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Erin Ashley Mink Garvey Dr.

Tardy WRD 543: Research Project 18 November 2010

Publish or Perish in English: Non-Native English-Speaking Faculty and the Academy Intersecting the English Language with Higher Education Language learners and readers surely know about the ever-increasing, seeminglyubiquitous presence of the English language worldwide. Of course, while some reasons for the spread of English can be attributed to historical or political events, like colonization of foreign lands or forced occupations of distinct nations, English's spread has also commonly been attributed to its quick becoming the standard linguistic currency of international business and stemming from the increasing globalization that has connected the farthest reaches of the globe previously unreachable. For the millions of native English speakers worldwidethat is, folks who speak English as their primary (if not exclusive) language or who have acquired a sophisticated mastery of the languagethe fact that English has come to occupy international importance and prominence means that they have simply lucked out: they are already adept in the language of the world. For the millions of other folks worldwide who lack a mastery, or even a rudimentary knowledge of the language, however, this linguistic gap can potentially stand in the way of advancing their careers. Suffice it to say that language is laden with politics, privilege, and power. Similarly, in higher education, especially in the United States, faculty members (herein, faculty) often feel pressures from their institutions or disciplines to publish or perish--that is, to continue to add knowledge to the discipline's discourse community or risk falling off the scholastic radar and, in time, becoming academically obsolete and lacking in the field's most up-todate advances in knowledge (and thus, without an academic career). With publishing international, peer-refereed journal articles written in English becoming the gold standard of scholastic relevance and prestige, faculty are often expected to publish their academic contributions in

English, regardless of their own first language or the language of their nation of residence. Thus, it is especially interesting to consider the types of challenges that non-native English-speaking (herein, NNES) faculty must face, worldwide, as they seek to advance their careers, as well as the challenges that NNES faculty, who currently teach in the United States, must negotiate in order to advance their careers. For the duration of this essay, I will further describe existing realities for NNES faculty, in terms of publication expectations, disciplinary distinctions, geopolitical challenges, and the help that goes into producing academic texts for publication; problematize some theoretical underpinnings about English's intersections with higher education; and finally, offer some potential initiatives, going forward, for DePaul University's own Collaborative for Multilingual Writing and Research (CMWR) to consider as it works with the university's NNES faculty. Existing Realities for Faculty Publication Expectations In Flowerdew's stratified sample study in his article Writing for Scholarly Publication in English, wherein he investigated scholarly publication in Hong Kong done by Cantonese-L1 academics, he found that his Hong Kong Cantonese academic respondents overwhelmingly considered international refereed journal articles to be the most important outlet for publishing the results of their work and that English is de facto by far their predominant language of publication (140). Flowerdew's explicit findings here also underscore the problematic nature of conflating international with English, in that international refereed journal articles insinuate journal articles written for an international audiencean English-literate audience, that is despite the myriad other languages that exist worldwide and within various disciplines. Additionally, in Flowerdew's later article (Problems) about scholarly publication in Hong Kong, he explains the enormous importance of English-language journals to scholars all over the world,

as he says that: because the international databases primarily list English language journals, the ascendancy of English is self-perpetuating. Libraries subscribe to journals that have the greatest impactthose that are included in the databases. Because journals publishing in languages other than English tend not to be included in the databases, they consequently are not held by libraries internationally. Articles published in these journals therefore receive little attention and few citations, and scholars thus are less inclined to publish in them. (243-4) Thus, as Flowerdew's explanations show, faculty all over the world, regardless of their own language or that of their country of residence, are seemingly stuck in their conditions to publish or perish in English in order to advance their careers. Besides advancing their careers by earning higher-paid positions, the premium on publishing in English also brings substantial opportunities for job promotion and research grants, which are extremely important aspects of faculty's lives (Lillis and Curry 4). A Caveat: Disciplinary Distinctions However, Flowerdew's research also notes that there is a slight corollary to the ecumenical expectation that faculty publish or perish in English, in that in the softer disciplines, such as the humanities and social sciences, it is still sometimes sufficiently prestigious to publish in local or regional journalsand in the national language, no less (124). Despite this corollary, though, he concedes that even the soft disciplines are slowly trending toward an expectation that faculty publish in English (Flowerdew 124). Curry and Lillis add to Flowerdew's observation of the slow trend toward publishing in English, even for the soft disciplines, by saying that despite the pressures to publish in English, many faculty are at the same time publishing in local national languages and, in some instances, in other national languages. The result is that they are writing for a number of relatively distinct communities (Curry and Lillis 681). To this extent, Swales also notes the complications arising from triumphalist English and the loss of specialized registers in otherwise healthy languages as a clear consequence of the global advance of English (Swales

