Research on Academic Writing in Critical Perspective.
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\nAcademic life is s a buzzing beehive of literate activity. A defining characteristic of the university is that is a place where people read, write, exchange and respond to a dizzying variety of texts in the context of disciplinary or interdisciplinary study. The genres of academic writing which members of the community–professors and students alike–encounter on a daily basis include a startlingly broad range, from research reports and e-mail communiqu\u00c3\u00a9s to requests for reprints and term papers. Each of these, in turn, can be definitively characterized neither by the presence of particular rhetorical and linguistic forms nor even in terms of the conventionalized purposes which the host discourse community associates with the genre. Under a critical and criticalist gaze, the a priori integrity of a category like “research paper” dissolves into a congeries of institutional, disciplinary and situational contigencies (Prior, 1998). The nested complexity in which academic writing tasks are framed, interpreted and executed is both problematic and potentially empowering for the non-native writers with whom the field of English for Academic Purposes (“EAP”) and this paper is especially concerned (Benesch, 2001a).<\/p>\n