Spanish: A Language for Scientific and Technical Communication

Response 1 to "Spanish for the Professions and Specific Purposes: Curricular Mainstay"

In the last two decades, the demand for a curriculum that reflects the diverse needs of language learners has furthered the growth of SSP (Spanish for Specific Purposes) programs and courses across the United States, especially in areas such as law, business, and medicine (Sánchez-López 2010). And, as suggested in the article at hand, "collaborative curricular opportunities with STEM" are expected to grow in upcoming years, in fact, the expansion to scientific and technological fields was proposed to be the next natural step of SSP curricular offerings almost two decades ago (Branan 1998: 5). However, the question of what form will these collaborations take is critical, in a time where it has been stated that "English is not only the dominant form of international scientific publication and oral communication at conferences and in multinational laboratories—it is almost always the only language of such communication" (Gordin 2015: 293). Although overly generalizing, such a declaration highlights the perception that languages other than English have a peripheral role when it comes to scientific applications, raising questions about the future of Spanish for Science and Technology (SST) education.

In this respect, two volumes are key to understand the challenges and prospects of Spanish as a language of scientific communication: El español, lengua para la ciencia y la tecnología (Arias-Salgado Rosby et al. 2009), and the more recent El español, lengua de comunicación científica (García Delgado, Alonso, and Jiménez 2013). Both collections describe the state of the language in contemporary science, drawing attention to the significant number of publications in Spanish, especially in the health sciences and other experimental fields. Furthermore, many authors seem to agree on the important role that Spanish plays, and will continue to play, in the dissemination of scientific and technological knowledge. In addition, it soon becomes clear that when most scholars talk about ciencia, they are discussing a broader domain than that defined by the term "science," which often refers to the physical sciences exclusively (Gordin 2015: 3). As a result, and taking the evolution of Spanish for the Health Professions (SHP) as a model (Hardin 2015), SST offerings in the United States will most likely focus on one or more of the following areas:

1. 1). Technical translation and interpretation, to address the specialized needs of such professionals in an era of digital globalization.

2. 2). Technical communication among peers, to facilitate the flow of knowledge across linguistic borders.

3. 3). Communication of science and technology, to foster scientific literacy and the public dissemination of scientific and technological knowledge.

In terms of pedagogical models that could support such offerings, possible approaches include content-based instruction and languages across the curriculum (Klee and Barnes-Karol 2006), along with project-based (García González and Veiga Díaz 2015) and service-based learning (Sánchez-López 2013), either as part of stand-alone SSP certificates, as proposed in Doyle (2017), or within more general programs. And although colleges and universities are natural settings for this SSP development, one can also expect private-sector initiatives, as more and more scientists, engineers, communicators, and policy makers see the value of SST education. If we are to truly embrace cultural competence in a globalized world, the science and technology domain of language learning cannot be ignored.