clearly”, in view of the ridiculous tone and scope of the pizza analogy I already mentioned).
So: no, it isn’t a strong undercurrent of indignant snobbery. It is borrowing the trope of indignant snobbery to put a fair-minded point in recognizably comedic form (namely, that of a put down, a roast, a ribbing, whatever).
For what it’s worth, I’m not saying you have to find it funny, but I suppose I am committed to saying that perception of a strong undercurrent of indignant snobbery isn’t a fitting reason to decide it to be un-funny. It’d have to be a higher -order reflection, probbably along the lines “comedy that relies on audiences being able to recognize the cultural reference of highfalutin British snobbery is un-funny because [explanation]”, or else maybe “comedy that relies on put-downs is un-funny because [explanation]. (Both of these will be hard to defend: put-downs that aren’t punching down have a long comedic tradition, so many will find general arguments against them unsatisfying; likewise, at least in British comedy, plays on highfalutin (uppercrust) British snobbery also have a long comedic history.)
I’ll go ahead and take this defense at face value. What that leaves us with is basically the thesis that American English should get no preferential treatment over its UK (or rather its Oxford-Academic UK counterpart), with all the talk of ‘origins’ relegated to purely unserious, comedic territory.
If that’s what’s going on, then I have no problem with it. Now I want ‘not a Monarchist’ to explicitly sign off on this reading and concede that there is no sense in which they find ‘the King’s’ English to be inherently more legitimate than any other variety of English, written or spoken.
Chaps, I’ve registered the to-ing and fro-ing vis-a-vis the potential Kings English Normativist interpretation of the preceding. Before I weigh in, I’m in the midst of Father Ted. I’ll ruminate and come back shortly. Cheerio
So, no explicit concession. Forgive me, then, if I persist in detecting notes of elitism beneath the snark.
If you’re taking my defense above at face value, then it’s necessary to detecting the humor that you detect notes of elitism. So I’m not sure this is strictly the claim you intended. Namely: you should persist in detecting notes of elitism!
I suspect you intended a claim more like “Forgive me, then, if I consider the humor likely tainted by the relevant (im)morality of the comedian”. Which I guess is fine, but it isn’t very charitable to go about assuming the worst of comedians… (even if it can serve as prudent self-protection to think so of arbitrary strangers in Internet comment threads, comedians included).
What an extraordinary excursus! Extraordinary in that you seem to be unflaggingly committed to defending OP from any and all moral suspicion, when I’ve already explained the grounds for said moral suspicion: conflation of a dialectic’s age with a dialect’s legitimacy.
What’s remarkable here is that none of you have explicitly conceded that age =/= legitimacy, so I’m forced to assume that you all have some reason not to admit this. If that’s false, please make it known. Otherwise, I’ll continue asking why you won’t make this simple admission. Make the admission, and I’ll happily shut up and concede all the rest.
I don’t care about interpreting previous comments. I care about what you lot actually believe with respect to the legitimacy of different English convention systems.
Well, that’s probably I difference:
I don’t really care about the intents of an anonymous stranger I’ve never met making a passing comment in a not super trafficked comment thread. (Note, this covers you and ‘not a monarchist’, and also covers me to you in the mirror case.)
I thought I was amicably helping talk through a cultural gap over how to read a certain kind of humor. I certainly didn’t expect you to find that activity pointless and unwelcome. Sorry for the conversation/bothering you.
Pointing out the obvious: You still haven’t admitted that any other varieties of English are equally legitimate to UK-Academic.
It’s your prerogative to insist. But that’s a bit too intentionalist for me. I’m not sure I need to care about ‘Not a monarchist…”s passing a morality test to treat the comment as I have.
(I’d be slightly more interested in what the typical audience reports about the passage, where I follow Wallace in hypothesizing that there are simply cultural differences in natural interpretation — hence my choice of name here. But even then I’d want to be careful in the normative weight I give to facts about those differences…)
It’s (I believe) an intentional self-parody.
“What am I missing here?”
A sense of humououour?
The elephant in the room is that the article is about the struggles of Chinese and Columbia philosophers trying to navigate hierarchies of systemic inequality to write in ways that the West deems acceptable, and the comments section is a pissing match between philosophers from Oxford or Cambridge and philosophers from NYU or Rutgers.
