Paper short abstract:

Differences within and between languages present opportunities for scientific communication. Disrupting anti-science rhetoric requires interrupting the homolingualism of English through comparing linguistic terms, concepts and theories to stimulate alternatives, creativity, and diverse perspectives.

Paper long abstract:

The controversy model sets up debate as an ideal mode of discourse for scientific thinking. Inherently, debate assumes winners and losers, instigating intellectual competition. Instead, a collaborative model for scientific communication seeks to produce shared understanding through utilizing different languages. How do you talk about evolution in different languages? How are the fundamentals of physics explained in, for instance, American Sign Language? Disrupting pervasive anti-science rhetoric requires interrupting the homolingualism of English, particularly in technical fields. Inviting linguistic comparison of terms, concepts and theories in other languages creates access to alternatives, creativity, and diverse life experience: instigating curiosity. Skills of inquiry about language use (Kent et al, in print) grounds rich point pedagogy, drawing upon the work of Michael Agar, who identified linguistic rich points (2000). We propose communicative rich points that purposefully introduce linguistic difference to support collaborative structures of social interaction that engage intellectual disagreement in terms that are essentially friendly rather than inherently antagonistic. Drawing on Canagarajah’s (2013) articulation of the use of later-learned English as a lingua franca (ELF) we show how co-constructing mutual, shared understanding is modeled by managers and employees in multinational enterprise (Kent & Kappen, in process) and politics (Kent, 2014). The plurilingual model applies to scientists in the academy and industry, across all levels of science education and science communication. Welcoming and utilizing language difference constructively rather than resisting it will make science more welcoming to diverse identities and promote scientifically-grounded social evolution, a radical and fundamental shift.