ABSTRACT
The emergence of the so-called social turn (Block, 2003) in second language research over the past 20 years has been accompanied by an increased focus on language learning as a social process and an emphasis on the contexts of learning (e.g., Ortega, 2012; K. Richards, 2009; Swain & Deters, 2007; TESOL, 2014). The field of L2 writing has seen a corresponding rise in the number of studies using theoretical frameworks such as second language socialization (Duff, 2010), sociocultural theory (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), activity theory (Engeström, 2015; Leontiev, 1981), community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), biliteracy (Hornberger, 1989), new literacy studies (Gee, 2012; Street, 1995), and identity theories (Ivanič, 1998; Norton & McKinney, 2011) that view writing as situated within multiple overlapping social and political contexts and emphasize co-construction of knowledge. As the field has shifted from a purely cognitive focus to encompass more socially oriented frameworks and from a concentration on texts to the con-texts in which writing is taught, learned, and produced, ethnographic and case study research on L2 writing has expanded from a handful of exemplars in the 1990s (e.g., Atkinson & Ramanathan, 1995; Carson & Nelson, 1996; Cumming, 1992; Prior, 1995; Spack, 1997) to become increasingly evident in applied linguistics and L2 writing journals (see Table 4.1 ).