Comment threads are multidimensional. Sometimes a relatively minor subtopic gets attention; that doesn’t block anyone from commenting on something more central.
I agree with your main point here: minor subtopics don’t block anyone from anything, strictly speaking. But we do have limited attentional resources and I find it unfortunate that whenever the disadvantages of being a nonnative speaker of English in academic philosophy comes up, the stylistic differences between different Englishes happen to dominate the conversation. This is of course anecdotal evidence, but worth noting.
For the record, the position underlying my argument is that all natural languages are, prima facie, equally valid means of expression which in principle deserve freedom from imperialist and/or elitist impositions. The increasing necessity of learning English in order to participate in academic philosophy is indeed a systemic and unfair disadvantage for non-native speakers, and the insistence on one stylistic form of English constitutes a wrong of a similar sort (if perhaps more easily overcome by native speakers of non-Academic English).
I want to be sensitive to the goal of this thread, so I apologize if I actually wound up detracting from it.
I find myself reminded of Denning’s opening to his judgement in Miller v Jackson.
“In summertime village cricket is the delight of everyone. Nearly every village has its own cricket field where the young men play and the old men watch. In the village of Lintz in County Durham they have their own ground, where they have played these last 70 years. They tend it well. The wicket area is well rolled and mown. The outfield is kept short. It has a good club house for the players and seats for the onlookers. The village team play there on Saturdays and Sundays. They belong to a league, competing with the neighbouring villages. On other evenings after work they practise while the light lasts. Yet now after these 70 years a judge of the High Court has ordered that they must not play there any more. He has issued an injunction to stop them. He has done it at the instance of a newcomer who is no lover of cricket. This newcomer has built, or has had built for him, a house on the edge of the cricket ground which four years ago was a field where cattle grazed. The animals did not mind the cricket. But now this adjoining field has been turned into a housing estate. The newcomer bought one of the houses on the edge of the cricket ground. No doubt the open space was a selling point. Now he complains that when a batsman hits a six the ball has been known to land in his garden or on or near his house. His wife has got so upset about it that they always go out at week-ends. They do not go into the garden when cricket is being played. They say that this is intolerable. So they asked the judge to stop the cricket being played. And the judge, much against his will, has felt that he must order the cricket to be stopped: with the consequence, I suppose, that the Lintz Cricket Club will disappear. The cricket ground will be turned to some other use. I expect for more houses or a factory. The young men will turn to other things instead of cricket. The whole village will be much the poorer. And all this because of a newcomer who has just bought a house there next to the cricket ground.”
Consider that it’s exactly as obnoxious when the cricket-lovers take it upon themselves to pontificate about how boorish and unsophisticated the non-cricket-lovers are. If you can’t help but clench your fists in rage because an ‘upstart’ dialect is gaining in prominence, then that sounds like a ‘you problem’ (if you’ll pardon the modern colloquialism; some of us aren’t bothered by the mundane reality of linguistic development/variation).
To be clear: Yes, I absolutely do consider it equally exasperating when Americans lecture Brits about ‘clarity’ or ‘concision’ or what have you.
One shouldn’t take the US perspective as the measure of all things – there is a wider world out there.
The idea that upper-crust Brits speaking RP are disadvantaged because they just can’t help but beat around the bush is a bit silly. Buried in here is a better idea worth taking seriously, though: namely, that speakers of dialects of English associated with lower classes and/or racial and ethnic minorities (e.g. rural working-class accents, AAVE, Chicano English) are also disadvantaged in ways similar to (but perhaps less severe than) native speakers of non-English languages on the basis of their dialects.
As a proud native speaker of a minoritized indigenous language (the north Dublin scanger variant of Hiberno-English), I wish more people recognized the linguistic disadvantage I face trying to correctly pronounce “th”.
I’m trying to work out what this means and I can’t – “learnt” is a completely ordinary English word. What is the point meant to be about “learnt” being an oddity?
A bit of a peculiar point on a specific subfield: I am still quite amazed by how English-centric philosophy of language turns out to be. I mean, it’s quite interesting how the English definite article works, or what sort of pragmatic intuitions native-speakers of English have with respect to sentences with epistemic modals and verbs, but it is interesting in just the same way as peculiarities of other languages that are often relegated to “cross-cultural pragmatics/semantics”.
