Levelling the Linguistic Playing Field within Academic Philosophy (guest post)


Stylistic norms for writing affect philosophers’ professional prospects in unfair ways, and what one thinks should be done about this may be tied to one’s conception of what philosophy is supposed to do.

In this guest post*, Louise Chapman, the CEO of Lex Academic, an organization that offers editing and translation services for academic authors, discusses these issues.


[detail of “A World of Languages” by Alberto Lucas Lopez. Click for full version.]

Levelling the Linguistic Playing Field within Academic Philosophy
by Louise Chapman

Philosophy has a language problem. Schwitzgebel, Huang, Higgins and Gonzalez-Cabrera (2018) found that, in a sample of papers published in elite journals, 97% of citations were to work originally written in English. 73% of the papers in the sample didn’t cite any paper that had been originally written in a language other than English, and 96% of the members of elite journals’ editorial boards are primarily affiliated with an Anglophone university.

Unless we think that this reflects who does the best philosophy and where they do it, this is prima facie cause for concern. The Barcelona Principles for a Globally Inclusive Philosophy aim at addressing a “structural inequality between native and non-native speakers”, and call on philosophers to take steps like including non-native speakers on editorial boards and not giving “undue weight to their authors’ linguistic style, fluency or accent”.

Schwitzgebel et al.’s study doesn’t tell us what percentage of papers originally written in English were by non-native speakers. Nevertheless, there is a strong sense that, as the authors of the Barcelona Principles say, “non-native English speakers, who have not had the chance to perfect their knowledge of the language, are at a structural disadvantage”.

How can this disadvantage be explained?

It’s possible that implicit biases play a role here. Pantos and Perkins (2012) used the Implicit Association Test to measure implicit attitudes towards those who speak with ‘foreign’ accents, finding that “the participants’ implicit attitudes favour the U.S. [in the context of the study, the non-‘foreign’] accented speaker”. Similar associations may be at play when we encounter written work that we judge to be by a non-native speaker. (Note, there are outstanding questions both about how to best understand appeals to implicit attitudes and about the efficacy of Greenwald et al.’s IAT, used by Pantos and Perkins, as a psychological instrument. For more on this latter worry, see this earlier discussion on the Daily Nous.)

Furthermore, we should also be careful not to downplay the effects of explicit evaluations of how a paper is written. Here’s an example. The Australasian Journal of Philosophy invites referees to comment on whether papers “display flair, or elegance, or vivacity in the writing” and are “enjoyable, even exciting, to read”. If the AJP is unique, it is only in making this requirement explicit: these instructions codify what happens, to a greater or lesser degree, when referees evaluate papers for top-tier journals.

Philosophy, then, has stylistic norms in addition to intellectual norms. Satisfying these former requirements will be harder for non-native speakers. As Saray Ayala says in an early contribution to this conversation, it is likely both that writing in one’s “native language gives one more freedom and control over one’s written style”, and that “stylistic considerations play a big role in editors’ and referees’ decisions”.

What can be done to remedy the exclusionary effects of these stylistic, or aesthetic, criteria? Here are two broad approaches.

One approach is to reject the norms, at least when making decisions that affect people’s careers. Being elegantly written, according to this line of thought, doesn’t in and of itself make for better philosophy. Allowing one’s evaluations to be informed by such features therefore excludes certain philosophers on the basis of something other than the quality of their work. Rejecting these norms may involve telling reviewers not to attend to stylistic features of a paper (other than clarity), and ignoring such features when choosing papers to cite or add to reading lists. The extent to which one can consciously prevent our evaluations from being guided by some features is, of course, up for debate.

A second approach is to keep the stylistic norms but make it easier for non-native speakers to satisfy them. Increased access to developmental editorial support may be part of this approach. Again, practical questions lurk. Wealthier scholars have increased access to such support. Funding could be provided as part of grants from governments or other institutions, or by universities. This, however, excludes those who don’t have grants, independent scholars, or those at less wealthy institutions. Those hoping for academic publishers to fund such services from their own profits may be waiting a long time.

These practical questions aside, a deeper tension is that which approach looks appealing may depend on your conception of philosophy.

