Lucia Thesen - Böcker

This book is an analysis of student literacy in an academic setting, and how this has changed due to political, economic and social factors. The contributors, who are all engaged in academic literacy work at a South African university, use the theoretical tradition of New Literacy Studies as developed by theorists such as James Gee, Brian Street and Gnnther Kress, and apply this to a case study of one university in the changing context of South Africa. Academic Literacy and the Languages of Change will be of interest to postgraduates and academics researching sociolinguistics, or language and education.

This title offers an analysis of student literacy in an academic setting in South Africa, and how this has changed due to political, economic and social factors. This book is an analysis of student literacy in an academic setting, and how this has changed due to political, economic and social factors. The contributors, who are all engaged in academic literacy work at a South African university, use the theoretical tradition of New Literacy Studies as developed by theorists such as James Gee, Brian Street and Gunther Kress, and apply this to a case study of one university in the changing context of South Africa. The context demands an extension of this theory in new directions, as the theoretical assumptions governing Anglophone, 'mainstream' traditions may limit insights into academic literacy settings on the margins of these traditions. The book probes some of these limitations by looking at the complex interactions taking place between students' diverse language and educational histories, their literacy practices, institutional discourses, and the many modes involved in engaging with texts.Language is central to all these interactions, and the book considers how they reflect or potentially change the institution.

This book brings together a variety of voices – students and teachers, journal editors and authors, writers from the global north and south – to interrogate the notion of risk as it applies to the production of academic writing. Risk-taking is viewed as a productive force in teaching, learning and writing, and one that can be used to challenge the silences and erasures inherent in academic tradition and convention. Widening participation and the internationalisation of higher education make questions of language, register, agency and identity in postgraduate writing all the more pressing, and this book offers a powerful argument against the further reinforcement of a ‘northern’ Anglophone understanding of knowledge and its production and dissemination. This volume will provide food-for-thought for postgraduate students and their supervisors everywhere.

This book brings together a variety of voices – students and teachers, journal editors and authors, writers from the global north and south – to interrogate the notion of risk as it applies to the production of academic writing. Risk-taking is viewed as a productive force in teaching, learning and writing, and one that can be used to challenge the silences and erasures inherent in academic tradition and convention. Widening participation and the internationalisation of higher education make questions of language, register, agency and identity in postgraduate writing all the more pressing, and this book offers a powerful argument against the further reinforcement of a ‘northern’ Anglophone understanding of knowledge and its production and dissemination. This volume will provide food-for-thought for postgraduate students and their supervisors everywhere.

This book seeks to disrupt the narrative about the process of academic writing and the written products which are currently valued in the university by juxtaposing the messiness and deletions of the writing process with the hegemonic imaginary of what research writing should look like. The author uses writing as both a subject and a method of enquiry in an ethnographic deep dive into her long-term engagement with a postgraduate writers' circle in an elite South African university. The book engages with growing global interest in the geopolitics of research writing and its relationship to patterns of epistemic privilege, drawing on current work on decolonising knowledge production. It opens a space to widen and deepen how we imagine the relationship between writing and knowledge-making.

This book seeks to disrupt the narrative about the process of academic writing and the written products which are currently valued in the university by juxtaposing the messiness and deletions of the writing process with the hegemonic imaginary of what research writing should look like. The author uses writing as both a subject and a method of enquiry in an ethnographic deep dive into her long-term engagement with a postgraduate writers' circle in an elite South African university. The book engages with growing global interest in the geopolitics of research writing and its relationship to patterns of epistemic privilege, drawing on current work on decolonising knowledge production. It opens a space to widen and deepen how we imagine the relationship between writing and knowledge-making.