The Role of the State Language in Scientific Research in the Social Sciences

Abstract

Modern science has almost always evolved in the context of dominant languages that facilitate communication among scientists across national boundaries. However, over the past thousand years, several languages have fulfilled this role in significant regions of the world – most notably Arabic, Latin, Classical Chinese, and German. Since the second half of the twentieth century, English has taken a leading position; however, it still accounts for less than 50% of all scientific publications. As the article demonstrates, precise statistics are lacking, and the available data can be interpreted in multiple ways. Moreover, the use of national languages varies considerably across scientific disciplines. In many areas of the social sciences, for instance, it remains impossible to gain a comprehensive understanding of current scholarly knowledge without engaging with literature published in Chinese, Spanish, Russian, and other official languages of major research and development powers. In this context, Russia – advocating for a more polycentric world order – should adopt state policy measures aimed at promoting the Russian language internationally, particularly within the scientific and educational domains, while also strengthening its status domestically. This, however, does not imply a rejection of English. As the article argues, addressing specific challenges requires a nuanced, well-calibrated policy that integrates a diverse set of complementary instruments.