376). He explains that such wrenching disproportions [of non-English speaking countries publishing far fewer articles in mainstream journals than the US] thus structurate America's role as the global academic gate-keeper and that the trend to English continues to be reported in largely triumphalist terms by anglophone commentators (Swales 376, my emphasis).1 Swales also notes that in some cases, publishing research findings in English, as opposed to an author's home country's language, is, in some respects, a bit inane, simply because in some fields, perhaps most crucially in agricultural and ecological sciences and in preventive medicine, the advantages of developing local research and publication traditions is clearly of benefit to many parties, from government ministers, to those concerned with environmental issues, to agricultural extension officers (Swales 378). For example, if a Kenyan agricultural scientist faculty finds a breakthrough in a conservation technique, but opts to only publish her findings in English, as opposed to Kiswahili, as Swales suggests, the faculty is, in essence, short-changing many powerful, change-enacting officials in her own country that (possibly) could make some significant changes, as a result of her research, simply because she has elected to publish her research in a language that will be more advantageous to her career! Thus, authors' publishing their research in a language that may not be accessible to those who could possibly positively affect social change, because of the experts' findings, is not necessarily as detrimental to the authors as much as it is to an entire populace who could benefit from the authors' expertise. In contrast, Flowerdew focuses more on the authors' individual, career-driven needs, and paints the picture of publishing scholarly, academic work in a language other than English as not much short of career suicide, as he says that failure to publish in English is to cut oneself off from the international community of scholars, on the one hand, and to prejudice one's chances of
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Swales also vividly relays the magnitude, and import, that English has engendered in non-English speaking countries, as he quotes a Pakistani commentator who explains, Teaching English has become a multi-million-dollar business the world over, a lucrative business next only to drug trafficking, and he admits his being taken, when reading of the pent-up demand for English in places like Eastern Europe, China and Vietnam, by the implication that the more crassly commercial interests in ESL are running enterprises dangerously close to language trafficking (377).

professional advancement, on the other--implicitly agreeing with his earlier-cited description from Swales, of English as a Tyrannosaurus rex, a powerful carnivore [that gobbles up] the other denizens of the academic linguistic grazing grounds (124). Geopolitical Challenges for Faculty's Publication Attempts Canagarajah also notes that many faculty who work at institutions in developing nations face additional challenges to publishing their findings in English, assuming that they are able to publish their research at all (445). He summarizes that the institutions in which many periphery scholars work often do not have the technological, economic, and communication resources necessary for them to meet the expectations of publishing circles in the center and offers his own experiences working at the University of Jaffna, in Sri Lanka, to illustrate the hardships (445-6). These challenges, not necessarily unique to Sri Lanka, would clearly preclude anyone, from working to their potential, notwithstanding interfering with their career goals of scholarly publication: challenges such as incessant power outages; unreliable systems of postal communication, oftentimes restricted by the leadership in power; intermittent electronic communicative abilities, due to the ongoing power outages; bans on foreign literature; political unrest and violence, especially during times of (speculated or alleged) leadership transition; and restricted travel within and beyond the country's borders, again due to stipulations placed on the people by the leadership in power at the time (Canagarajah 446-7). Consequently, in many ways, one might argue that before faculty in developing countries even begin to publish their research, they might already face a Sisyphean type-challenge to overcome their country's geopolitical barriers. In this way, these faculty are challenged in manifold ways that their peers in other environs might not encounter and thus, could be said to be unduly disadvantaged in their publication attempts. The Help: Literacy Brokers

