L2 writing in Political Science in a multilingual context: Disciplinary norms, L1, and other influences

Today L2 scholars experience various tensions when they write their research: institutional regulations push them to publish a certain genre (e.g., research articles) in certain publication venues (e.g., high-rank journals) and in a certain language (e.g., English). However, contemporary scholar's individual writing style is influenced not only by the language regime of the university and the department where they work but also by their experience of studying, working and doing research in multicultural and multilingual environments. On the personal level, this results in a complex interplay of L1, L2, and other languages, national writing traditions, and disciplinary norms. To see how strong the influence of disciplinary norms is and to uncover other factors that affect L2 writers, I have interviewed 18 scholars from a broad domain of Social Sciences and Humanities in one of the top Russian Universities. The interviewees may be called representatives of 'multilingual and multicultural generation' since they all speak at least two languages, have international experience of either studying or working abroad, are actively involved in international research collaboration, and have publications in at least 2 languages: English (L2) and Russian (L1). The results show that along with disciplinary norms, the norms of writing in a certain research paradigm seem to be a significant factor shaping research writing. Another important factor influencing linguistic features of research text is journal requirements. The results have implications for English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) pedagogy since they reveal the influences that should be taken into consideration by ERPP course designers and instructors