Practitioner Agency and Identity in English for Academic Purposes

This volume provides insights into EAP practitioners’ identity and agency in varied contexts and field positions. Each chapter delves into a theoretical perspective (Bourdieu's field theory, Post-humanism, Legitimation Code Theory, Symbolic Interactionism..), and a variety of methodologies, enabling different questions to be explored. Each chapter is also a window into the everyday life of practitioners as they navigate their professional lives, and the specificities of their EAP contexts, the politics and struggles over power, domination, legitimacy, status, ambition and recognition. The authors’ concerns and strategies vary and show that the weight of powerful structures and collective habitus is difficult - but not impossible- to resist. From a socio-analysis of EAP and its narratives of origins, to a discussion on Ethics in EAP and a critique of the Global South label, the reader will explore contributions from Canada, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, the UK, and Zimbabwe. The chapters reveal a field which is made up of a constellation of worlds, each with its own logic but importantly, a field with no centre. The studies in the chapters are likely to intrigue, inspire, but also disrupt some readers’ expectations and challenge their assumptions about the field and its practitioners.

Alex Ding is Associate Professor of English for Academic Purposes and Director of Scholarship at the University of Leeds, UK.

Laetitia Monbec is Lecturer in the Centre for English Language and Communication at the National University of Singapore, Singapore.

Melinda Whong is Associate Professor of Language Education, and Director of the Center for Language Education at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong.

Ian Bruce is Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.