Journal of English for Academic Purposes

1 (2002) 29–44
www.elsevier.com/locate/jeap

Multilingual writers and the academic

community: towards a critical relationship
Suresh Canagarajah

Abstract
In recent times, ESOL teachers of academic writing have become sensitive to a community-
based orientation to literacy. Such notions as communicative competence in linguistics, social
constructionism in philosophy, and situated learning in education help perceive writing as a
social activity. They have shown the importance of learning to write as an insider to the
community one wishes to address. Though these realizations are constructively altering our
teaching practice, there are new problems in defining the community and one’s relationship to
it. As we move away from static and homogeneous notions of tightly bound community, we
confront new questions in orientating to the academy as a community. Such questions become
even more complicated when we think of teaching multilingual students who enjoy member-
ship in diverse communities simultaneously. The issue that has concerned me most in my
teaching and research on academic writing is the attitude that I should help multilingual wri-
ters adopt towards their engagement with academic discourses. How should they position
themselves towards their vernacular community and the academic audience? In this paper I
examine how different pedagogical approaches in ESOL answer these questions. In the light
of emerging theoretical and research findings, I chart a more critical orientation to the rela-
tionship between communities. This discussion should prove useful in helping multilingual
students develop a writing practice that is creative and challenging. # 2002 Elsevier Science
Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. The importance of community

Thanks to the advances made in several schools in the humanities and social
sciences, we now recognize that simply teaching the linguistic/textual grammar or
the cognitive processes of writing are insufficient to make a student competent in
academic writing. We have moved beyond both the product and process paradigms to
situate these pedagogical activities in the specific discourse communities one is writing
in/for. As early as the mid 1960s Dell Hymes corrected an emphasis on the abstract

E-mail address: canax@aol.com

1475-1585/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S1475-1585(02)00007-3
30 S. Canagarajah / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 29–44

rules of communication and emphasized the need to understand the values, con-
ventions, and practices accompanying the use of those rules. His notion of commu-
nicative competence tells us that students need an understanding of the cultural
assumptions and social practices of disciplinary communities in order to commu-
nicate effectively to this audience (Hymes, 1966). These assumptions cannot be
learned from outside the community, just as learning to speak a language fluently is
not well served by someone memorizing the dictionary or doing grammar exercises
from a textbook. To develop communicative competence one has to engage with the
community in question and become familiar with the nuances of its cultural prac-
tices and linguistic usage. This realization has encouraged schools like English for
academic purposes and genre analysis to study the more specific registers and con-
ventions accompanying text construction in different disciplinary communities.
While such sociolinguistic approaches assume that students could use community-
specific rules and conventions to write about an independent body of knowledge
that is out there, social constructionist philosophies later revealed that even knowl-
edge is relative to the different communities (Berger & Luckman, 1967). We realize
now that knowledge is shaped by socio-cultural practices. More radical versions of
this school developed a non-foundationalist philosophical outlook, teaching us that
there is no reality/truth that is independent of language and material life (Harland,
1987). Knowledge becomes, therefore, a ‘‘language game’’ that is maintained
through the interaction of community members. It is the linguistic activity of the
members in debating, revising, and legitimizing the ‘‘paradigms’’ that make sense to
them that constitute knowledge. This realization has led teachers to emphasize con-
tent-based courses in academic writing, urging students to pay attention to the
knowledge constructs that periodically enjoy dominance in the different disciplinary
circles. In other words, we became interested not only in teaching students how to
write to the academic community, but also what to write.
But can students effectively learn the form and content of disciplinary discourses
in the writing classroom, detached from the scholars who practice them? The notion
of situated learning in education has recently made us aware that learning anything
is a community activity, done in engagement with the circles that practice that
knowledge. Lave and Wenger (1991) show why legitimate peripheral participation in
communities of practice is important in the learning process.
First of all, it is practice—not discourses, languages, or rules—that unifies differ-
ent communities. Therefore, learning these constructs from the outside–if possible at
all–will be incomplete. It is by participating in the activity of the community that
one can become an insider in the knowledge and conventions of that circle. Of
course, since students are not expert members of that community, they have to
orientate to the practice with a certain amount of detachment and protection.
Therefore, a peripheral participation is ideal till students have developed the insider
knowledge and confidence to become full participants. But to be permitted this level
of close engagement with the community–and to find transparent its discourses and
practices–one should enjoy legitimate access to the workings of that community.
Legitimacy means both that students should be permitted relatively easy access to
the activities of the community, and that the pedagogical tasks they engage in
 S. Canagarajah / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 29–44 31

