A shift from handmaidens to enlightened waiters


Viewed in the spirit of Benesch’s (2001) call for the questioning of the status quo in the name of social justice, I have found it helpful to regard this interdisciplinarity more as a form of ‘critical trans-disciplinarity’, which can be seen as an entire or partial rejection of the constrictions of traditional disciplinarity, whilst raising questions of social justice (Vickers, 1997). This term might be seen as reflecting an ‘all hands on deck’ approach to tackling complex social issues, a view reinforced by the call for more recognition of ‘socially robust … lay perspectives and alternative knowledges’ to dismantle the traditional expert/lay dichotomy and promote new partnerships between the academy and society (Klein, 2010). As transformative practitioners, EAP practitioners have an opportunity to participate in, and even spearhead, such processes.


FINAL THOUGHTS


If we embrace the analogy of the enlightened waiter and exercise a degree of agency in defining our own roles in the hidden third spaces of the neo-liberal university, the figurative and often also literal placement of many in our profession in the borderlands between professional services and academia can be not merely something to be begrudgingly tolerated, but can become one of our greatest assets. Should we choose to use our peripheral positions to support those also on the periphery (such as forced migrants) to gain access to HE, we not only answer Benesch’s (2001) call to action in the name of social justice, but also, through shifting our gaze from our own positions onto using our skills to assist others to move inwards from the periphery, inadvertently reaffirm the value of our own position on boundaries.


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REFERENCES


Benesch, S. (2001) Critical English for Academic Purposes: Theory, politics and practice. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Charles, M., & Pecorari, D. (2015). Introducing English for Academic Purposes. Routledge. Ding, A., & Bruce, I. (2017). The English for Academic Purposes practitioner: Operating on the edge of academia. Palgrave Macmillan.


Hadley, G. (2015). English for Academic Purposes in neo-liberal universities: A critical grounded theory. Springer. Harwood, N. (2019, April). Is everything rosy in the EAP garden? Points to ponder from a study of proof-readers of student writing. Keynote address at the BALEAP Conference, Leeds, UK.


Hyland, K. (2006). The “other” English: Thoughts on EAP and academic writing. The European English Messenger, 15(2), 34–38. Hyland, K. (2018). Sympathy for the devil? A defence of EAP. Language Teaching, 51(3), 383–399.


Hyland, K., & Hamp-Lyons, L. (2002). EAP: Issues and directions. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 1(1), 1–12.


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