engleski

Humanities Speak Many Languages: The Language of Summaries Published in Croatian Journals in the Field of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology

Aim: The scientific communication has changed. Changes are visible in the modalities of scientific publishing, especially those concerning languages of scientific publications. The aim of this research is to determine the characteristics of scientific communication patterns noticeable in journals in the field of ethnology and cultural anthropology published in Croatia. The research will focus on the languages in which the articles are published, and in particular the languages of summaries will be explored. Methods: The research is based on a set of articles published in three Croatian scientific journals in the field of ethnology and cultural anthropology: “Etnološka tribina: godišnjak Hrvatskog etnološkog društva“, “Narodna umjetnost: hrvatski časopis za etnologiju i folklor istiku“ and “Studia ethnologica Croatica“. The research covered a five-year period, from 2014 to 2018. The types of journal articles considered eligible for inclusion in the analysis are original scientific paper, preliminary communication, review article and professional paper. The resulting set of articles (194 articles) was than analysed for determining language pracitices. The following information was recorded for each article: language in which the full text of an article was published and choice of the language for the article summary. Results and Discussion: The analysis of languages in which the full text of the articles were published gave the following results: 46.4 % of articles were published in Croatian language, 48.5 % in English, 4.6 % in Serbian and 0.5 % in Bosnian. The analysis of article summaries showed the total number of 400 summaries published in the analysed set of 194 articles. The summaries were published in following nine languages: 46 % in Croatian, 48.5 % in English, and 5.5 % in languages other than English (Albanian, Bayash Romanian, Bosnian, Polish, Romani Chib, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, and Spanish). The diversity of languages of the summaries published in the set of articles analysed in this research is the result of the heterogeneous scientific publication patterns in the humanities. Also, every field in the humanities is characterized by specificities in scientific communication and publishing. Therefore, in the field of ethnology and cultural anthropology, as part of humanities, attention must be paid not only to ethnographic writing but also to other forms of communication among experts, which must be followed in writing and editing of scientific articles. The subject matter of scientific and professional articles in the humanities journals, as well as those from ethnology and cultural anthropology, has a particular national and regional interest, and therefore, publishing in the local language is a very common phenomenon in humanities. Publishing in the local languages makes science available to local community, and terminology development plays a pivotal role in enriching the language and culture of a society. In addition, articles can be published also in English, which potentially leads to greater international visibility and recognition of scientific work, and contributes to internationalisation of scientific community and research results. Conclusion: The results of the scientific research of a wider scientific community, made up of speakers of different non- English languages, can become invisible and unrecognizable to the wider scientific community. In order to prevent such a language bias in science, it is advisable to publish articles in multiple languages. Multilingualism can encourage accessibility as well as transparency of scientific research, and it is important to mention that it also promotes the preservation of the languages of small-scale scientific communities. This can be accomplished by translating full-text articles into multiple languages, but also by publishing summaries not only in English but also in languages other than English.

scientific journals ; languages ; summaries ; ethnology and cultural anthropology ; Croatia

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