One understanding of philosophy is that it involves building models or theories of a target phenomenon that are then evaluated against competitors for the purposes of identifying correct answers to philosophical questions. If this is right, then so long as a paper is written clearly enough to grasp the theory being presented, its stylistic or aesthetic features are (philosophically) irrelevant. If paying attention to these features systematically disadvantages some philosophers, this becomes a defeasible reason to ignore them in evaluative contexts.

If, however, you take the aim of philosophy to be therapeutic or to help us understand our place in the world, then disregarding stylistic norms looks less appealing. How successfully a piece of writing brings about a psychological change in its reader may turn non-trivially on how it is written. The power that some philosophy has over us cannot be boiled down to premises and conclusions, and so content cannot be cleanly disentangled from style. If this is right, then something would be lost if style was evaluatively disregarded altogether.

The route forward is not entirely clear. What is clear is that this structural disadvantage deserves closer philosophical and empirical attention. We owe this to current and future members of our philosophical community for whom English is not their native language.

Disputed Moral Issues - Mark Timmons - Oxford University Press
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Mich C
2 years ago

The same issue applies to grading student papers. Educators tend to impose Standard English on all students regardless of the student’s native language or vernacular, & this reinforces other structural inequalities.

Yael
Yael
Reply to  Mich C
2 years ago

The linguistics department at Michigan is currently trialing a more critical stance towards standard language ideology in academic settings, aiming for a more equitable approach to linguistic variation and diversity: https://lsa.umich.edu/linguistics/about-us/values-statement/standard-language-ideology-statement.html

Yael
Yael
2 years ago

It might be more precise to say that academic philosophy has a language awareness problem. If philosophy is envisaged as something along the lines of “thinking about thinking”, and even more so as “principled thinking about thinking”, then this reflective work requires some kind of linguistic self-awareness and epistemic humility. That’s a tough call, because this challenges the kind of linguistic ideologies (national, professional) into which many philosophers are acculturated from a very early age, to say nothing of how dominant these ideologies are in contemporary institutionalised knowledge economy, and how funding-starved departments and individuals are strongly incentivised *not* to challenge them. Then again, this higher-order reflective capacity seems like a crucial task for philosophy, and thankfully there’s a rich body of relevant scholarship in related fields on which to draw in doing this job.

Daniel Muñoz
Daniel Muñoz
2 years ago

Analytic philosophy would be *much* worse—for everyone involved—if we gave up norms of good writing. Even if the goal is to get at the truth, messy writing directly obstructs that goal by obscuring a paper’s ideas and wasting readers’ time. Boring writing has the indirect effect of making life harder for teachers. This is not the place to “level down.”

That said, I love the idea of making it easier for non-native speakers to write well, read more easily, and reach a bigger audience. We should try to raise more money for translations, for example, and we should encourage people to write with an international audience in mind. Papers need to be clear. But they don’t always need cutesy wordplay and winking cultural references.

Yael
Yael
Reply to  Daniel Muñoz
2 years ago

Analytic philosophy has much to gain from a more considered understanding of its own (c)overt linguistic norms, the social and political history that shaped them, and (if I may be so bold) a more nuanced understanding of who “we” are as a community with a shared system of linguistic conventions. What passes as “good writing”, “boring”, “obscuring”, “clear” “more easily” and “cutesy” can very often be highly arbitrary judgements based on personal aesthetic preferences, which vary significantly between authors. These are odd foundations for a field that prides itself on principled thinking, and that attitude lies in an uncomfortable proximity to similar claims that one does not see race/gender/ability etc.

More importantly, none of the recent calls I’ve seen for rethinking the language question in philosophy entail “giving up” on norms in any way or form. Most of what is asked, to my understanding, is that professional communicative norms might be renegotiated on a more equitable basis. Does that not seem like a reasonable proposal, especially considering that L2 English speakers already vastly outnumber the L1 ones? And if not now, then at what point, precisely, would rethinking existing norms and negotiating new ones be seen as justified?

Filippo Contesi
Reply to  Daniel Muñoz
2 years ago

That is merely an ideal world: there is very little money already as it is in philosophy. As to “good writing”, you seem to conflate a bunch of distinct issues: boringness is not messiness, messy is only one way of being opposed to good etc. Among other things, you seem to be assuming that contemporary Anglophone philosophy is already employing the best norms of “good writing”, and that the levelling down the post suggests will have an impact on readability that is greater than the added value of bringing into the conversation talents from all over the world with knowledge of different languages and cultures. See also Yael Peled’s comments above.

