I see articles published in unedited English (or possible poorly edited English -- hard to tell) in minor, online, academic journals from various non-English-speaking countries, usually Eastern European (like this: http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=89807), but I believe this reflects resources and is entirely unintentional.  It also doesn't come close to what's being discussed here. I've never seen an academic paper in, say, Gullah or any other dialect ... one entirely in iambic pentameter, yes, but not in non-standard English, and I see a fair number of things by second and further language Africans, Asians, South Americans and Europeans.  

I agree with John. Even though English has no central authority, English is writer-responsible; the differences I see in academic English are mainly tiny reflections of dialect, roughly of the "an herb / a herb; the army is / the army are" variety.

Linda McPhee
http://www.lindamcpheeconsulting.com 


On 2 Mar 2011, at 17:19, John Harbord wrote:

> Kate's comments are interesting. I think there are two strands here, one regards whether the student's English can be considered 'Zimbabwean academic English' and I think the consensus is that it definitely is not. I take Kate's point that the fact that the thesis is inconsistent does not mean that the student does not master the informal oral code, only that they do not master the formal code.
> 
> The other strand, which is at least as interesting, is whether hypothetically, a PhD thesis could be submitted in a variety of English which was not 'standard US/UK', assuming that the variation between the latter and the variety of English used in the thesis was big enough to matter. I have heard that Indian English has a greater tolerance for double negation (eg. not insignificant) and even triple negation (hardly not insignificant) than UK English. One might imagine the supervisor (outside India) having to read a few sentences twice to make sure she understood, but basically, the audience, while they might notice an Indian flavour, would not complain that this was not standard English.
> 
> The real question is whether a thesis can be accepted when it is written in a non-standard form that differs so significantly from standard US/UK English as to cause problems for the reader. My take on this is that English is a writer-responsible language - if the reader has a hard time making sense of what you are trying to say because you are trying to reach that reader but in a variety of language that reader does not easily understand, you are failing as a writer. Whether we institutionalise this failure by saying we expect research to be written in standard English, or whether we leave it to the market to let such research drop in obscurity, is perhaps open to debate.
> 
> John
> 
>>>> Caroline Chanock <[log in to unmask]> 1/3/11 21:53 >>>
> Hi, people, 
> this is one of the most interesting discussions I've seen for quite a while, and I'm beginning to fantasise that some of you might get together and produce an article about this issue, maybe drawing on people like Pennycook for a linguistic perspective. Just on the question of non-standard varieties of English, though, I'm not sure I'd agree with John's idea that if a student writes in a mixture of standard and non-standard it means that s/he doesn't control either one. Most students would be aware that the non-standard variety is not welcome at the academy and would be trying to replace it with the standard, insofar as they know how that works; it's because they don't have full control of the standard one that we get the mixture. I think the really interesting question is whether universities are justified in excluding any of the "world Englishes" other than the original colonising one, and I'm gathering from the last couple of endorsements of John's view that many people think they are. I have real reservations about that, based on my experience of reading theses that are a lot better than the supervisor thinks they are, if you read them with some knowledge of the rhetorical conventions and/or idiom of the academic tradition the writer comes from. I'm not saying we should be happy with writing that's incomprehensible; just that we might broaden our repertoire for comprehending, and be the richer for it. 
> 
> Kate
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing - discussions [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Linda McPhee [[log in to unmask]] 
> Sent: Wednesday, 2 March 2011 7:32 AM
> To: [log in to unmask] 
> Subject: Re: PhD in African English
> 
> One of the universities in which I work has a multi-pronged approach to this, recognising that the ability to do good work and the ability to write flawless English are not the same. The  PhD students have the option of working with me in a writer's group, the supervisors look at multiple drafts of individual chapters, students are encouraged to present parts of their work in articles and at conferences (and are assisted in making presentable articles or conference papers), are required to give a seminar (writing there can be minimal, but the questions asked therein that help sharpen ideas) and there is a final editor/proofreader.