should have a functionality and meaning in relation to the activities of that circle.
This realization is inspiring teachers of academic writing to devalue textbook learn-
ing of academic discourses and simulated tasks of academic writing. The focus is
now on apprenticeship. We are exploring how real life tasks and functional projects
of students, in collaboration among themselves and with mentoring by disciplinary
specialists, help produce written texts that make a valid contribution to knowledge.
If this was all there is to mastering academic writing, things would be simple.
Unfortunately, multilingual students already come with membership in other com-
munities of practice. Holding membership in two different communities may not be
easy—especially if they have a history of antagonistic relations.1 How do students
relate the discourses and cultural practices of their vernacular community to those
of academic communities? Would they face the temptation of giving up the verna-
cular discourses in order to acquire the academic discourses? Would they have
inhibitions against participating in the life of a community which enjoys more power
and status in relation to their vernacular communities? What kind of stresses and
tensions would they face in shuttling between both communities? Can they take the
discourses of their vernacular community with them as they participate in the life of
the academic community? These are the many questions that arise in actual contexts
of writing and pedagogical practice.
The answers to these questions depend considerably on how academic commu-
nities are really constituted and defined. Matters are compounded by the fact that
there are difficulties in identifying and characterizing communities in the context of
postmodern discourses and cultural/economic globalization. We are realizing, for
example, that communities are more often imagined than physically constituted (as
Anderson, 1984 has reminded us). This means that we may not always find discourse
communities that are rooted in a specific spatial or temporal setting. Membership
may be enjoyed by individuals working in diverse settings who are still connected by
their work on a common project and the information that flows between them. To use
fashionable contemporary terminology, communities have become deterritorialized—
i.e., unmoored from specific locations.
We are also realizing that communities may be hybrid, characterized by a hetero-
geneous set of values and discourses. Thus one community may not be separated
from another according to unique unchanging values. Members could hold diverse
values and ideologies, enjoying membership in multiple communities. Therefore, it
may be difficult to pin down the identity of a person as belonging exclusively to one
community or as characterized by homogeneous values. Identity has become decen-
tered—i.e., lost the wholeness provided by uniform characteristics.2 These new rea-
lizations could empower or limit the writing practices of multilingual students,
depending on how we theorize the relationship between the diverse communities
that they belong to. It is in the light of these developments that I wish to consider

1
For a perspective on the hegemony of western communities in academic activities and knowledge
construction, see Canagarajah, 1996, and Mignolo, 2000.
2
For a detailed theoretical exposition of these realizations, see Appadurai, 1996, Bhaba, 1994 and
Hall, 1997.
32 S. Canagarajah / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 29–44

how some of the dominant models in ESOL academic writing conceive of the rela-
tionship between multilingual students and disciplinary communities.

2. English for academic purposes: asserting boundaries

Among the pedagogical approaches in L2 writing, the school of English for Aca-
demic Purposes (EAP) has contributed immensely to understanding the ways of
communicating in the academic community. Helped by the research and pedagogi-
cal approaches of related movements like English for Specific Purposes (in second
language teaching) and Writing across the Curriculum (in L1 writing circles), this
school has described a variety of features that characterize the discourses of the
different disciplinary circles. Scholars have worked towards describing the knowl-
edge content (Brinton, Snow, & Wesche, 1989), typical genre conventions (such as
the research article—Swales, 1990), and register (see Johns & Dudley-Evans, 1991).
These findings enable teachers to develop pedagogical approaches that facilitate
communicative competence among their students in addressing the discourses of the
academic community in general and disciplinary communities in particular.
While this school’s descriptions of discourse are of immense value, its attitude
towards the academic community raises some conflicts in pedagogical practice for
multilingual students. EAP adopts the normative attitude that the discourses of
academic communities are not open to negotiation or criticism. If a student doesn’t
adopt the established discourses of a discipline, then she simply loses her claim for
membership in that community. For example, if an L2 scholar’s research article
diverges slightly from the canonical structure of introductions (formulated in the
CARS model) EAP scholars may treat this writer as unproficient in the writing
genre (see Swales, 1990, p. 158). But if we could explore why this scholar may be
adopting this practice, whether there may be serious reasons that may motivate
alternate styles of writing, and whether this may indicate an incipient criticism of the
accepted conventions of academic communication, we will develop a critical attitude
to disciplinary discourse. This would make us sensitive to academic discourse as ideo-
logical—representing the interests and values of a specific circle, suppressing other dis-
courses, and perhaps imposing its own orientation to knowledge on other communities
to exercise its domination. But these questions are irrelevant for the EAP approach.
As suggested by the previous example, the school also orientates to the academic
community as a homogeneous circle, unified by its distinctive discourse features.
The students must realize that their own communities have their own unifying and
distinctive discourse features, and must see to it that these discourse systems are kept
separate. Mixing the discourse of these communities is treated as a sign of incom-
petence. In much of the scholarship of this school, there is little interest in the dis-
courses students bring from their own communities. In effect, the cultural and
discursive difference ESOL students represent get treated as a ‘‘problem’’ for aca-
demic writing. This is therefore a one-sided approach to community that considers
how one should acculturate to the community one wishes to join, without considering
the discursive implications of the other memberships one brings with oneself.
 S. Canagarajah / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 29–44 33