Moreover, as NNES faculty go through the processes of preparing their academic manuscripts for publication, they often utilize what Lillis and Curry call literacy brokers, which includes editors, reviewers, academic peers, and English-speaking friends and colleagues, who mediate text production in a number of ways, to ensure that their manuscripts meet their disciplinary and journalistic demands (4). Literacy brokers play a very powerful, important role for NNES faculty seeking publication goals because publication in English-medium publications often result in immediate economic gains, like the aforementioned job promotions and salary increases, as well as more diffuse social and cultural capital, such as prestige and reputation (Lillis and Curry 13). Additionally, as the earlier description noted, literacy brokers typically belong to one of three groupsacademic professionals (a general academic, who is not from the same disciplinary area(s) as the author or authors; a discipline expert, who shares the same disciplinary background and interests as the author or authors; or a subsidiary specialist, who is from the same specialist field as the author or authors); language professionals; or nonprofessionals (Lillis and Curry 14). Theoretical Underpinnings for the English Language and Higher Education The global move toward publishing academic work in English, regardless of the author's primary language or the language of his or residence, is problematic for many reasons, as we have already considered, yet it is also laden with some potential advantages and disadvantages. Flowerdew notes that English's hegemony (a value-loaded descriptor, to be sure) is responsible for the rapid dissemination of human knowledge, which can quickly yield progress in education, health, and technical knowledgea dissemination that would not be so easily facilitated if the knowledge had to be translated over a wide swath of languages (244). Additionally, like others, Flowerdew asserts the possibility that having a lingua franca such as English could more easily bring about cross-cultural understanding and the peaceful coexistence of peoples and nations

(244). However, Flowerdew, citing Phillipson and Pennycook, explains that English's spread also carries with it a lot of ideological baggage and inherently (if not explicitly) devalues local languages and culture, perpetuates inequalities between native and non-native speakers, and, as Flowerdew citing Mauranen explains, creates a sort of linguistic impoverishment when a language ceases to be the vehicle of a sophisticated genre, such as the research article (Flowerdew 245). NNES faculty publishing in English, especially those who reside in non-English-speaking countries, may, ideologically, feel as though they are contributing to their local environment's linguistic impoverishment by publishing their research findings in English, but pragmatically, as our earlier analysis revealed, many faculty may not feel they have any alternativesespecially if they want to advance their careers. Lillis and Curry explain that this pressure [to produce in English] is sustained and refracted through a complex set of inter-relationships between local institutional and national geopolitical contexts on one hand and individual scholars' academic interests and material living conditions on the other (4). Moreover, NNES faculty from periphery, or newly-emerging English-adopting, environments, may have additional stressors related to publishing in English that L1 English-speaking faculty lack, including limited access to material resources such as journals and library databases, the means to achieve sufficient [levels] of English proficiency, and time for writing in more than one language, particularly if the faculty are writing in both their local or national languages, in addition to English, for ideological and pragmatic reasons (Curry and Lillis 681). While, ideologically, some faculty may feel more compelled to publish in their L1, perhaps in an effort to help bring greater visibility in their discourse community or discipline to their home country, pragmatically, these same faculty may feel that they have no choice but to publish in a language to which they feel little or no connection, simply because it is what is expected of them,

