Dialogic Appropriation in Academic English Literacy and Pedagogy: Transnational and Translingual Praxis

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay presents a decade-long reflective account of resisting (in) and appropriating English that I have experienced as a young, female academic from the Middle East who has been engaged in teaching and researching Academic English pedagogy transnationally. Informed by Bakhtin’s philosophy of dialogue and his notions of insided-ness, outsided-ness and in-between-ness, I highlight the ideological complexities associated with teaching (in) English in both Anglophone and non-Anglophone contexts. I unpack these complexities through diverse scenarios where the tension between ‘Internally Persuasive Discourse’ and ‘Authoritative Discourse’ of English was evident. I propose an alternative curriculum, namely English for Dialogic Purposes as a rich way of appropriating in English and for the English-dominated discourse of academia to allow for polyphony of voices and boundary learning, vital for the multicultural and plurilingual world of education.