Perhaps EAP scholars have good reasons for adopting this position. They display
a pragmatic attitude to writing. They hold that the practical objective in ESOL is to
develop mastery of academic discourses rather than work towards critiquing it.
Though some scholars are open to the possibility that academic writing may repre-
sent ideological interests, they feel that these questions are irrelevant to students.
Asking questions about the underlying values and rationale for academic discourses
would only distract students from the immediate objective of becoming proficient in
this writing. Swales (1990) explains that his reason for leaving out ideological con-
siderations about academic discourse in his work ‘‘rests on a pragmatic concern to
help people, both non-native and native speakers, to develop their academic com-
municative competence’’ (p. 9). Interrogating academic knowledge is therefore con-
sidered unhelpful—i.e., perhaps of secondary interest, irrelevant to the survival
needs, and sometimes plainly beyond the linguistic and intellectual abilities of ESOL
students.3 The attitude encouraged is to orientate more towards achieving academic
success and communicative fluency, rather than developing a critical awareness of
the underlying knowledge-making processes.
Others have adopted an instrumental attitude towards academic discourse (Johns,
1990; Reid, 1989). They have argued that it is more important to do things with it
rather than reflect on it. Therefore discourse features are reduced to skills that have
to be mastered through carefully focused practice. Reid (1989) exhorts ESOL tea-
chers to ‘‘discover what will be expected in the academic contexts their students will
encounter, and they must provide their students with the writing skills and the cul-
tural information that will allow their students to perform successfully’’ (p. 232).
When discourses are treated as ‘‘skills’’ and ‘‘information’’ leading to successful
performance in the academy, students won’t have the space for asking larger ques-
tions of power and difference. They will simply receive practice in using the estab-
lished knowledge and conventions in the expected way.
But ESOL students face serious conflicts in adopting to academic discourses
uncritically. Not only do these discourses represent values that are perceived as
hegemonical and repressive by multilingual writers, they also appear to lack the
strengths and resources represented by their own knowledge traditions. Some stu-
dents want to bring to their academic communication the resources they enjoy from
their vernacular in order to enhance their writing. There are cases where these crea-
tive attempts at infusing vernacular features are appreciated for both stylistic and
ideological reasons by those in the academic community (Li, 1999). Moreover, to
treat each use of deviation from academic discourse as a sign of unproficiency or
failure is to underestimate the agency of the students. Lu (1994) relates the experi-
ence of an ESL student who uses a peculiar grammatical feature in her essay. After a
lengthy discussion Lu discovers that the student had adopted this structure after
failing to find a suitable grammatical structure in English that would express what
she really wanted to convey about a cultural feature. She had therefore used this
grammar item advisedly.

3
See, further, Benesch, 1993, for a critique of this orientation.
34 S. Canagarajah / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 29–44