on an international scale, in order to advance. Therein lies the crux of the issue between language's intersections with power, prestige, and politics (if not also pragmatism)--and ample opportunities for higher education institutions in the US to be supportive of their NNES faculty, just as they would (typically) be of their NNES international or resident students. Initiatives for the CMWR and DePaul's NNES Faculty As an institution, DePaul University is committed to advancing education for the most marginalized in society, regardless of their socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, gender, age, or other social identifier, as part of the university's commitment to its status as a Vincentian, Catholic (and catholic) place of higher education. Our analysis here has shown how the politics, power, and privilege surrounding language can invariably marginalize an individual or a group of people, and this extends just as much to DePaul's NNES faculty community as it does to its students. That said, the institution ought to strategically consider the resources it has available, such as the Collaborative for Multilingual Writing and Research (herein, CMWR), for potential avenues it could extend as support mechanisms for the university's NNES faculty who are experiencing difficulties in manuscript publication in English, not in substitution for the services the CMWR provides for DePaul's students but instead, in tandem with them. Perhaps the most logical way to launch any initiatives between the CMWR and DePaul's NNES faculty would be to first inform the NNES that the CMWR exists and is available to them as a professional resource: in other words, not only can the faculty send their students to the CMWR, but they, too, as multilingual scholars, can frequent the Collaborative and use it as they see fit. Before beginning any outreach or support services, it might also be worthwhile for the CMWR to conduct some targeted, qualitative research on DePaul's NNES faculty, much as Flowerdew did in his study of Hong Kong Cantonese-L1 academics. The CMWR could use Flowerdew's and other scholars' questions as a basis for an online survey or focus group and, from the respondents'

answers, structure its outreach accordingly.2 For example, the CMWR may find that NNES faculty, upon beginning their teaching at DePaul, lack the literacy brokers that they originally had in their previous institutions or homes and feel ill-equipped to find a similarly-reliable type of help here as they seek to continue to publish their research. If the CMWR is able to develop a strong enough knowledge of the various NNES faculty, as well those native-speaking faculty (or graduate students) who would be willing to volunteer as literacy brokers, the Collaborative could perhaps help connect the dots on behalf of the NNES faculty and help situate them with resources they need in order to be more successful at their publishing pursuits. Alternatively, perhaps through the targeted research efforts, the CMWR may find that DePaul's NNES faculty are sufficiently knowledgeable about how to continue to publish in English; knowing this, then, the CMWR could maintain (with ample evidence) that it could better direct its resources toward other programmatic and supportive endeavors than toward DePaul's NNES faculty. Thus, it seems that, given resource constraints, it would behoove the CMWR to conduct at least some sort of preliminary data collection and analysis to find out what the needs are, if anything, of DePaul's NNES faculty, in an effort to strategically and responsibly structure its outreach and supportive offerings.3 The Way Forward Language's politics, privileges, and power pervades all social institutions, and this becomes especially clear when folks realize they are outside the realm of linguistic control: that is, when they realize that their communicative shortcomings preclude them from advancing, personally or professionally, as they would like. Our analysis showed that this is especially salient for NNES
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I have included sample qualitative survey and/or focus group questions in the appendices at the conclusion of this document.

To this extent, as the CMWR soon begins its pilot program at La Universidad Nacional Autnoma (UNAM) in Puebla, Mxico, in the 2011 winter quarter, it may find that the ways it supports the implementation of a faculty-focused writing center could carry over to the ways the CMWR supports DePaul's own NNES faculty (or vice-versa).

faculty who feel forced, for pragmatic reasons, to publish their research findings in English in order to advance in their careers, despite their ideological or perhaps nationalistic objections. A cursory review of the available literature elucidated that many third-party entities, such as literacy brokers, play prominent roles in assisting NNES to publish their findings in international, peerrefereed academic journals, the current gold standard of the research world. As NNES faculty begin their academic careers at new institutions, perhaps in English-speaking countries, they may find themselves without the types of support mechanisms they originally had, even further inhibiting their production of English-language texts. At DePaul, specifically, the university ought to consider its resource constraints and determine how, if at all, it can support its NNES faculty members' pursuits at publishing their scholarship, especially since access to educational advancement is a major underpinning of the university's commitment to providing a Vincentianbased education for its community. NNES faculty need not perish for lack of access to support mechanisms in their efforts to publish their research, and given the unlikely occurrence that English's hegemonic spread is replaced by a massive upsurge in multilingual proliferation the world over, it behooves higher education institutions to strategically provide ample support for their NNES faculty to be able to advance, both personally and professionally.

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Appendix A The questions below are extracted from Flowerdew's stratified research study of Hong Kong Cantonese-L1 academics and were featured in his article Writing for Scholarly Publication in English: The Case of Hong Kong. DePaul's CMWR could adapt these questions for an online, qualitatively-based survey or use them as potential discussion points for focus groups.

