ABSTRACT
We do not think of academic (or scholarly) writing and reading as being strongly affected by context, or, rather , we think of such endeavour as being set within well-defined conventions. It is often taken as lying at a pole opposite that of casual conversation - as maximally unsituated, impersonal in its appeals, and hence as the prototype of literacy (as opposed to orality) or text (as opposed to utterance). While academic discourse typically does not rely on particular personal knowledge (or 'presence') between writer and reader to make its case or to guide interpretation, much academic discourse addresses an audience of experts and concems a topic which is timely to that audience in a way non-experts can only guess at. I will use the term insider to refer to experts (players), but also to other members of a disciplinary discourse community who might be conceived of as avid fans - readers who keep track of the state of the discipline in order to report it in lectures, refer to it in publications, and gossip about it in coffee rooms, conferences, and cocktail parties. 'Insiders' thus include both the esoteric and the exoteric audiences for an academic/scientific article described by Greg Myers - both the immediate circle of fellow researchers and the more disinterested disciplinary audience (Myers 1989a). Both of these audiences are insiders, as distinct from the audiences for textbooks or popularized (Scientific AmericanlAmerican Scholar) writing.