Yes, and when you tell them that Slavic languages use a double negative they fall out of their chair.
They wouldn’t have in the heyday of Oxford ordinary language philosophy; Ancient Greek uses double negation.
Standards are definitely slipping. 😄
As does French, in certain instances!
As does English.
Making it somewhat unlikely that any philosopher of language is dumfounded by Slavic double-negations.
I speak from experience.
Coming from an Appalachian and Pennsylvania German (Deitsch) background, I always found academic English alien – a bizarre foreign dialect.
Academic English, especially in analytic philosophy, comes with a whole host of unspoken metaphysical assumptions that deserve to be questioned.
Why value “clarity”? If that clarity is produced by an extremely esoteric style, which takes years even for native English speakers to learn, then that clarity is a kind of linguistic distortion, which may very well produce philosophical distortions.
The high value of this clarity assumes that reality itself has a kind of clear structure, one which is an image of the grammar of academic English. This sometimes appears explicitly in various arguments from language in metaphysics (e.g. Lewis’s linguistic argument for non-actual possible worlds). And of course it also assumes a pretty naïve version of the correspondence theory of truth.
There aren’t any good arguments that reality is isomorphic to the grammatical structure of academic English, or to the grammatical structure of any language at all. Maybe people have done recent work on this issue, but last I recall seeing any discussion of the problems here was in Nietzsche. It may well be that reality has a very unclear structure, a messy structure which doesn’t correspond well to the grammar of academic English.
Analytic clarity involves an extreme narrowing of the semiotic power of language, and this narrowness might well entail a kind of blindness. Whereof we cannot write with clarity, we must remain silent. Much truth might lie outside this blinkered style.
Besides syntactic and semantic problems, there are severe pragmatic problems with the notion of “clarity”. Clarity enforces the maxim “tell, don’t show”. Following that maxim, if you’re doing philosophical work on horror, you might write about horror in the dead robot voice. You don’t make the reader feel horror; you explain it with emotionless prose. And that might well be a performative contradiction. To avoid such pragmatic conflict, you ought to reveal horror, your writing ought to produce horror in the reader.
And there’s an even deeper meta-philosophical assumption behind clarity: the task of philosophy is the same as the task of the sciences. Really? Why? Because reality has the kind of rational structure disclosed by the sciences? Really? Why?
Lots of historical philosophers wrote differently. Maybe Hegel got it right: reality isn’t clear. Continental philosophers are at least aware of stylistic issues. It’s possible to do philosophy in the mode of “show, don’t tell”. Such revelatory philosophy would still value rigorous argumentation, but it would value other things too.
“ It may well be that reality has a very unclear structure, a messy structure which doesn’t correspond well to the grammar of academic English.”
Or, if you adopt the perspective of physics, it might be that reality has a crystal clear structure, an elegant and precise structure which (nonetheless) doesn’t correspond well to the grammar of academic English.
Shameless self-promotion: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/phpe.12172
Well, our local physical reality might well have that crystal clear structure.
Setting aside worries about whether that’s the entirety of reality, I think your point is true in a way that’s probably not good news for any analytic philosophy that claims to be imitating science. Analysts really ought to be doing math.
And current work in the foundations of mathematics suggests that the mathematical structure of reality might be psychotic. All those cardinals beyond the Kunen inconsistency, floating in the abyss like deranged gods . . . .
This is all super interesting, but when I think about clarity, I’m not thinking about metaphysics. I’m thinking about whether I’m communicating with my audience. Clear writing is just writing that the reader can make sense of. The opposite is obfuscation. Do you think that striving for clarity in this sense presupposes anything about the structure of reality?
Sure, but I’m saying that all style presupposes metaphysics. I might be wrong. But what if reality is obscure? Another question: what do you want to communicate to your readers? A description of horror, or a description that produces horror, thus instantiating the concept.
There’s knowledge by description (“tell, don’t show”), and knowledge by acquaintance (“show, don’t tell”).
Imagine a text by a philosopher who thinks reality is fundamentally obscure (in general or some aspect). One way one could effectively show this is to exhaust the resources for explaining it clearly *by* attempting to write about it clearly, showing the obscurity of reality through the failures of clear writing to express it. If I may permit myself a bit of wordplay, this might be a way of showing clearly the obscurity of reality (if reality is obscure, is it better to be shown this clearly or obscurely?).