1. What discipline do you belong to? 2. How often do you typically publish your research findings? 3. How many articles, books, book chapters, or other publications have you authored (or coauthored) during your academic career? 4. What exposure have you had to English through study and work in English-speaking countries? 5. What do you think is the most important type of publication for (insert faculty's L1 language here) academics publishing their work? 6. To what extent is English the language of publication of (insert faculty's L1 language here) L1 academics, in your opinion? 7. How do you think other (insert L1 language here) L1 academics feel about writing in English? 8. What do you feel are the main problems of (insert L1 here) L1 academics writing for publication in English? 9. How confident are (insert L1 here) L1 academics about writing for publication in English, based on your experiences? 10. To what extent do other (insert L1 here) L1 academics collaborate with native speakers when they write papers in English?

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Appendix B The questions below are extracted from Lillis and Curry's Academic Writing in a Global Context, in which they conduct a text-oriented ethnography on 50 scholars', from the fields of education and psychology, representing 12 countries, experiences related to professional academic writing (2). DePaul's CMWR could also fashion these questions to fit a qualitative, anonymous online survey or as fodder for NNES faculty focus groups, similarly to how they could for Flowerdew's aforedescribed questions.

Overarching Questions: 1. How is the dominance of English affecting scholars who use languages other than English and live/work in non-English dominant contexts? 2. In what ways is the position of English as an academic lingua franca influencing academic knowledge production and exchange in the twenty-first century? 3. Which texts are successful or unsuccessful in being accepted for publication, and why?

About Scholars' Experiences and Practices 1. What are scholars' experiences in writing and publishing their research in English? 2. What meanings does publishing in English have for scholars? 3. What pressures do scholars face in this enterprise? 4. What barriers to publishing in English do scholars encounter? 5. What does and doesn't get published, and why?

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Appendix C The questions below are extracted from the other Flowerdew article (Problems) I cited throughout my earlier analysis. These questions are considerably open-ended and could easily lend themselves to lengthy responses, so if the CMWR were to use (or alter) these questions, it would be wise to use them in a focus group settinginstead of a qualitative surveyso as to not unduly burden respondents.

Initial Interview Questions Perceptions 1. Do you enjoy writing in English for publication? What do you like/don't like about it? 2. Can you describe your experience in getting published/trying to get published for the first time/first few times? 3. Can you describe the typical process you go through in preparing a paper for publication? 4. What about follow-up after the editor has contacted you with his/her decision? 5. How would you describe your written English? 6. Which parts of the academic article are most problematic/least problematic for you and why? 7. Would you like to have more opportunities to write for publication in [insert L1 here]? Why/why not?

Problems 1. Do you feel at a disadvantage compared to native speakers when you submit a paper for publication? Why/why not? 2. Do you think editors and reviewers are biased against non-native speakers? Why/why not?

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3. What do you think are the special problems, if any, of [insert L1 speakers or specific ethnicities or nationalities here] in getting published in English? 4. What do you think are your individual problems in writing in English for publication? 5. What are the particular problems of your discipline, if any, when it comes to publishing in English? 6. Which parts of the paper do editors/reviewers most often ask you to revise? Why?

Strategies 1. What are your particular strengths in writing in English? 2. What strategies have you used in developing/improving your English writing? 3. Do you enlist the help of anyone else when preparing a paper for publication? If so, who, and in what capacity? 4. If time and money were not a problem, what would be the best way for you to improve your academic writing in English?

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Appendix D The survey questions below are taken from Tardy's small-scale questionnaire and focus group study of international graduate students studying at an American university (247, 265-7). Though these questions attempt to understand these students' attitudes toward English and its role in scientific communication, the Collaborative, if interested, could easily adapt them to facilitate discussion from DePaul's NNES faculty about publishing in English (Tardy 247).