Daniel Muñoz
Daniel Muñoz
Reply to  Filippo Contesi
2 years ago

Filippo, I don’t understand your comment. When did I conflate boring and messy writing? When did I assume that the “best” norms of good writing are already in force?

On the contrary, I said that boring writing and messy writing have different downsides, and that our norms should become more inclusive.

Yael, I find your comment puzzling, too. You ask who is saying we should give up norms of good writing. Did you read the post? The first proposal is to “reject the norms” that favor elegant writing.

As for the rest of your comment, let me see if I’ve got this right.

I said we should cut down on cutesy wordplay to be more inclusive. You said:

1. Who’s “we?”

2. “Cutesy” is arbitrary.

3. Basing our norms on what’s cutesy (etc.) is akin to certain bad views about race.

Afraid I don’t see the connection. Are you saying we should have *more* cutesy wordplay? If not, where do we disagree? Should I have defined “cutesy” before using it?

Maybe your point is that it should be up for debate what counts as “good” writing, for the purposes of philosophy. Great! I agree. That’s why I said we should change our norms around inside jokes and references.

That said, I don’t agree with you that norms of good writing are largely arbitrary. The point of most writing is to convey ideas. Some things—like ambiguity—can mess with that aim. Other things—like clunky syntax—can slow readers down for no reason.

I think our writing should convey ideas distinctly and succinctly. And I feel very lucky to be in a field with editors—like those at the AJP—who agree.

Filippo Contesi
Reply to  Daniel Muñoz
2 years ago

I’m no longer sure I understand your comments either.

Daniel Munoz
Daniel Munoz
Reply to  Filippo Contesi
2 years ago

That’s ok. I appreciate the work you do on this stuff & hope you have a nice day.

Yael
Yael
Reply to  Daniel Muñoz
2 years ago

Hi Daniel, thanks for this reply and questions. Here’s a very tired attempt of a reply after a very long day. Let me being by saying that I understand your puzzlement, because we seem to have two very different understandings of what language and systems of linguistic conventions are. You seem to be adhering to a view that is very closely aligned with standard language ideology, and I’m trying to demonstrate that this is precisely what it is – an ideology. If you believe in this ideology, and happy to sign up for the very particular ways in which it organises contested matters of linguistic authority and legitimacy into a neat and supposedly problem-free normative order, then great. At least that decision is based on sufficient reflective awareness. But it seems to be worth pointing out that that is an ideology nonetheless, and that there are very clear epistemic and moral risks involved in not being aware of that fact.
 
Because of that basic difference in approaches, I am not entirely sure how to reply to your questions without having to essentially do a full-on intro to socio- or applied linguistics, critical or otherwise, first. One key insight from that would be that norms can never really be done with, because any kind of meaning-making, like any other type of social cooperation borne out of the nexus of difference and interdependence, is dependent on *some* shared norms. The point is that the kind of norms we discuss here are very seldom formed in an equitable manner, and that they are highly sensitive to unwarranted power relations. Think of something like the epistemic injustice scholarship, for a sense of how social meaning-making is very rarely the product of some kind of purely instrumental communication.
 
I will say one quick thing about “arbitrary”. What is considered to be standard, “good writing”, etc. can and indeed often vary significantly from one author to another, even among analytic philosophers; and many authors, when asked, find it incredibly difficult not only to identify what they dislike about certain usage but also to give a more comprehensive account of what good usage is. (This is distinct from things like readability levels which are much more systematic in their conception). One of the funny things about this state of affairs is that, when receiving referee reports, it is entirely possible that reviewer 1 would be very happy with the writing, while reviewer 2 would go into significant length identifying each and every utterance that is not fully aligned with their particular usage and specific preferences. None of this is surprising, because notions of deficiency are part and parcel of standard language ideology. But many writers who perceive themselves as loyal adherents to the standard do in fact display a surprising level of variance in their usage, which is then conveniently attributed to “personal style”. But then how to determine what is “standard” and what is “personal style”, and who is legitimately authorised to make that determination? A non-principled judgement is, indeed, an arbitrary one.
 
