Cross-Cultural Psychology and the Rise of Academic Capitalism: Linguistic Changes in CCR and JCCP Articles, 1970-2014. (October 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Holtz, Peter; Deutschmann, Emanuel; Dobewall, Henrik
• Is Part Of: Journal of cross-cultural psychology. Volume 48:Number 9(2017)
• Page Start: 1410
• Page End: 1431
• Publication Date: 2017-10
• Subjects: linguistic change -- cross-cultural psychology -- academic capitalism -- publish or perish -- positive framing; Ethnopsychology -- Periodicals; 155.805
• DOI: 10.1177/0022022117724902
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0022-0221

Abstract

Recently, several studies have investigated developments in academic language over the last four decades: An analysis of a large number of PubMed abstracts by Vinkers, Tijdink, and Otte showed a dramatic rise in use of positive words such as "innovative, " "robust, " "novel, " and "unprecedented." In the field of psychology, Pritschet, Powell, and Horne found an increase in mentions of marginally significant statistical findings, and social psychologist Michael Billig raised concerns about a surge of technical jargon in the social sciences. All these phenomena are believed to be a consequence of higher publication pressure and the need to become visible as a researcher in an increasingly competitive climate that is often referred to as academic capitalism . In our study, we tested the aforementioned indicators of linguistic change for a sample of 1, 680 research articles from the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology (JCCP) and 657 research articles from Cross-Cultural Research (CCR), published between 1970 and 2014. Overall, we found a consistent increase in positive framing, a rise in reports of marginally significant statistical findings, and indicators for growth in technical jargon. These findings suggest that self-marketing strategies are also on the rise in cross-cultural psychology.