3. Contrastive rhetoric: respecting boundaries

Contrastive rhetoric (CR) displays the openness to take the student’s culture ser-
iously and understand the conflicts in interacting with academic communities. It
treats the discursive deviations of the students with more tolerance and appreciation.
CR begins with the relativistic assumption that different language communities
represent different cultures and literacy practices. This would explain why multi-
lingual students may have reservations in communicating in an academic discourse
that is predominantly associated with English. They may even have problems in
understanding and using this discourse proficiently, as these students will be influ-
enced to orientate to writing through their cultural and discursive practices. This
healthy dose of relativism would prevent teachers from criticizing students for using
different conventions or thinking of academic discourses as a neutral construct that
any intelligent person should be able to adopt.
CR has produced some useful studies on the differences in the discourses of non-
native communities and English-based mainstream disciplinary communities. Scho-
lars in this tradition have undertaken their own studies on text construction, regis-
ter, and paragraph organization. After Kaplan’s initial studies on paragraph
structure, the domain of analysis has become more complex now. There are other
areas of surface structure that have been studied—i.e., development of the thesis,
cohesion and coherence, and topic development. Furthermore, whole genres like
narrative, persuasion, and argumentation have been compared (see Connor, 1996
for a review). The difference from similar studies by EAP is that CR is informed by a
relativism that treats the features of each community as motivated by their unique lin-
guistic and cultural traditions that one cannot be generalized as superior over others.
Despite this valuable contribution in understanding community differences, CR
has a troubling position on possibilities of crossing community boundaries. Some of
the original proponents of CR still hold a cultural and linguistic determinism that
considers one’s values as possibly preventing one from practicing academic dis-
courses effectively. Through the developments over three decades CR has moved
away from its extreme versions of determinism that made the early scholars argue
that multilingual students will be conditioned by their first language to be unable to
appreciate or write in other styles (Kaplan, 1966). But Kaplan still seems to hold:
‘‘different cultures have different rhetorical preferences for the organization of writ-
ten text... Contrastive rhetoric preferences not only shape written text in distinct
languages and cultures, but tend to manifest themselves consistently, if subtly, in the
writing of students learning a second language’’ (Grabe & Kaplan, 1996, p. 197).
The assumption here is that human agency cannot transcend cultural biases. Culture
expresses itself beyond one’s control when a writer is composing in a second lan-
guage. There is the additional assumption here that if features of another culture
appear in the writing of a language, it’s a case of interference rather than a creative
case of appropriation or negotiation.
Furthermore, CR displays a static and homogeneous orientation to culture. The
cultures of different communities are treated as separate and unvarying. There are
no common features or overlaps in cultures. This would be called an ‘‘essentialist’’
 S. Canagarajah / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 29–44 35

orientation by postmodern theorists. Such definitions overlook the considerable

hybridity and heterogeneity evident in each community. So, for example, theorizing
that Japanese students would write and think in a uniform way ignores the diversity
of styles one may find in the Japanese community and the changes Japanese rhetoric
has gone through in recent history (Kubota, 1999). To make matters worse, these
descriptions ignore the reality of linguistic and cultural contact–in terms of which
the discourses of a community modify, reconstitute, and borrow from other com-
munities. My studies on Sri Lankan scholars show that they shuttle ably between
local and western academic communities belonging to their field as they publish
their findings (Canagarajah, 2000). There are considerable overlaps between these
two discourses. In fact, local scholars sometimes knowingly import features of wes-
tern discourse to challenge traditional vernacular rhetoric, just as they modify the
established genres of writing with their vernacular ethos. In this age of globalization,
when we shuttle between communities and enjoy multiple memberships, it is hard
to pin down any person or community as characterized by an immutable set of
values.
Despite its rigidity in defining community identity, in a pedagogical move that
sounds theoretically inconsistent CR goes on to develop strategies for students to
write as insiders to the academic community. It is assumed that with suitable display
of textual models and sufficient practice, ESOL students can adapt to academic lit-
eracy. But, as in EAP, it is assumed that when students write to the academy they
should adopt the normative discourses of that community. Any display of the stu-
dents’ vernacular is treated as an interference (that is, a problem not a resource). In
assuming this, the different-but-equal attitude to discourses prevents CR from
addressing the underlying issues of power. Though students may feel comforted in
being asked to see diverse discourses as being true in themselves (with neither having
a greater claim to rationality), the orientation fails to appreciate that in social life
certain communities and discourses enjoy greater legitimacy and power. Students
may see a need to resist academic discourse when they sense the power it enjoys
historically, with bad previous experiences of objectifying their communities, pro-
viding them subordinate positions, and even leading to the domination of minority
cultures.
Therefore, students may feel tempted to bring in their vernacular discourses to
mediate the power of academic discourses. But CR would perceive these strategies of
mediation as an interference. I show elsewhere how a graduate student in the Uni-
versity of Jaffna brings in features that are important for her as a woman and a
Tamil speaker to infuse a more personal oral discourse in her dissertation. This is
the way she deals with the dissatisfactions she has with academic discourse as a
detached and impersonal medium of communication (Canagarajah, 1999, chapter 7).
In effect, CR ends up ignoring issues of power and hampering boundary crossing.
In this respect it is similar to the EAP approach. Disciplinary communities are pro-
tected from change, modification and democratization, with their interests and
values kept intact. They are kept safe from contact with other discourses and con-
tamination from other values. This is eventually disempowering to multilingual
students as it prevents them from engaging with the academic discourses in terms of
36 S. Canagarajah / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 29–44

their own interests and traditions. Though CR respects difference and gives dignity
to the vernacular discourses represented by the students (unlike EAP), it attempts to
contain difference within the respective communities.