I made this point before on a different post, but many philosophers know more about the origin of their food and clothing than the origin of their linguistic beliefs, habits and convictions. I think that this is unfortunate, because there are very serious questions there about linguistic power, authority and legitimacy which have very real impact on the field and who gets – and doesn’t – to be part of it. So much of the conceptual cluster that you deploy in your (very welcomed!) reply exemplify that, e.g. “clunky syntax” and “distinctly and succinctly”, and the same goes for identifying linguistic contestation relative to things like inside jokes as opposed to fundamental elements of what does and doesn’t count as “reason”. What I’m trying to highlight is that there’s a very specific ideology that is underlying your understanding of how (professional) language works. If you’re happy with that ideology, great. All I’m trying to point out is that it is, indeed, an ideology, and as such may not be as problem-free as it appears to be.

Daniel Munoz
Daniel Munoz
Reply to  Yael
2 years ago

Thank you, Yael, for the thoughtful reply. It sounds like we may agree about more than we disagree.

Some of our norms around writing are unfair. We should think about where they come from, and how to change them. We should be humble, since lots of our peers disagree about what counts as “good writing,” and we should bear in mind that not everyone in field comes from the same background with the same advantages.

All that said, I guess I still think norms of clarity and elegance are invaluable — not just for the elites, but for everyone who has to read philosophy. Maybe you would agree if I added some caveats. We shouldn’t assume that everyone agrees about what’s clear and elegant, and we should be willing to listen to people with different perspectives. Maybe some things strike us as “elegant” for bad or biased reasons.

Anyway, thanks again for the reply & hope you got some rest!

Yael
Yael
Reply to  Daniel Munoz
2 years ago

Hi Daniel, thanks for the kind words. It was good to get some rest, for sure. I am happy we seem to be at least in partial agreement. What I really wanted to highlight was mostly that aesthetic judgements in language (as in other domains of human difference), and especially their epistemic inferences/interpretations, are never divorced from power relations.

I think perhaps my best conclusion would be the following: standard language ideology may not as simple as it seems – or purports – to be; but, equally, challenging standard language ideology in a pragmatic manner and along more equitable terms may not be as complicated as it is feared to be. 

tenure track
2 years ago

Being born into a country, or family, where English is regularly spoken is an obvious advantage in some respects. For example, I was born to English-speaking parents in an English-speaking country, and the challenges I face of writing publishable philosophy have little to do with my English ability. I recognize that as citations/publications are disproportionately English-centric, there are serious advantages that someone like me enjoys. But people like me also face disadvantages, personal and professional, given our linguistic backgrounds. I am not saying that these disadvantages are equal to the advantages I have based on my English background, but I think it is important not to simply ignore them.

Let me illustrate. I have some ability to speak/read other languages, but none of it is at the fluent level. Furthermore, it took me *a lot* of time and effort to get where I am with those languages. It took literally years and literally hours every week. A person born into a more linguistically-diverse context will often be a native or near-native speaker of more than one language. Personally, this has many benefits. Oh, were my parents also speakers of another language! It also has professional benefits. For example, a Chinese speaker is much better situated than I am to do work in Chinese philosophy if they so desire (the same goes for any language that has some philosophy done in it). Look at the ads on philjobs and how many of them ask for an AOS in non-western philosophy of some sort. For someone like me to get to the point of being able to claim an AOS in, say, African philosophy, much more effort is required than for a native speaker of the relevant language.

Again, I am not saying that the linguistic challenges that someone like me faces are equal to the linguistic advantages that someone like me enjoys. I just want to point out that there are in fact potential professional advantages to being a non-native speaker.

All this aside, I do think that, at the very least, journals should be less picky about the eloquence/enjoyability of a submission’s writing style.

Non-native
Non-native
Reply to  tenure track
2 years ago

Is this for real? I understand that it took you “literally years and literally hours every week” to learn a language for leisure (kudos to that), but we are talking about a language that you don’t need to publish, and therefore don’t really need to pay the rent. Now, we non-native speakers have literally gone through the same hardship for years… but we DO need that language to get published, and land our jobs. And despite our efforts, we still get our papers rejected from journals because our English isn’t quite ‘elegant enough’ – or at any rate, will always be slightly less elegant than the next paper written by a native speaker. To add to the humiliation, our research is often ignored or its importance downplayed because it didn’t come out of an Anglophone university (or for other reasons noted by the OP). To chime in to say that we still have an advantage because they were born knowing some other language that allow us to read a few texts in their original version, or to have a decent shot at a fistful of “exotic philosophy” jobs for exotic people… well that’s a bit offensive. But your post is still illuminating, because it vividly illustrates how blind people can be to their own privilege.

tenure track
Reply to  Non-native
2 years ago

I’m not sure why you’re attributing to me things I neither said nor implied, but it’s worth pointing out that this is what you’re doing.

