ABSTRACT
My purpose in this chapter is to show that knowledge production is a social endeavor and takes place within discourse communities which form to exchange and promote specific knowledge. I focus on the issue of discourse and its use in disciplinary communities, and argue that the writers’ rhetorical choices stem from their idiosyncratic ideas, thoughts and experiences on one hand and the conventions of the discipline on the other. I support this approach through selected social constructionist perspectives which conceive of written discourse as a product of text, interaction and context where language is a resource for negotiating meaning and driving change. From this perspective, I draw a parallel between leadership and the processes and considerations involved in scholarly text production. In so doing, I extend the notion of leadership to include the writer's management of their communication with the reader arguing that effective communication comes about when both parties are recognized as co-constructors of meaning in a specific socio-cultural and disciplinary context.