At the risk of too much clarity: take this as a playful nudge against the idea that there is a correspondence between style and metaphysics, rather than an attempt to defend clarity as stylistically superior.
Surely there are cases in which it is helpful for someone to think about horror by reading writing about horror that does not provoke horror. Surely there are also cases in which it is helpful for someone to think about horror by reading writing about something else that does provoke horror. And there are probably also cases in which it is helpful to read writing about horror that does provoke horror. (And it’s probably also helpful to read writing that does not provoke horror and is about non-horror topics, like love and life and happiness and sadness and fear.)
I think the reason the particular sort of clarity that has been prioritized became prioritized is because it often produces a kind of writing that is helpful for very many purposes (and for people from very different cultural backgrounds) while the styles that are more revelatory for a particular purpose are often less useful for the many other purposes that many other readers might want our writing for.
But where it’s useful, we absolutely should be employing each of these styles.
You’re absolutely right, and I didn’t mean to imply that the dead robot voice is performatively wrong in every case — that would be the same sin inverted! Our problem is that in our professional writing (in academic English pragmatics), you almost always see “tell, don’t show” writing, and almost never see “show, don’t tell” writing.
Very interesting point, and I partly agree. Still, as an NNES, I personally prefer a “clear” writing style for two reasons. First, since analytic-style writing is simple, it is easier for NNES to imitate, and therefore more accessible to us. Second, I am often asked to review articles written in English, and I find it much more difficult to understand them when they include metaphorical or rhetorical expressions, similar to those used in novels. I think that while the requirement for “clarity” can be a barrier for both NES and NNES, it also helps NNES engage more effectively in philosophy.
I am a non-native English speaker working in an English-speaking country. I feel that this post is more about non-English speakers in non-English-speaking countries. But I just want to share some personal experience.
An obvious hidden cost is that I just spend more time working, especially in my teaching and service. My “academic” English is fine, but I do need more time reading other materials, such as official documents, novels, etc. For example, with the trend of interdisciplinary approaches, I find myself spending more and more time in reading novels, sci-fictions, memoirs, and so on. Well, it is my choice to include them, but part of that is from the peer pressure. My reading speed is slow for those materials. (I am not sure if there is any empirical evidence. But as a non-native speaker, I feel that my close reading speed is fine, but I am not good at skimming materials. I spend way more time reading things that only need to be skimmed.)
Another hidden cost is that I always feel not qualified to teach “writing” according to my colleagues’ standard. Don’t get me wrong. My colleagues are supportive, and I have published papers in English (with no help from anyone). But still, people always emphasize the importance of writing skills and think of writing as a crucial learning goal for philosophy classes. This has always made me feel bad about myself. I once worked with an editor on some non-academic writing, and they told me that my writing was too formal and analytical, almost like ChatGPT. Well, I guess I am just an analytic philosopher whose English is their second language.
Very interesting point. I completely agree with the first one. While I am familiar with reading philosophy papers written in English, I find it more difficult to understand other English materials, including the comments on this blog post—even though their content is probably much easier than that of philosophy papers. I am now working on the ethics of mobility and often read English news articles to collect necessary information for my studies. However, because they frequently include words that rarely appear in philosophical contexts, they are much harder for me to understand. And, as you mention, skimming and grasping the overall picture of an article is especially difficult for me outside of philosophical contexts. When it comes to novels, it becomes even more challenging.
The same applies to daily conversation or business meetings: while I can discuss philosophical issues in English, I often get lost in these situations.
I think these difficulties are not simply cases of the language barriers of academic English, but they still suggest that the language barriers faced by NNES in academia are not limited to mastering academic English.
Thank you for sharing this. I really hear you. Philosophy puts such a heavy weight on writing, more than most disciplines, and that makes the pressure on non English speakers especially intense. Even when your English is already excellent, it’s easy to feel “not qualified.” And the extra time spent on slang, cultural references, or examples that only make sense in a native context adds yet another invisible burden.
But you’re already doing great. Publishing, teaching, and contributing in a second language is an achievement in itself, and it shows real strength. The problem is the way philosophy has tied its identity to language in ways that make things harder than they need to be. I honestly think the field would benefit from being more encouraging, more like the social sciences sometimes are. Until that changes, I hope we can all be kinder to ourselves and each other, making doing philosophy a happier experience.
