Defining academic literacies research: issues of epistemology, ideology and strategy

Lillis, Theresa and Scott, Mary (2007). Defining academic literacies research: issues of epistemology, ideology and strategy. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4(1) pp. 5–32.

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Abstract

Academic literacies research has developed over the past 20 years as a significant field of study that draws on a number of disciplinary fields and subfields such as applied linguistics and sociolinguistics, anthropology, sociocultural theories of learning, new literacy studies and discourse studies. Whilst there is fluidity and even confusion surrounding the use of the term ‘academic literacies’, we argue in this paper that it is a field of enquiry with a specific epistemological and ideological stance towards the study of academic communication and particularly, to date, writing. To define this field we situate the emergence of academic literacies research within a specific historical moment in higher education and offer an overview of the questions that the research has set out to explore. We consider debates surrounding the uses of the singular or plural forms, academic literacy/ies, and, given its position at the juncture of research/theory building and application, we acknowledge the need for strategic as well as epistemological and ideological understandings of its uses. We conclude by summarising the methodological and theoretical orientations that have developed as ‘academic literacies’, conceptualised as a field of inquiry, has expanded, and we point to areas that merit further theoretical consideration and empirical research.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Copyright Holders:	2008 Equinox Publishing
ISSN:	1479-7887
Academic Unit/Department:	Education and Language Studies > Centre for Language and Communication
Interdisciplinary Research Centre:	Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology (CREET)
Item ID:	17057
Depositing User:	Wendy Hunt
Date Deposited:	04 Aug 2009 09:03
Last Modified:	02 Jan 2014 21:35
URI:	http://oro.open.ac.uk/id/eprint/17057

 

 

Work like you don't need money
Love like you've never been hurt
and dance like no-one's watching

 

"Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation

into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the

means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality  and discover how to participate

in the transformation of their world." Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

 

Work like you don't need money
Love like you've never been hurt
and dance like no-one's watching

 

"Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation

into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the

means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality  and discover how to participate

in the transformation of their world." Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)