4. Social process: crossing boundaries

But boundary crossing is made easy by the next school we will consider, social
process approach (SP). Informed by social constructionist thinking, scholars who
popularized this approach (from predominantly the L1 composition scene) believed
that notions of truth or knowledge are not grounded in an underlying material rea-
lity (Bruffee, 1983). From this perspective, no discursive paradigm of any group can
make a superior claim to truth. Each group constructs discourses that suit its social
practice, historical experiences, and interests. Disciplinary discourses, again, represent
both the means and end of intellectual activity. SP believes that this non-foundationalist
perspective would help prevent multilingual students from treating disciplinary dis-
courses as superior to theirs (Bizzell, 1992). After all, all discourses are ‘‘language
games,’’ providing partial and partisan views on reality. This philosophical stance is
more radical than the Sapir—Whorf anthropological underpinnings of CR which holds
that there is an underlying common reality that cultures only interpret differently.
Social process practitioners assume that a pedagogy of discourse analysis that lays
bare the assumptions and features constituting the discourse of the academic com-
munity would take the sting off its power and provide access to those outside the
group. Having thus demythologized the conventions of the academic community,
social process scholars believe that teachers can encourage their students to shuttle
between their vernacular community and the disciplinary audience without conflict.
As one of the leading proponents puts it:

Conventions that are common in the society could be used as bridges between
different discourse communities—for example, to ease the transition into the
academic discourse community for students who come from discourse commu-
nities far removed from it. Through discourse analysis we might offer them an
understanding of their school difficulties as the problems of a traveler to an
unfamiliar country—yet a country in which it is possible to learn the language
and the manners and even ‘‘go native’’ while still remembering the land from
which one has come. (Bizzell, 1982, p. 218, p. 238)

Apart from discourse analysis, students are also encouraged to engage in group
activities of debating, reasoning, and analyzing disciplinary subjects (Bruffee, 1983;
Rose, 1989). This way, students simulate the activity of the disciplinary communities
in constructing the discourses that they agree to uphold in an effort to encode their
world view and maintain their identity.
This school thus goes beyond the determinism of CR by arguing that there are
common values between even conflicting discourses that can be used to move across
community boundaries. In assuming that students can move across communities, SP
 S. Canagarajah / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 29–44 37

acknowledges the dynamic nature of interpersonal interactions where subjects do

enjoy multiple community memberships in social life. SP proponents also assume
that one doesn’t have to lose one’s primary community membership or identity
while interacting as an insider in a different community. Borrowing constructs from
sociolinguists like Basil Bernstein and Dell Hymes, these scholars assume that such
movement across communities is part of socialization for all of us. After being born
in a primary discourse community constituted by family or ethnicity, we move on to
secondary discourse communities like nation, school, and other institutions. That
subjects always move between different communities is a more flexible attitude
compared to the EAP and CR assumptions that make boundary-crossing difficult
and define communities as exclusive in membership.
Yet, in attempting to practice this model in a writing course for African–American
students in an American university, I faced significant problems (Canagarajah,
1997). Despite the demythologization of discourses, minority students find it hard to
accept the liberal position that discourses are of equal power simply because they are
non-foundational. Students sense that certain discourses enjoy more power in social
life, and that they are antithetical to the interests of their vernacular communities.
Though the discourses themselves don’t have greater claim for truth, social and
material power are used to impose one group’s discourses over others. So using the
academic discourses—albeit with some critical detachment—would still give life and
power to their dominant status. Furthermore, students are uncomfortable with
representing their identities through academic discourses. They see that they are
adopting voices and subjectivities that they abhor, and have been trained historically
to suspect or resist. In effect, SP simplifies power. Considering power in purely dis-
cursive terms and not considering their material and historical underpinnings has led
to romanticized views of egalitarianism in deconstructionist and postmodern circles.
The notion that students have to ‘‘go native’’ in the academic community is also not
far-reaching. Like EAP and CR, this attitude is informed by the assumption that the
discourses of communities are somewhat homogeneous and discrete. When one
moves into a community, one has to leave back other discourses and identities. One can
only enjoy one community membership at a time. This sounds too restrictive at a time
when hybrid identities of subjects and the decentered status of communities are
taken for granted. What my students seemed to want was to take their identities, values,
and interests with them as they communicate in the academy. It appeared to me
(although they didn’t articulate it explicitly) that students would like to creatively
complicate the academic discourse by adopting a ‘‘multivocal’’ approach that fuses their
native discourses with the conventions valued by the academy (Canagarajah, 1997).

