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Book reviews / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 10 (2011) 61e69

Review of: Academic writing in a global context: The politics and practices of publishing in English, Theresa Lillis and Mary Jane Curry. London and New York: Routledge, (2010) (pp. 203), ISBN 9780415468831. 18.25/US$44.95 (paperback). Theresa Lillis and Mary Jane Currys book is a welcome addition to the growing body of research into the dominance of English as the language of academic writing for publication. Drawing on their eight-year longitudinal research project on the academic writing experiences and practices of 50 multilingual scholars, Academic Writing in a Global Context examines the impact of the global status of English on their lives. Using a text-oriented ethnographic approach to examine the nature of these scholars writing experiences Lillis and Curry contribute much to our understanding of text production and knowledge-making practices in a global world in this highly engaging book. Informed by the works of Jan Blommaert, Pierre Bourdieu, Suresh Canagarajah, Roz Ivanic and John Swales, among others, Academic Writing in a Global Context critically examines the politics of text production, exchange, and evaluation across national and transnational boundaries. It also critically evaluates approaches which focus too closely on academic writing as individual competence rather than the result of networked activity (Casanave, 1998) and argues for the need to decentre academic text production and [text] evaluation practices which will benet scholars globally (p. 155). The book has been divided into seven chapters, each of which includes a description of the specic methodological tool used to examine the central issues in the chapter, a number of proles of the scholars to illustrate these issues, and valuable suggestions for further reading. The rst four chapters are necessarily more descriptive in nature as they introduce the background against which the remainingdmore polemicaldchapters have been written. Whilst the discussions in chapters 1 to 4 explore differences and diversities across the communities and networks presented in the book, those in chapters 5 to 7 focus on ideologies, knowledge and power. This arrangement has given the book a exibility not often found in books of this type. As the authors themselves suggest, readers can start by delving into the debates about the larger picture presented in the last three chapters or by acquainting themselves with the background and detail introduced in the rst four. Chapter 1,"English and the politics of academic knowledge production, sets the scene for the rest of the chapters in the book. It examines central issues in the production of texts for publication such as the geopolitical location of texts, producers and language, with specic reference to four national sites (Hungary, Slovakia, Spain and Portugal) as examples of centre contexts which are also peripheral in a number of ways (p. 5) although these issues could very easily apply to other sites such as Latin-American countries. Central to the discussions presented in this chapter are the global position of English as the language of academic publication, the privileged status in the academy of the journal article, the impact factor of journals, and the Institute of Scientic Information (ISI) index, all of which inuence academic text production and knowledge creation. Writing for publication in a globalized world is the title of Chapter 2. This chapter presents a critical and detailed examination of what is at stake for multilingual scholars who live and work outside the Anglo-centre. The chapter examines the complexities of scholars having to write in English, the communities they write for, and the decisions they are faced with about writing nationally and/or transnationally, together with the factors that inuence these decisions: systems of regulations and rewards and the central role of English in funded research projects. Chapter 3, Mobilizing resources for text production, academic research networks, has two main aims: to problematize the emphasis in certain approaches on writing as individual competence, and to illustrate how the success in English-medium publishing of these scholars largely depends on networked activity. Lillis and Curry open up the chapter with a critical analysis of approaches to researching and teaching writing that see it as individual performance rather than a process that relies on the collaboration of a range of people" (p. 63). Against this argument and based on their observations of the writing practices of the participating scholars, the authors demonstrate how multilingual scholars are able to access crucial material as well as linguistic and rhetorical resources needed for publishing in English through national and transnational networks that include colleagues, mentors, and brokers. This examination paves the way for chapter 4: Texts and literacy brokers". As its title suggests, this chapter examines the wide variety of brokering activities involved in academic text production and publishing. Throughout the chapter, the authors analyse different kinds of interventions by people other than the authors of texts such as professional language brokers, proofreaders, journal reviewers, to mention just a few, but specically focus on what they call language brokers (e.g. translators, proofreaders) and academic brokers (e.g. colleagues, journal editors). Lillis and Curry demonstrate how these interventions, which are more frequent in texts written for international journals that publish in English only, impact not only the processes of text production but also the professional lives of the multilingual

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scholar. The chapter provides interesting insights into the professional and, sometimes, personal struggles of the participating scholars when they have to respond to conicting reviews and to calls for simplication and minor and major revisions, practices most readers of Academic Writing in a Global Context, including myself, will be familiar with. The last three chapters of the book continue exploring the issues presented in the rst four chapters but from a more macro perspective, providing a crafty link between the local and the global in the politics of knowledge making. Chapter 5, Staying local going global? Working at Enlightenment Science, explores the importance of the local and the global in the lives of scholars, illustrating the central meanings of "local as a geographic reality or a research focus and interest, and those of global as transnational research communities in several scholars accounts and writing practices. The chapter concludes with an insightful analysis of the powerful ideology of Science which seems to permeate the professional lives and writing for publication practices of the scholars. Chapter 6 is closely related to chapter 5 in that it further elaborates on issues of knowledge making in the global academic community which still clearly differentiates between the Anglophone at the centre and the non-Anglophone scholars mostly at the periphery, and their respective scientic production (Canagarajah, 2002, 2005). Chapter 6 shows the various attempts, linguistic and otherwise, of scholars to cross these boundaries and the resistance they normally nd embodied in the text evaluation practices of the centre, where local may be seen as too local or too parochial for global interpretation and consumption. Chapter 7, the last chapter in the book, aims at decentring these practices in academic text production and evaluation. The chapter starts with a critical evaluation of the current practices of text production in which English enjoys supremacy over the local languages. Against this picture, Lillis and Curry outline specic ways in which present practices could be changed: making invisible ideologies visible, sustaining local languages for research and publication, and supporting knowledge as a gift economy through, for instance, open access journals and academic blogs. Although chapter 7 is also meant to close the book, I would have preferred a concluding chapter which could, for instance, have elaborated on the last paragraph of the chapter about the authors own experiences in conducting their longitudinal study and writing this book. The book would also have gained from a further elaboration of the some of the innovative research tools that the authors used for their longitudinal study and in the book. Their text-oriented heuristic is one case in point. Although the heuristic is explained and elaborated in the authors previous work (Lillis & Curry, 2006), an explanation of how it was utilised in their analysis of text histories, for instance, would have beneted the readers of this book. In sum, Academic Writing in a Global Context represents a ground-breaking approach to analysing the politics and practices of academic writing for publication. The book makes an invaluable contribution to the elds of applied linguistics, teaching and researching writing in general and academic literacies in particular, and teaching English as a second and foreign language. It will no doubt be of interest to researchers and teachers in these elds and become part of the lists of highly recommended readings in postgraduate programmes in these areas. References
Canagarajah, A. S. (2002). A geopolitics of academic writing. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Canagarajah, A. S. (2005). Reconstructing local knowledge, reconguring language studies. In A. S. Canagarajah (Ed.), Reclaiming the local in language policy and practice (pp. 3e24). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Casanave, C. P. (1998). Transitions: the balancing act of bilingual academics. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12(1), 175e203. Lillis, T., & Curry, M. J. (2006). Professional academic writing by multilingual scholars: interactions with literacy brokers in the production of English-medium texts. Written Communication, 23(1), 3e35.

Julio Gimenez Centre for English Language Education (CELE), The University of Nottingham, UK International House, Jubilee Campus, Wollaton Road, Nottingham NG8 1BB, United Kingdom * Tel.: 44 115 951 4407; fax: 44 115 951 4992. E-mail address: julio.gimenez@nottingham.ac.uk
doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2010.11.003