Journal of English for Academic Purposes 11 (2012) 1–3

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Journal of English for Academic Purposes

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jeap

Editorial

English for Academic Purposes: Contributions from systemic functional

linguistics and Academic Literacies

The purpose of this special issue is to consider the contributions of two approaches to the field of English for Academic
Purposes (EAP), focusing in particular on academic literacy. One of them, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), has for the past
forty years underpinned extensive investigations of academic literacy and associated pedagogy. These investigations began
with Halliday and colleague’s early work on register and genre in the 1960s (e.g., Halliday, McIntosh, & Strevens, 1964) which
was widely taken up by EAP researchers and practitioners (see Wingate and Tribble, 2011, for a discussion of Halliday’s
contribution to the intellectual foundations of EAP). It was further developed in both school and higher education settings in
Australia by Halliday and associates in the Linguistics department of Sydney University and elsewhere. It is currently influ-
ential in other parts of the world, including the UK, the USA, China and Indonesia.
The other approach, Academic Literacies, emerged around the same time from a new paradigm in literacy research known
as New Literacies Studies. New Literacies Studies grew out of the ethnographic fieldwork of Brian Street in Iran (Street, 1984),
Shirley Brice Heath’s investigations into the literacy practices of communities in the southern United States (Heath, 1983) and
Scribner and Cole’s research among the Vai people in Liberia (Scribner and Cole, 1981). Its applications to academic literacy
research and pedagogy began to gather strength in the early 1990s when the term ‘academic literacies’ (plural) was coined.
Academic Literacies perspectives are increasingly influential in literacy research and pedagogy in higher education, partic-
ularly in the UK, but also in South Africa and the USA.
The contributions made by SFL and Academic Literacies to EAP are different but can both be related to calls for action to
EAP researchers and practitioners made in JEAP’s inaugural editorial (Hyland & Hamp-Lyons, 2002). Systemic functional
linguistics, for example, has provided powerful tools for investigating disciplinary discourses. Consequently it has
contributed towards strengthening ‘the understandings which make EAP teaching a profession’, including challenging ‘the
widely held assumption that academic conventions are universal and independent of particular disciplines’ (Hyland &
Hamp-Lyons, 2002, 6). Through close textual analysis, it has offered insights into how ‘participants draw on knowledge
of prior texts to frame messages in ways which appeal to appropriate cultural and institutional relationships’ (Hyland &
Hamp-Lyons, 2002, 5).
Academic Literacies has concerned itself with a different challenge issued by Hyland and Hamp-Lyons (2002, 9): the extent
to which EAP as a field is either ‘pragmatic’ or ‘critical’. Thus, whilst traditionally, the primary focus of EAP has been text and
text features, Academic Literacies has promoted the need to interrogate and critique the socio-political processes in which
academic texts are situated. A key notion which is used in Academic Literacies to underpin its approach to critique is the
representation of writing as ‘practice’ as well as ‘text’. In a position paper outlining the state of Academic Literacies research in
the 2000s, Lillis and Scott (2008) explicitly identify a focus on ‘practices’ over ‘texts’ as a defining feature of Academic
Literacies. This shift of focus from texts to practices is associated with the ‘transformative’ agenda of an Academic Literacies
approach.
For a text-oriented approach like SFL, which also has a social justice and transformative agenda (cf., Martin, 1999), this
association by Academic Literacies theoreticians and practitioners of a focus on practices with a critical perspective calls for
reflection on the place of text in academic literacy research and development. This special issue provides a place for such
reflection. The papers have been selected to demonstrate the insights into academic writing and learning that each approach
can bring. Donohue applies SFL to the analysis of student writing in a first year film studies module and considers the role of
this writing as students move from film viewers to film analysts. Coffin, Hewings and North use SFL to analyse argumentation
in computer mediated conferencing in the study of history at school and of health and social care at university. Turner applies
the theoretical framework of Academic Literacies to the contested activity of the proof reading of students’ texts, fore-
grounding the diverse practices that are displayed by professors in response to proof reading in the humanities and social

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2 Editorial / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 11 (2012) 1–3