Agreed. I have written and done activism extensively on these topics since at least 2018, see e.g.: https://doi.org/10.1111/meta.12650
Not sure I agree with the claim that English is the dominant language of philosophy. Of analytic philosophy, certainly. So then, I suppose, the claim really is that analytic philosophy is the dominant – whatever it is, everyone can fill in their favorite take on the analytic/non-analytic divide – philosophy.
Is that really so? It seems to me that the French or the Italians or the Germans are very happy doing philosophy in their own language. If they venture clearly into analytic philosophy, they will do it (also) in English, but most departments, in Germany, Italy, or France are not analytic, it seems to me.
Or is the claim more sociological that if one wants to be world famous or make a lot of money one needs to do philosophy in English? I am skeptical also about this claim since analytic philosophy is not exactly my idea of achieving either of these, whereas public intellectuals in the mentioned countries seem to be doing much better than their analytical counterparts at fancy places in the US or the UK.
Anyway, just musing. I know this is not what this post was about.
Thank you for raising this. I agree that strong traditions in France, Germany, and Italy continue in their own languages. Still, there is ample evidence that English has become the dominant language of philosophy as a global academic discipline. Non-English traditions remain vibrant, but if we look at citation networks, journals, hiring, and conferences, the influence of English-language analytic philosophy is overwhelming.
The asymmetry shows in how often continental thinkers are translated into English, compared with the far fewer translations of analytic philosophers into French, German, or Italian. Public intellectuals in Europe may flourish locally, but academic recognition, funding, and cross-border collaborations largely follow the English-language model.
So while English is not the only language of philosophy, it has become the one that sets the conditions for global participation. That may not be ideal, but it is a sociological reality.
Very interesting point. Actually, analytic philosophy is a minority in Japan. In most major philosophy departments, there is only one—or sometimes no—analytic philosopher. Interestingly, although there is a long-standing tradition of German and French philosophy in Japan, scholars in these fields generally write their papers and books in Japanese. So while continental philosophy is dominant, the dominant language of philosophy in Japan is still Japanese. I also wonder how the situation is in other non-Western countries.
I think the same is true in Italy and France, Germany is more of a mixed case. Considering the other response to my comment, I wouldn’t deny that statistically English beats any other language (although what’s with Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian languages if we simply just count the number of people using the language for doing philosophy?). But whether this means that English-language philosophy dominates, I am not so sure. If it does, it isn’t because analytical philosophy dominates, but mainly because the broader science network uses English as its first language. In other words, it is really because English is dominant in (natural) science that English might also be dominant in philosophy.
There is another aspect to this debate – a structural problem in academia (and philosophy): “Linguistic Justice and Neoliberalism in Academia”
https://blog.apaonline.org/2023/05/24/linguistic-justice-and-neoliberalism-in-academia/
In the TV show Farscape, we are told that the Pilot species has an information-dense language: “One sentence can carry over a hundred different facts, concepts, emotions.” So, come on philosophers, time to get cracking…
Seriously though, with regard to the post, this is such an under-discussed issue. I agree it’s a promising place to start, but I fear that the current political landscape (at least in the US and to some extent elsewhere) is barely receptive to philosophy in any language. There are so many structural issues to overcome. It’s good to see such issues made visible here. Thank you for writing this.
Glad to read that, Felix. I also wonder why this issue is relatively under-discussed. In the post and the paper itself we could only scratch the surface of some of these problems. E.g., the qualitative data from the ‘free response’ question in the survey is really rich, and we couldn’t introduce everything in the paper. I hope people have a look at those free responses (all available on our OSF platform) and maybe make use of them to inform calls for structural changes.
Sure I’m disadvantaged but at least I can pronounce Sartre correctly.
Just don’t pronounce Kant correctly in front of English speakers. Except Australians, I guess.
Strawson always did – and so do I.
I am a native speaker of Silbo Gomero, the whistled language of the Canary Islands. It is not closely related to other language families, and growing up I never had much opportunity to learn English. While I picked up a bit of French in school, English has always been a struggle. For years, this meant my philosophy papers were almost always rejected from Anglophone journals, usually at the desk-rejection stage.
