ABSTRACT
The political and ideological discussions that emerged surrounding L2 writing research from 1980 to 2005 centered essentially on the hegemony of English (and its current academic writing preferences) and on the role of a critical perspective in L2 writing instruction. During the 1980s L2 writing’s political and ideological agenda focused on advocacy for L2 English learners, often in face of institutional and educational policies detrimental to L2 learners (Benesch, 1988; Edelsky, 1996; Smoke, 1998) and often, responding to immediate inequities, with a practical more than theoretical orientation. During this time as well, applied linguists showed signs of interest in exploring the nefarious aspects of the spread of English language worldwide (Fairclough, 1989, 1995; Phillipson, 1992; Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000; Swales, 1997). But pointed disciplinary discussion of the ideological aspects of teaching L2 English writing was sparked by two publications in the early 1990s. The first was an article by Terry Santos (1992) in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Second Language Writing. Santos made the argument that the L2 writing field had not become as overtly ideological as its L1 English counterpart for two primary reasons. First, unlike L1 English, the roots of L2 English in North America were not in the humanities, with literature, but in the social sciences, with linguistics and applied linguistics. This historical disciplinary allegiance resulted in a bias in favor of empirical rather than hermeneutical research and a more practical, less theoretical collective turn of mind, all tending to nudge the field away from more ideological considerations. The second influence on L2 writing was the conservatizing effect of its international clientele and focus. Sensitivity to the practices and values of other cultures made English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teachers reluctant to take on classroom roles that might seem to impose U.S. or Western practices and values, including a focus on ideological and
political questions. Furthermore, burning ideological issues in the US, for instance, may simply be irrelevant to many internationals. In addition, in some cases for those teaching abroad, discussion of ideological issues may have carried social sanctions or even security risks that were not worth taking, either for the teachers or for their students. About the same time Suresh Canagarajah published a short article (1993b) calling for promotion of local knowledge in face of the hegemony of L2 academic writing in English.