5. Transculturation model: merging boundaries

Such a perspective gains a lot of respect in the postmodern culture where identities
and discourses are not perceived in dichotomous terms. All subjects claim mixed iden-
tities. Similarly, the discourses and texts of each community show considerable fusion
deriving from their long histories of contact with other genres of communication. It is
38 S. Canagarajah / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 29–44

possible then for students not to use academic discourses in the academy’s terms,
but to construct mixed discourses and identities that take their own interests into
account. Such communicative acts may serve to broaden academic discourses and
make them more inclusive.
Vivian Zamel (1996, 1997) has recently proposed a model of transculturation
(TM) in L2 circles to theorize that moving between discourse communities is quite
natural for students who enjoy multicultural backgrounds. Zamel considers it pos-
sible for multilingual students to mix discourses and merge discourse boundaries.
This may give birth to multivocal texts that display mixed genres of writing. Stu-
dents may mix their vernacular discourses with textual conventions from dominant
communities to produce such novel and creative writing. In fact, Zamel is of the
opinion that to define academic discourses and textualities in a discrete manner is
misleading. There is considerable overlap in disciplinary discourses and plurality
within communities that she considers it a deterministic and stereotypical activity to
pin down disciplinary discourses in a homogeneous manner.
Her position is motivated by the postmodernist notion that essentialization, clas-
sification, and categorization of any kind is rigid and deterministic. The identity of
communities and students is so fluid that there is nothing to prevent one from
moving freely between boundaries. Using terms like ‘‘transcending boundaries’’ and
‘‘transculturation model,’’ she argues that academic discourses are so heterogeneous
and ESOL student cultures so diverse that many different outcomes are possible.
She finds this orientation providing ample space for student agency. Students don’t
have to be restricted by their native linguistic or cultural backgrounds, or the
exclusionary practices of dominant groups, in their communicative life.
TM thus adopts a more complex orientation to communities and discourses than
the previously discussed approaches. We might say that whereas CR and EAP warn
students to respect boundaries, and SP allows a careful crossing of boundaries, TM
encourages an unceremonious merging of boundaries. Thus borders are made por-
ous. And TM permits one a life in multiple communities simultaneously. Further-
more, while the other schools make the process of shuttling between communities
somewhat difficult, TM makes it very easy. But the question remains whether this
process is made too easy? It appears that the model attempts to erase difference and
nullify power. The oft repeated prefix ‘‘trans’’ in Zamel’s theorization raises suspi-
cions about the eventual direction. It is made to appear that this movement between
communities is unrestricted and unhindered (except perhaps by ill-advised teachers).
Postmodern discourses of splintered identities and fluid boundaries are exaggerated
to simplify the reality of power. Also, these discourses are used to remove subjects
from their specific location in society and history. What is lacking is a critical
orientation to this boundary crossing process.
Despite trends of postmodern fusion and hybridity, minority communities still
occupy marginalized status in society, their discourses don’t constitute cultural
capital, and stereotypes are imposed on them to exert domination. More impor-
tantly, they cannot move outside discourses and cultures to achieve a neutral, free
position as the prefix ‘‘trans’’ may suggest to some. Students do have to struggle
against the imposition of negative identities and statuses in order to achieve a space
 S. Canagarajah / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 29–44 39

of advantage for themselves in academic discourse. Multilingual students’ struggle

for voice is more ‘‘counter’’ discursive rather than ‘‘trans’’ discursive. Aware of their
location in society and history, they engage with the dominant communities criti-
cally to make a space for their interests. Acceptance into other communities is not
guaranteed.
There are different strands of research that warn us not to take too far the post-
modern fascination with eradicating power and accommodating difference in scho-
larly literacy practices. The academic community adopts strict gate-keeping
practices in the publication of papers in the leading research journals. We know that
reviewers and editors don’t show much tolerance towards divergence from standard
discourses in the field. Even variations in dialect in English articles are treated as
errors, leading to the rejection of submissions from periphery writers (Canagarajah,
forthcoming). Others who have attempted to publish critical perspectives on domi-
nant constructs testify to facing considerable resistance from the academic commu-
nity. Bazerman’s (1987) chronicling of the growth of the APA Publication Manual
from six and a half pages in 1929 to 200 pages in 1983 indicates how the policies and
requirements of journals have become tighter. If at all, the conventions and rules of
academic writing are becoming more micro-managed, not opened up for fluid genres
and discursive play.
Though there is a plurality of discourses that characterize a field at any given time,
the range of accommodated discourses still complement the dominant ideologies and
suit the interests of the dominant members (see Bahri, 1997). Furthermore, however
fashionable notions of hybridity and plurality may be, there is still a glaring inequality
in the demography of scholars publishing in mainstream academic journals. Scholars
from periphery academic communities, especially from non-English backgrounds, are
poorly represented in many fields (Swales, 1990; Canagarajah, 1996). We must keep in
mind Geisler’s (1994) recent studies on how academic literacies are implicated in the
vested interests of professional classes which provide the rationale for the formation of
the academy in the United States.