Things changed recently. Thanks to ChatGPT and similar tools, I have been able to bring my ideas into English in a way that reviewers can actually engage with. My process is simple: I draft the paper in Silbo Gomero whistling (noting the whistles), then use Google Translate to get a rough English version. From there, I run it through ChatGPT, which smooths out the infelicities and awkward phrasings. The ideas are mine, fully expressed first in my own whistling language of the Canary Islands. But now, for the first time, editors and referees can evaluate them on their merits. Already I’ve received “revise and resubmit” verdicts at two good journals—something that felt impossible before. To me, this shows how transformative these tools can be for philosophers who think and write outside the Anglophone mainstream. Some will object that I should not use ChatGPT, but I see it differently. The technology is not replacing my thinking. It is simply giving my Silbo Gomero ideas a fair hearing in English. That, I think, makes it a genuine democratizer of philosophical thought.
I’ve never heard of Silbo Gomero before, but it sounds fascinating! I’ve always felt we should preserve linguistic diversity rather than make everyone use the same language in academia, and it’s amazing that tools like AI now make this possible. I also use AI tools to polish emails to save time and help ensure my tone is clear and polite. After all, it’s not just language; cultural differences behind it can also lead to misunderstandings. I believe that with the development of technology, achieving justice in the academic field will become more possible.
Well, it looks like the converse hold too: if you can’t whistle it, you can’t say it either.
Thanks for sharing. I am sure you have great, publishable ideas, and I am glad that Ai helped.
But with the intention of being helpful, I want to tell you that I can somehow tell you used Ai to write. This makes the post looks a little bit less authentic to me, because I would expect an author to not only have ideas but also craft the sentences to express the ideas. I would suggest–with unsolicited advice–that perhaps you can use AI to only correct the language, rather than make over the whole writing without restraints.
Hello, and thank you for your comment. I should clarify that I do not actually understand the English you see here. My native mode of communication is the Silbo Gomero whistling language of the Canary Islands. To get from Silbo Gomero to English, I first render the whistles into Spanish, then run the Spanish through Google Translate. That translation is often clunky, which is why I use ChatGPT to smooth it out. I am not able to refine the English myself, since I do not understand it. For example, the very first sentence of my original post in English—“I am a native speaker of Silbo Gomero”—comes from the Spanish “Soy hablante nativo del Silbo Gomero”, which itself was derived from a simplified notation of my whistled language. H = high whistle (/i, e/)
M = mid whistle (/a/)
L = low whistle (/o, u/)
| = break/interruption for consonants
It might be helpful to you to use “DeepL” (based in Cologne/Germany) as a translation tool – it is far superior to Google. The translator can be used for free with a limit of 1,500 characters per translation. If it’s a longer text you just have to do it in chunks. But there is also a paid option without restrictions.
Thank you–I will check it out!
I think it’s great that you are doing your best to get your ideas out in English, given that the native language is Silbo Gomero – and forgive me and I mean this with no disrespect, but I am struggling to see how any professional philosophy can be done by whistling. This might be my own ignorance here, but suppose (I’m just imagining an example here) you are trying to read the latest paper in metaphysics of grounding. Is the idea that , since you don’t speak English, you translate the paper into Spanish, and then translate the paper into whistles, you hear the whistles, and then whistle your own ideas, then decode them into basically music note notation, and then run this through a translator to Spanish (since as I understand from your post below, Spanish is the only langauge directly convertable into Silbo Gomero) and then convert to English? I think it might be worth trying to learn English to avoid all of this re-routing – but at the same time, I commend you for all the hard work here!
As far as I understand it, any language can be whistled in Silbo Gomero.
It would be nice if true, but I think it is very unlikely. Here are three philosophical sentences that I highly doubt could be whistled in Silbo Gomero. 1) Seneca’s quote, “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things“. And 2) From Kripke, Naming and Necessity “If a designator is a rigid designator, then in every possible world in which the object exists, it designates that object; in no possible world does it designate anything else.” And finally 3) And finally, from Kant’s CPR A51/B75 “If, however, appearances are things in themselves, then space and time are forms of things given in themselves, and would thus exist independently of our sensibility; yet that is absurd, for then appearances would be present without being related to our faculty of representation, and thus would not be appearances at all, which contradicts the very concept of an appearance.” If any of those could be whistled, I’d eat my hat.