Demographic Information 1. Home country 2. Other countries lived in 3. First language 4. Other language(s) 5. Age 6. Sex 7. Years of formal English instruction 8. Length of time in the U.S. 9. Length of time at [fill-in university name here]

Professional Background 1. Field of study 2. Degree (circle one): (Master's, Doctorate, Other) 3. Approximately how many scientific papers* have you written in English? In another language? (*include any work written in school, the workplace, or professional activities)

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4. Have you written a thesis for your bachelor's degree or master's degree? If Yes, in what language? In what country? 5. How important is English within your field? Circle the most appropriate answer (Not important, somewhat important, very important, essential) 6. In general, how would you describe your English competence for professional activities*? Circle the most appropriate answer (Weak, adequate, strong, fluent) (Professional activities are those activities that are related to your professional work. This may include, for example, coursework, research, reading research, writing professional papers, communicating with others in your field, attending professional conferences, etc.) 7. How many professional conferences have you attended conducted mainly in English? In another language?

Language and Scientific Communication 1. English has become the primary language of communication in scientific fields. In your own view, what are the benefits of this situation, if any? What are the negative aspects of this situation, if any? 2. As a researcher from a non-English speaking country, do you ever feel that you are at a disadvantage when participating in professional activities? Explain and/or give an example. 3. As a researcher from a non-English speaking country, do you ever feel that you are at an advantage when participating in professional activities? Explain and/or give an example. 4. Imagine that all languages were equally valued and used in international scientific

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communication. If you were given a choice, in what language would you prefer to conduct the following professional activities? Why? Reading research? Writing up research? Attending conferences?

Focus group interview questions 1. When you complete your degree, some of you may stay in the US and others may return to your home country. Professionally, what are some benefits to remaining in the US? To returning home? 2. According to a recent study, about 95.5% of the articles listed in the 1998 Science Citation Index were written in English. The other 4.5% were written in French (~1%), German (~1%), Russian (~1%), or all other languages (~1%). How does this situation influence you and your scholarship? 3. The following viewpoints have all been expressed by scholars in language policy and planning. Which of them do you most agree with and why? (If you disagree with all of them, explain your view). English provides a common language that allows everyone in scientific fields to communicate equally. The use of English in science benefits native English speakers, but disadvantages non-native English speakers. The dominance of English in science has caused a serious power imbalance among scholars, and this imbalance should be changed. Multilingualism should be promoted in science. For example, native

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English-speaking scientists should speak at least one other language, and journals should publish articles in multiple languages.

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Works Cited Canagarajah, A. Suresh. 'Nondiscursive' Requirements in Academic Publishing, Material Resources of Periphery Scholars, and the Politics of Knowledge Production. Written Communication 13.4 (1996): 435-472. Print. Curry, Mary Jane, and Theresa Lillis. Multilingual Scholars and the Imperative to Publish in English: Negotiating Interests, Demands, and Rewards. TESOL Quarterly 38.4 (2004): 663-688. Print. Flowerdew, John. Problems in Writing for Scholarly Publication in English: The Case of Hong Kong. Journal of Second Language Writing 8.3 (1999): 243-264. Print. ---. Writing for Scholarly Publication in English: The Case of Hong Kong. Journal of Second Language Writing 8.2 (1999): 123-145. Print. Lillis, Theresa, and Mary Jane Curry. Professional Academic Writing by Multilingual Scholars: Interactions With Literacy Brokers in the Production of English-Medium Texts. Written Communication 23.1 (2006): 3-35. Print. ---, and Mary Jane Curry. Academic Writing in a Global Context: The politics and practices of publishing in English. Oxford: Routledge, 2010. Print. Pennycook, Alastair. The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. London: Longman, 1995. Cited in Flowerdew's Problems in Writing for Scholarly Publication in English: The Case of Hong Kong. Journal of Second Language Writing 8.2 (1999): 123-145. Print. Phillipson, Robert. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford U P, 1992. Cited in Flowerdew's Problems in Writing for Scholarly Publication in English: The Case of Hong Kong. Journal of Second Language Writing 8.2 (1999): 123-145. Print. Swales, John M. English as Tyrannosaurus rex. World Englishes 16.3 (1997): 373-382.

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Print. Tardy, Christine. The role of English in scientific communication: lingua franca or Tyrannosaurus rex? Journal of English for Academic Purposes 3.3 (2004): 247-269. Print.

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