>     This all sounds a bit strange to me -- especially the part where the entire thing has been written in dialect. Where was this person's supervisor? Why were there no earlier drafts that a supervisor commented on? Surely the supervisor would have known early on that there was a problem with the Language -- and if he/she did not want to engage with the problem then find someone who could?
>     It's also strange to me since I've worked with Zimbabwean students who had little or no problem code-switching into formal international academic language. Is there a more complex political story there -- is he Matebele/Ndbele? Somehow, this person seems to have had insufficient opportunity to work in English in Zimbabwe... at least, that's a guess... and to me, it sounds like his department has let him down.
> 
> linda mcphee
> http://www.lindamcpheeconsulting.com 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 1 Mar 2011, at 20:18, Shimona Kushner wrote:
> 
>> Here, here!!
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Shimona Kushner
>> Technion-Israel Institute of Technology
>> Neve Shaanan, Haifa 32000
>> Israel
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Harbord" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Monday, February 28, 2011 4:17 PM
>> Subject: Re: PhD in African English
>> 
>> 
>> Dear John and All,
>> 
>> This is a knotty problem. If we assume for the moment that your university is in a position to specify that theses should be written in standard academic UK or US English (ours does, for example), it is then possible to argue that this thesis does not meet that standard, quite regardless of whether or not it may be an adequate sample of Zimbabwean English.
>> 
>> Much more difficult is the next question of whether or not the student should be required to demonstrate mastery of one of these 'prestige dialects' as a requirement to being awarded the degree. Arguably the answer is yes if he is going to be accepted as a member of the academic community and publish (at least outside Zimbabwe). I consulted with an Indian colleague on this and he said that while Indian English is a recognised different variety of the language at the spoken level and in creative writing, in academic writing, the standards would be very close indeed to those of academic US/UK English and would not tolerate any significant grammatical deviation.
>> 
>> Another key indicator a linguist would bring to the analysis is the regularity of the 'non-standard' grammatical structures. Certain varieties of English, eg. some US black dialects, or Norfolk dialect - which I speak - have no third person 's' (eg. She go). Yet that third person 's' is consistently absent unless the code is switched (the speaker changes to a more formal variety due to some sociolinguistic contextual change related to topic, audience, location or whatever). Within a PhD thesis, there should be no occasion for the code to switch, therefore, all grammatical 'errors' should be fully consistent throughout. If they are not, the student simply does not master the code, or to put it in lay terms, he is not in control of his own language.
>> 
>> The Russians, the Brazilians and the Indonesians are all required to meet certain high standards of English as academics if they complete a PhD in English - it is not clear that because someone speaks a variety of English that is accepted as being distinct from UK/US English they should be exempt from meeting this requirement. Unfortunately, universities do tend to fudge the issue because it does not look good if their PhD candidates (that they probably should not have taken in the first place) fail. This means that someone gets employed to 'polish up' the English.
>> 
>> Writing support should have been on the ball with this student from the word go. He should have been referred to a writing center or some other kind of help after his very first written assignment and coached all the way so that he could graduate with the skills he lacked on entry. That hasn't happened. If I was God right now I would hurl a thunderbolt and fail him, and the university and the student should both suffer the consequences. That, however, isn't going to happen because it is a lot easier and cheaper to ask someone else to rewrite the whole thing for him - he passes, the university is happy, money is saved because about 700 euros spent on rewriting a thesis is a lot cheaper than actually providing an effective writing support program, and the copywriter makes a fairly good living. Low standards and academic sloppiness and indifference about authorship is a win-win situation; if it wasn't, writing support would be a lot more extensive in every university in Europe.
>> 
>> In the present situation I would say two things:
>> 1. Proofreading should be charged at commercial rates, whether the student or the department pays.
>> 2. Proofreading should deal with nothing other than " grammar, punctuation and syntax" - there should be no effort to rewrite the text into a more coherent argument. In other words, it should lay bare the relative inadequacy or otherwise of the written argument.
>> 
>> I'm in a savage mood today, aren't I?
>> 
>> John