sciences. Two papers, Coffin and Donohue, and Wingate, discuss some of the differences between the approaches, including
the strengths and weaknesses of each in relation to different research and teaching purposes. Three papers, Gardner, Coffin
and Donohue, and Donohue, highlight the complementarity of the two approaches and the mutual contributions they can
each make to EAP research and practice. In the case of Coffin et al. and Gardner, an additional research tool (corpus linguistics)
is brought into the frame. As in the case of any attempt to combine research methods and theoretical perspectives, these
papers raise questions concerning compatibility and theoretical integrity, as well as pedagogically related issues.
There is much that SFL and Academic Literacies share. Both approaches have been influenced by ethnographic experience:
SFL from Malinowski’s work in the Trobriand Islands and Academic Literacies from Street’s (e.g., 1984) work in Iran, Heath’s
(e.g., 1983) work in the US, and Scribener and Cole’s (e.g., 1981) work in Liberia. Both approaches have a strong sense of the
relationship between ‘context’ and language use. But there are also differences – the fact that one approach draws strongly on
linguistic (text-based) paradigms and the other on ethnographic (practices-based) ones. The challenge this special issue
engages with is whether it is desirable – and possible – to seek for closer dialogue between the two paradigms represented by
these two approaches, and to what extent it is already occurring. This can be seen as referring back to the challenges laid
down by Hyland and Hamp-Lyons in the inaugural issue of JEAP: how to develop better accounts of disciplinary discourses,
how to locate ourselves between critique and accommodation, and – a third challenge not mentioned yet – how to work with
rather than for disciplinary specialists (Hyland & Hamp-Lyons, 2002: 3).
It is our premise that one reason for the apparent divide between SFL and academic literacies perspectives can be
attributed to a difference in the locus of their concern. With its interest in disciplinary discourses, SFL is focused on how
knowledge structures are developed within subject areas; it shows less interest in individual knowers. In contrast, academic
literacies, with its interest in reader–writer identity and power balances in the academy, is focused on the knower and shows
less commitment to disciplinary discourses and the knowledge that they may be integral to building. This explanation draws
on the work of Bernstein (1999), Hasan (2009), and Maton (2011), on pedagogy, knowledge construction and semantic
variation (see Coffin and Donohue, this issue for further discussion). Mediating the engagements of knowers with the
knowledge represented by academic discourses in the university through the medium of language is what constitutes ‘this
profession’ of EAP (Hyland & Hamp-Lyons, 2002: 6). The risk that SFL text-based approaches or Academic Literacies practices-
based ones alone will focus only on one side or the other of the engagement has led us to produce this special issue of JEAP.
The issue is designed to explore whether each approach oriented towards the other may model the engagement more
holistically. (See Wingate and Tribble, 2011, who take up some of these issues.)
It is the purpose of this special issue to reach a more informed understanding of both SFL and Academic Literacies and to
explore the potential for drawing a more powerful synthesis out of the undoubted strengths that both bring to work in English
for Academic Purposes. Does a focus on text that draws from a theory of language as meaning making, and a view of learning
as the expansion of individual’s meaning making resources necessarily lead to an accomodationist stance in EAP? Does a focus
on practices marginalise the texts that are the material outputs of these practices? In what ways can a text focused approach
productively also employ ethnographic methods? How can a practices oriented approach use text analytical tools? Should
they?

Acknowledgements

This special issue emerged from a one day seminar (April 2010) in which representatives from Academic Literacies and
Systemic Functional Linguistics discussed their different approaches to investigating Academic Writing. This seminar was
sponsored by the British Association for Applied Linguistics and Cambridge University Press and we would like to thank both
for their generous support.

References

Bernstein, B. (1999). Vertical and horizontal discourse: an essay. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 20(2), 157–173.
Halliday, M. A. K., McIntosh, A., & Strevens, P. D. (1964). Linguistic sciences and language teaching. London: Longmans.
Hasan, R. (2009). Semantic variation. London: Equinox.
Heath, S. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hyland, K., & Hamp-Lyons, L. (2002). EAP: issues and directions. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 1, 1–12.
Lillis, & Scott. (2008). Defining academic literacies research: issues of epistemology, ideology and strategy. Journal Applied Linguistics, 4(1), 5–32.
Martin. (1999). Mentoring semogenesis: ‘genre-based’ literacy pedagogy. In F. Christie (Ed.), Pedagogy and the shaping of consciousness: Linguistic and social
processes (pp. 123–155). London: Cassell (Open Linguistics Series).
Maton, K. (2011). Theories and things: the semantics of disciplinarity. In F. Christie, & K. Maton (Eds.), Disciplinarity: Functional linguistic and sociological
perspectives (pp. 62–84). London pgs: Continuum.
Scribener, S., & Cole, M. (1981). The psychology of literacy. Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press.
Street, B. (1984). Literacy in theory and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wingate, U., & Tribble, C. (2011). The best of both worlds? Towards an English for Academic Purposes/Academic Literacies writing pedagogy. Studies in
Higher Education1–15, First published on: 12 May 2011.

Caroline Coffin*
Centre for Language and Communications, Faculty of Education and Language Studies, The Open University, Walton Hall,
Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK
 Editorial / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 11 (2012) 1–3 3

James P. Donohue
Department of Languages, Faculty of Education and Language Studies, The Open University, Walton Hall,
Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK

Corresponding author. Tel.: þ44 1908 858 495; fax: þ44 1908 654 111.
E-mail address: c.coffin@open.ac.uk