  1. I never said that the time I spent learning languages as an adult was for leisure. In fact, two were required for philosophical work (formally required even). In fact, I had to dedicate that time in graduate school while colleagues were dedicating the same time to writing philosophy papers.
  2. In addition, though I do not know your particular situation, I know that the vast majority of non-native speakers I know (which are many) started learning English at a younger age (often when the mind is still plastic). I recognize that learning English took them lots of time and hard work. But years learning a language in your 20s are much less effective than years learning as a ten-year old.
  3. I did not describe any jobs, or any people, as exotic. I’m not sure why you’re making it seem like I am. In fact, philjobs has a search function. I encourage you to search for jobs that have an AOS or AOC in non-western philosophy. As you’ll see, there are a fair number. In a tight market, a fair number is a big difference. So, the ability to do non-western philosophy is a serious job market advantage. You’re welcome to dismiss it as a fringe benefit, but I think that’s simply false. (And notice that I did not dismiss my privilege as a fringe benefit.)
  4. Finally, I *twice* explicitly said I was not comparing the benefits I’m highlighting to the privileges I have. That is an empirical question. So, I’m not sure what privilege you think I’m blind to. I have explicitly recognized the privilege of being a native English speaker. What more would you like? Does it make someone blind to privilege to point out that people who do not share my privilege might also have different privileges of their own?
Non-native
Non-native
Reply to  tenure track
2 years ago

Hi TT, thanks for your clarificaiton. I still stand by my comments above, and think that your intervention is somewhat offensive and out of place. About (1), that may be, but it’s still not true of the condition of most native speakers, and so irrelevant to generalisations. About (2), I suspect it shows once again that your considerations are out of place: of course it is true, but it’s true because for us (unlike natives) learning a second language is not really a choice: we’re compelled to. We HAVE to start early because we are born with a linguistic disadvantage. Also, let’s not forget that in many countries schools suck, esp. in those low-income countries that need them most. Not everybody is lucky enough to get good education at this stage; for those who are unlucky, starting early is not really that much of an advantage. About (3) I agree, I used the term ‘exotic’ because you are equating non-native speakers with non-Westerners, a generalisation which I found mildly offensive – more or less like using the term “exotic”. As shocking as it may sound, non-native and non-Westerners are not synonyms. In fact, most non-native speakers who read this blog are from Western countries, especially Europe, who houses about 350 millions (Latin America has way more, but I suspect not as many that reads this blog, which is mostly about analytic philosophy). About (4), I did not suggest otherwise. I only suggested that what you say is irrelevant, since the advantages we enjoy are disproportionately lower than the disadvantages we suffer. I think that, when the advantages that a group enjoys are ridicolously less significant than the disadvantages its suffers, to point your finger at the advantages can be offensive, especially in the context of a conversation that aims to delineate new ways to attenuate those disadvantages. This is what i complained about.

tenure track
Reply to  Non-native
2 years ago

Hi Non-Native,

Thanks for your response. I think we’re talking past each other to extent. For example, we both seem to agree that there are advantages on both sides. You think that there are not equal in strength, but I did not say they were (I was explicitly agnostic). You seem to think–sorry if I’m overreading–that my bringing up the advantages enjoyed by non-native speakers in the context of this post reflects that I must think the two kinds of advantages are closer in strength than you think they are (due to the irrelevance of the comment to the post). But the post is about levelling the linguistic playing field, not about just removing one source of privilege. Insofar as the advantages of non-native speakers I brought up here are linguistic in nature, they are relevant to the question of levelling the linguistic playing field.

