Metropolitan writing practices in a local context : a Southern theory-informed critical discourse analysis of knowledge production and dissemination in the discipline of second language writing in Thailand

Abstract

The dominance of metropolitan academic writing practices has been examined in many studies in various fields. However, the focus of these studies seems to be on journals published by publishers based in the Global North, defined in this study as the U.S. and European countries (Dados and Connell, 2012). This dissertation shifts the focus from Anglophone-based artefacts and contexts to academic journals and textbooks produced in Thailand, a country located in the Global South, a term referring to countries located outside North America and Europe. It is aimed at exploring the extent to which periphery scholars conform to or deviate from metropolitan writing practices, while also attempting to account for such conformity and/or deviation. To achieve these goals, two sets of data consisting of 34 academic articles in PASAA, a local non-Anglophone academic journal, and 6 locally-produced college-level English writing textbooks were examined using the integrated southern theory-informed critical discourse analysis. The analysis involved quantitative analysis and deductive coding procedures to identify the presence and absence of writing practices which have been found to be characteristic of metropolitan writing practices, including claim of universality, reading from the center, metropolitan conventions of scholarly writing, the use of the English language, and the employment of Anglophone-based cultural content. Further, to account for the authors’ choices to either conform to or deviate from such writing practices, the three layers of critical discourse analysis—that is, text analysis, discursive practices, and sociocultural practices—were examined. As an interdisciplinary project, text analysis included close reading, which is a hallmark practice in the humanities, and transitivity analysis, which is a common text analysis in the social sciences. Data regarding discursive and sociocultural practices were collected from document research; surveys; academic public talks; and interviews with an academic journal editor, two journal reviewers, and two experts on genre studies. The analysis reveals that, despite evidence of conformity, writing practices of scholars publishing in local venues also seem to deviate from the metropolitan conventions in varying degrees, which could be ascribed to particular rhetorical situations and the influences of American ideologies (particularly, the culture of publish or perish and capitalism) that seem to be backfiring. Based on the findings, this dissertation argues that in contrast to previous literature pointing to a rather total domination of metropolitan writing practices in academic knowledge production and dissemination, other alternative writing practices in fact can find a footing in locally-produced journal articles and textbooks, meaning that there is still space and hope for nonmetropolitan writing practices to thrive. This understanding is important because it could help raise the status of local journals and textbooks, from being ascribed of as low quality and of less value, to be ones that could provide space for scholars in the Global South to express their identities and creativities, and to some extent to challenge the Anglophone dominance, in order to create a more democratic knowledge production and dissemination. Moreover, for this challenge to be sustainable, editors, reviewers, and writers should work in tandem; that is, editors and reviewers might consider being more generous to alternative writing practices, and researchers should also prioritize their local audience and be aware of the ideologies that are working their writing practices.