Gerhard Stickel (IDS – Mannheim)
The present use of languages in the sciences and the humanities in Germany

…I shall present the main results of a survey I conducted two years ago among about 2000 scientists in 78 research institutes in Germany. The general tendency to use English as medium of publication is not surprising, especially not in the natural sciences and in technological fields. This tendency also prevails in some of the social sciences and the humanities. Some of the commentaries on the situation of languages in their fields given by the scientists during the survey are more interesting and revealing than the pure statistics. These commentaries indicate, that the linguistic situation also carries with it some grave problems for the development of the sciences themselves, because the monolingual reduction of communication very often means a reduction of scientific traditions with their variety topics and methods.