More productively, I think it’s necessary to distinguish between linguistic advantages/disadvantages that persist across socioeconomic backgrounds and those that don’t. You’re absolutely right that subpar schooling can be a disadvantage for non-native speakers. But that’s just a side-effect of a socioeconomic background. To see whether the advantages that native speakers enjoy are linguistic (rather than proxies for socioeconomic advantages), we’d need to compare those non-native speakers who went to bad schools to native speakers who went to bad schools too. My point is that it’s not clear who has the overall advantage. For one, this is a question that requires a lot of complex math (math I don’t have the ability to do, and never will). It’s also a question that I don’t believe has been really investigated in detail yet (open to correction on this point).

tenure track
Reply to  tenure track
2 years ago

P.S. The non-western example wasn’t equating non-native speakers and non-westerners, but was one example of how non-native speakers can have advantages. German philosophy would work just as well as an example. It just so happens that a lot of the areas where non-native speakers are at an advantage with regards to linguistic backgrounds are also areas that are considered non-western and which are in demand at the moment (relative to a decade ago, at least).

Yael
Yael
Reply to  tenure track
2 years ago

I don’t want to flood the discussion, so I’m just going to point out that socioeconomic background is not the only determinant of access to the very specific type of English and skill in its confident performance that are so central to academic philosophy. Think about ability, for example, and why so many Deaf philosophers experience so much professional exclusion. Which is incredibly unfortunate, because their insight into the communicative norms of philosophy could really help in rethinking their current inequities. Perhaps an important way forward might be to not only train philosophers to articulate themselves in very specific ways, but also to be better interlocutors. 

On the market
On the market
Reply to  Non-native
2 years ago

There are a lot of jobs that require speaking a language other than England. For example, most jobs in Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy; about half of the jobs in Scandinavia. I imagine Asian jobs are similar. Even jobs in those countries which accept applications from English-speakers still favor, usually explicitly in the ad, those with fluency. Those who grew up speaking these languages but are fluent in English (as virtually everyone with a philosophy PhD is, regardless of origin) have a significant competitive advantage in the academic job market.

Michel
Reply to  On the market
2 years ago

Not if they’re less competitive on the Anglophone (especially American) market, since that’s a much larger market. I take it that’s the point.

Non-native
Non-native
Reply to  On the market
2 years ago

I think these considerations lack a bit of nuance. Two counterweights should be taken into consideration.
First, in most of these job markets, applicants will still be evaluated based on their publication record. Virtually all presigious journals are English-language journals ran by English-speaking gatekeepers. If the OP is vaguely right, it is easier for natives to get published there (c’mon guys, writing in a language that is not your own is HARD, and getting published in a competitive market with very narrow acceptance rates like ours is NEAR IMPOSSIBLE for non-natives – just scroll the surnames at some big journal; they’re disproportinately Anglo-saxon, unless it’s some mathy topic).
So, if you are a native English speaker you still hold an advantage when applying in every country on this list – the advantage of being able to put together a competitive CV with less effort.
For this very reason, if you are a non-native, you will still be at disadvantage (compared to the native) in every other market. In every market where the language spoken is not your own, your native twin will have a better chance at the job. The list offered above is misleading because a single non-native applicant doesn’t speak all those languages. They speak only one, and in every country in that list but one they will have a worse chance at the job than their native counterpart.
Finally (second counterweight) a non-native speaker will be at disadvantage in every institution where teaching is done in English (I don’t need to explain why). More and more institutions are moving to English teaching, either partially (some courses) or fully. Getting these jobs will be like stealing candies from children for the native speakers.
This is not to say that there is no bonus in speaking one language that is not English more fluently than English. But I think that the comments above don’t quite consider the full picture: they overstate the pros, and lose sights of the cons.

Peter Finocchiaro
Peter Finocchiaro
Reply to  On the market
2 years ago

Those who grew up speaking these languages but are fluent in English (as virtually everyone with a philosophy PhD is, regardless of origin)…”

Speaking from my personal (and still quite limited) experience, it is definitely not the case that virtually everyone with a philosophy PhD is, regardless of origin, fluent in English. And I’m not sure why you would assert that unless you have a deep knowledge of PhD programs around the world

Nicolas Delon
2 years ago

Merits of the argument aside (full disclosure: I signed the Barcelona manifesto and support a linguistically inclusive profession), am I the only one to wonder whether it is perfectly appropriate for this guest post to be written by someone who has a financial interest in helping non-native speakers fit the mold? Again, I appreciate the content of the post, very much so, and I respect and find valuable Lex Academic’s business. But I’ve received my share of Louise Chapman’s promotional emails on various listservs. She was in fact recently removed from one mailing list for repeatedly violating and ignoring its rule against promotional messaging (speaking of professional norms).

Last edited 2 years ago by Nicolas Delon