6. Contact zones perspective: appropriating boundaries

A perspective on academy that takes into account the struggles and conflicts in
negotiating power while retaining the agency of writers to cross boundaries is Mary
Louise Pratt’s notion of contact zones (CZ). Pratt (1991) considers the postcolonial
world as constituting many domains of cultural and ideological contact of diverse
social groups, giving rise to new genres of literacies and communication. Thus the
academy is by definition a meeting point of disparate discourses. Though Pratt
adopts a postcolonial orientation that is congenial to the hybridity of subjects and
fluidity of discourses of TM, she defines the academy as ‘‘social spaces where cul-
tures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymme-
trical relations of power’’ (1991, p. 34). The cultural contact here takes place under
unequal power relationships. Thus Pratt reminds us that heterogeneity shouldn’t be
taken to mean that the academy is an egalitarian domain.
40 S. Canagarajah / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 29–44

Though CZ is sympathetic to concerns of writerly agency and the possibility of

negotiating new academic genres of writing, CZ emphasizes that these possibilities
come about through a critical negotiation with dominant conventions. They are not
available automatically, by virtue of discourses and subjects being plurally con-
structed or because of the dominant multiculturalist discourse evident in mainstream
society.4 Because of the unequal relationship, multilingual writers have to adopt
many subtle and creative strategies of communication to construct their opposi-
tional forms of knowledge and discourses. Students shouldn’t be satisfied with just
switching discourses as Bizzell argues, or fusing discourses as Zamel encourages, but
appropriating dominant discourses according their interests and values in order to
gain voice. Through discursive struggle, students adopt creative strategies to reshape
academic conventions to represent their interests and values. As dominant dis-
courses are taken over by the students, new genres and literacies are born. Auto-
ethnography, transculturation, critique, collaboration, bilingualism, mediation,
parody, denunciation, imaginary dialogue, and vernacular expression are among the
few genres Pratt lists.
I can illustrate such a writing practice through an interesting research in ESOL
writing done from a feminist perspective. In a case study of a Chinese and a Japa-
nese female graduate student writing their dissertations, Belcher (1997) shows how
they produced embedded forms of argumentation in otherwise narrative texts in
order to gently and tactfully challenge the biases of their faculty advisors (and, in
effect, the dominant discourses in their field). This writing strategy derives from a
community-based and gender-influenced desire to show respect, understanding, and
co-operative engagement in dialogue, different from the agonistic forms of argu-
mentation associated typically with males. The female graduate students infuse the
academic text with a more relaxed, empathetic, involved prose that introduces an
oppositional voice in the academic discourse. Despite the risks involved in antag-
onizing their thesis committee with their ‘‘deviant’’ conventions and losing their
degrees, the students manage to evoke respect for their writing.
Belcher in fact takes this example a step further to argue that these alternate
modes of argumentation and reasoning are a healthy corrective to the established
identities in academic discourse. She relates how mainstream scholars are themselves
reconsidering the place of adversarial modes of argumentation and identities which
are not conducive to generating meaningful dialogue or cultivating ethical relations
in intellectual conversations. The value of the critical voice emerging through stra-
tegies of textual appropriation is that it creatively challenges the established ideolo-
gies and subjectivities in the academic community. This is a good example of the fact
that accommodating new voices enables change, reform, and progress in the dis-
courses of that community. A community that insists on new members participating
4
Many other theoretical orientations complement CZ by challenging the easy multiculturalism evident
in contemporary scholarly discourse. Scholars in the field of critical race theory and feminism resist what
they see as the complacency of multiculturalism which has prevented people from confronting subtle
forms of racism that are still present in social institutions (Prendergast, 1998; Hooks, 1989; Kubota,
1999). They emphasize a reflexive attitude of confronting racism in one’s subjectivity and a keener
awareness of the historical and material context or domination.
 S. Canagarajah / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 29–44 41