You would be surprised by the richness and complexity of our ancient whistle language. I accept your challenge: for your Seneca quote we translate first to Spanish (“Los hombres no se perturban por las cosas, sino por los principios y nociones que forman acerca de las cosas.”) then we could do the following whistle reduction L|L–M|L|H|L–M–L|L|H|M|L–M|H|L|L–M|H–M|L|H|M|H|H|L–M|H|L–M|H|H|M|H|L–M|M|H|H|M|L–M|H|H|M|L–M|M|H–M|H|L|H|M|L|H|M|H|L–M|H|H|M|L–M. Bit of, as we call it, a whistle twister, but it will do.
This discussion really is revealing. For some the limitations of English are the limitations of their thought. They can’t conceive of the richness of a whistling language.
As a NNES, I’d like to add two other challenges. 1- Answering the questions in Q&A is way more challenging. Not only is understanding others questions difficult, but thinking instantly and answering the questions are challenging too. And my impression is that english speakers often don’t consider this fact in their judgment about NNESs. 2- It is more difficult to have others’ theories, opinions, and arguments in memory and recall them. This makes the process of writing, explaining, lecturing, answering, etc. very slow. You should always review your notes.
With all the academic endogamy that goes on, there are surely people whose first language is academic English. Someone recounted to me hearing, on a visit chez Geach and Anscombe, one of the young children say in conversation, ‘That doesn’t follow!’
Thanks for this blog post! Just as a side note – we now have a Linguistic Justice Society affiliated with the APA and our first meeting will be a panel at the 2026 Eastern on the Barcelona Principles for a Globally Inclusive Philosophy. If you plan on being there, please stop by to join the conversation and to share your insights about the role of English in academic philosophy.
I would love to hear from NNES who have experienced problems in Q&A at talks (either as the speaker or an audience member asking a question) if they have any suggestions for how departments might address the problem. One idea for speakers would be to offer the option of a slighter longer Q&A period, so that there’s enough time to make sure that questioner and speaker are on the same page before the speaker is expected to answer. For NNES questioners, we might permit clarificatory follow-ups, even when we don’t usually permit follow up questions. Would either of those options be useful? What other options might be useful?
When I was a grad student and anxious about being NNES, I often wrote down a question during the talk (about the talk), just so to have something to look at (or in the worst case, read), if I get stuck. (It didn’t really happen as far as I recall, but it really helped, mentally.) I think that was as good a strategy as any; I’m not sure extra time / follow ups would have helped much.
But others may disagree.
For what it’s worth, I often did this as a grad student (and still sometimes do it now) even though I’m a native English speaker, just because I found it helped me make my questions more precise and clear. I think it’s a good idea for many people!
This is quite interesting, but then the even more interesting question is what to do. (I’m a NNES, but have done most of my philosophy career in English.)
I was recently at a conference of our mid-size society, which now decided to place emphasis on diversity, and as a result, encouraged everyone to present in their native language (well, not *everyone* — my native language wasn’t one of these — but if you spoke Italian, French, Dutch, Spanish, German, or Portuguese, you were in luck).
I thought this was a disaster. I understood between 50-90% of most of the talks (except perhaps Portuguese, which proved surprisingly hard, especially the Brazilian variety), but seriously, how can we expect people to be able to ask questions in all these languages? One would either have to go full EU parliament style (so yes, accept my weird non-Indo-European native language too, please!) and then have an interpreter for all of them; or we just need to pick one, and today it will probably be English, even if not everyone speaks it perfectly.
Thanks for sharing this, I completely agree that the real challenge is what to do next.
Your conference example really captures the dilemma: promoting linguistic diversity can be great in theory, but sometimes it turns into a live experiment in mutual confusion. Still, it makes me wonder: why English? Why not Chinese, German, or Silbo Gomero? English isn’t the language most people in the world use, yet it’s become the default for philosophy because of historical and institutional privilege, not because it’s somehow more neutral or universal.
Of course, we can’t drop English overnight, it’s still the most practical bridge we’ve got. But we can at least recognize the privilege that comes with it and take small steps to make things fairer for NNES participants: using real-time translation tools during sessions, allowing written summaries in multiple languages, and reducing the pressure to sound “perfect.” I know some conferences have already started taking steps in this direction, and it really helps.