Abstract
This paper considers the influence of language of work on the professional attitudes and activities of scientists. This Issue is of considerable significance to those linguistically-defined scientific communities in which the medium of scientific training does not coincide with the dominant lingua franca of scientific communication and recognition Does language of work, for Instance, serve to isolate scientific communities, thereby depressing research activity? This and other questions have been studied in the case of academic engineers affiliated with an English-medium and a French-medium university in Quebec - a society where the relationship between the two linguistic groups used to be described as 'two solitudes'. Considerable variations have been found between the two universities m terms of professional orientations, research activity, etc. Yet attempts to introduce the local language and to respond to local needs and priorities do not seem to be incompatible with the capacity to be cosmopolitan - although some of the data indicate that relationships to the international scientific system may be weakened.
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