only on its own terms is denied these advantages. It reproduces the same discourses
through time and eventually may ossify.
What teachers have to attempt is to get students to engage with the academy, not
necessarily be inducted into it. It is not crossing over into the academy but shuttling
between communities that might be ideologically desirable for students. Students
then shouldn’t give up their own experiences, values, and interests as they engage
with academic discourse. In fact, the relative detachment they enjoy as members of
vernacular communities is good for this purpose of appropriation. While engaging
with academic scholars, texts, and activities, they should do so with the conscious-
ness that they are partial outsiders. They don’t have to become insiders in the sense
that they fully ‘‘go native’’ in the academic community (as spelt out by Bizzell). As
Bartholomae and Petrosky (1986) point out in their reading/writing pedagogy, there
is an advantage in students maintaining their outsider status. The resulting dis-
cursive tension provides a critical detachment towards the academic community that
can lead to creative text construction.
Prior (1998) theorizes how members may participate in the specific discursive
activities of the community with the full consciousness of their histories–i.e., their
experiences, values, identities. It is in this way that they can adopt a relative
detachment towards the academic discourses, critique them, and develop new per-
spectives. How does the native (or primary) discourse of the member play a role in
his/her orientation to the academic discourse? Adopting terminology from Bakhtin,
Prior argues that this may happen by a process of lamination, where the authoritative
discourse of the institution (and faculty members) merges with the internally persua-
sive discourse of the student. Both may exist in parallel for some time (or even in a
state of tension), before they begin to inch towards each other with subtle symbiotic
modifications.
Prior shows through his ethnographies on graduate students how their experiences
and relationships outside the academy contribute to appreciating the positions pre-
sented by their professors. There are some points on which the students’ positions
don’t correspond to that of the experts in the discipline. Through time and constant
negotiation between the advisor and student, both move towards a position that
satisfies both of them while leaving their original positions slightly altered. Thus the
authoritative discourse of the expert gradually becomes the internally persuasive
discourse of the student, just as the former itself slightly changes in light of the new
experiences introduced by the student. This is a creative and critical orientation to
literacy. By bringing their own histories into their writing projects students are
empowered, not paralyzed or confused. Therefore students have to make a sincere
attempt to engage with academic members and infuse their insights into the
authoritative discourse.5

5
In employing Bakhtin’s constructs to explain this process of lamination, Prior also sets right some
misuses of postmodernist thinking to suit a free-floating scenario of discourses which one can adopt at
will. A more careful orientation to Bakhtin shows that he is indeed situating discourses in socio-historic
context and emphasizes the process of struggle with which subjects represent meanings through language.
42 S. Canagarajah / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 29–44

7. Conclusion

The distinctions I have been making in the orientation of many popular con-
temporary pedagogical approaches to community membership shouldn’t be taken to
mean that I don’t see any value in the models I criticize. First of all, it is the
advances made by each respective approach in insights into academic literacy which
have made us progress to a more sophisticated understanding of the disciplinary
communities and the challenges for multilingual writers. Furthermore, collectively,
each of the schools contributes diverse tools and pedagogical practices to help
practice academic writing with greater effectiveness.
For example, even scholars in critical writing approaches use the descriptions of
disciplinary discourses by EAP in their pedagogy. These descriptions enable them to
understand the conventions and rules that serve to maintain the power of the
dominant academic circles. These descriptions help to demystify the power of the
academy by opening up for analysis their in-group codes and conventions which
others have to contend with if they want to make a claim for insider status. Simi-
larly, CR has made fine-grained linguistic and textual descriptions of the differences
in the practices of disciplinary communities and non-western communities that cri-
tical scholars use in order to anticipate some of the challenges for students as they
teach academic writing.
While EAP and CR make empirical contributions, the other models sharpen the
theoretical orientation relating to multilingual students. SP and TM provide a space
for agency. They provide a useful insight into the possibilities available for students
to move across and between discourse boundaries. The sociolinguistic and post-
modernist orientations provide a more complex perspective on identity and construct
sophisticated tools of discourse analysis that are useful for critical practitioners.
Therefore, each of these schools contributes to a richer pedagogical practice as we
orientate multilingual students to academic writing. In fact, it is not impossible to
adopt these pedagogical and textual insights in the service of critical academic writing,
even though leading proponents of some of these schools have distanced themselves
from critical pedagogy.

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