Arabic as a research language: The case of the agricultural sciences.

Abstract

This dissertation represents, as far as we know, the first major attempt to investigate the discourse of the contemporary research article (RA) in the Arabic language. Arabic as a medium for communicating scientific research in the Arab World so far has been overshadowed by English. For instance, a bibliographic study of the scientific journals currently published in the Arab World showed that English in the language of almost 70 percent of all Arab journals, while the rest are divided equally between Arabic and French. However, the investigation also shows that there is a trend towards an increasing use of Arabic in research publication, especially in the agricultural sciences. Further evidence of a concern to develop Arabic as a research language was elicited in interviews with agricultural scientists at the University of Jordan in 1987. A discourse analysis of 48 Arabic-language research articles dealing with agricultural topics and taken from five Arab journals (two from Egypt, and one each from Jordan, Syria and Iraq), was undertaken. Some uncertainty about nomenclature for RA sections was uncovered. It was found that the RA introductions fell into two broad types: one followed a 'Create a Research Space' design, the other a 'Problem-Solution' model. The methods sections tended to be more detailed than their English-language counterparts. The typically combined Results and Discussions generally followed the 'results + evaluation' cycles established for English RAs. Throughout the Arabic RAs, however, there was a marked absence of critical evaluation of previous research. An investigation of several selected linguistic features of the RA revealed that, in the process of borrowing loan words and phrases from Scientific English, Scientific Arabic has adapted, either directly or via journalistic Modern Standard Arabic, some of the distinctive syntactic properties of this variety of English (most importantly, the agentive passive). The analysis also shows some residual influence of the characteristic rhetorical features of literary Arabic. In the final chapter, implications for research publication in the Arab World as well as to the teaching of research writing in Arabic are explored, and several proposals for future research are made.