‘Theoretical subtleties’ or ‘text modules’? German researchers' language demands and attitudes across disciplinary cultures

•Language demands made on researchers vary with disciplinary culture.•Variables are rigidity of genre and language, writing mode, data under study.•Impact of high ratio of native to non-native English speaking reviewers and editors.•Publishing success may not always be related to individual language competence.

The article identifies and discusses different language and disciplinary demands that non-native English-speaking researchers face when writing and publishing in English and how these relate to their (perceived) writing difficulty. By drawing on 24 interviews conducted with German researchers from four disciplines, the concept of disciplinary culture is invoked to investigate how research paradigms, writing conventions and value systems affect non-native English-speaking researchers in different fields when it comes to writing in English. The article highlights several factors that may play a role in the language demands made on researchers, such as the degree of rigidity of genre and language, the distribution of writing tasks and the ratio of native-speakers of English to non-native speakers in a given field. The results suggest that what could be considered sufficient language competence for research publishing in English varies across, but also, depending on researchers' career levels, within the four disciplines studied, i.e. biology, mechanical engineering, German linguistics and history. It is also argued that research on academic writing can benefit greatly from understanding writing as a disciplinary practice and that ethnographically-oriented research could be one way of shedding more light on the relationships between language and disciplinary cultures.