ABSTRACT
Existing theories of LA writing have not given adequate consideration to contexts outside English-speaking countries, non-English languages used during the students’ composition processes, and non-literary genres in their literacy experience. Furthermore, existing LA writing-based studies tend to be politically motivated to challenge prevalent views of language and literacy in North American institutions of higher education. In contrast, the pedagogical and epistemological roles of LA writing in the EFL context remain less theorized. Chapter 3 addresses this gap by linking LA writing with critical pedagogy. The argument contains four premises: (1) LA writing should be studied ecologically; (2) a writer’s LA composition process is informed and mediated by an evolving and expansive cultural, linguistic, and genre repertoire; (3) LA writers can exercise their agency by sharing preferred stories and identities; and (4) LA writing may contribute to the decolonization of thinking and epistemology by allowing the writers to wrestle with hegemonic relations and imbalanced cultural dynamics and to form, through negotiation, their own dialogical voices from a Global South perspective.
