Plo Alastrué, Ramón and Carmen Pérez-Llantada : English as a scientific and research language

The use of English as a scientific and research language is today a subject of lively debate. The lingua franca role that English has assumed in many domains has given rise to numerous social, linguistic and geopolitical questions about this dominance over national languages. The present volume originated in the Zaragoza conference of December 2013 which was part of the larger English in Europe: Opportunity or threat? Project (2012-2014) . One of the common goals of the chapters selected for this volume was to focus on the role of English in research settings in Europe specifically, and to identify trends and challenges related to the local geographic contexts in question. As underlined by Ramón Plo Alastrué in the introduction, contributions seek to "to identify both shared and divergent trends and challenges and contextualize scientific English usage across the local specificities of various geographic locations in Europe." The range of research settings in the book covers Northern, Central and Southern European countries, including Portugal, Spain, Germany, Italy, Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden, Romania, Croatia and Poland