Co-Responsibility in the Dialogical Co-Construction of Academic Discourse TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC MỞ BÀI GIẢNG GIÁO TRÌNH

THE AUTHOR Gwendolyn Gong is professor of English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and founding editor of the Asian Journal of English Language Teaching She teaches applied linguistics and literature courses, and her book Editing: The Design of Rhetoric was named the Best Book for Excellence in Technical and Scientific Writing REFERENCES Wen, Q & Gao, Y (2007) Viewpoint: Dual publication and academic inequality, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 17(2), 221–225 Co-Responsibility in the Dialogical Co-Construction of Academic Discourse YIHONG GAO Peking University Beijing, People’s Republic of China QIUFANG WEN Beijing Foreign Studies University Beijing, People’s Republic of China & In her response to our paper on academic equality, Liz Hamp-Lyons, editor of several important English journals in applied linguistics, expressed her sympathetic attitudes toward English journal publication of research already published in another language (Hamp-Lyons, this issue) She also shared her own editing experience in responding to papers written by authors of English as an additional language (EAL) In our view, this indicates a positive step toward equity in knowledge creation, distribution and access, which is what we strongly look forward to For a ‘‘better way forward’’ toward this direction, Hamp-Lyons suggests that authors should ‘‘frame the reporting of their research within the social, linguistic, academic, and professional setting in which their study took place, and present this framing with a strong sense of the audience of the specific journal they are targeting’’ (p XX) This argument raises the issue of a gap in background knowledge and assumption, i.e., the gap between what the reader expects the writer to know about what the reader knows, and what the writer knows about what the reader knows about the writer’s context The task of bridging this gap is not as simple as it appears Hamp-Lyons’ suggestion to 700 TESOL QUARTERLY Tesol Quarterly tesol_symposium.3d 30/12/09 20:05:53 The Charlesworth Group, Wakefield +44(0)1924 369598 - Rev 7.51n/W (Jan 20 2003) authors is of great value However, it seems to imply that authors already know or will easily obtain the knowledge regarding what readers know about the context from which they are writing Yet in our view, such mutual knowledge cannot be assumed From a dialogical perspective of social constructivism, academic discourse production is a process of co-construction involving not only authors, but also editors, reviewers, readers, and the academic community in general Intertextuality naturally exists between any text and its discourse tradition, and writer–reader knowledge mismatch is subject to negotiation It is through continuous questioning and responding that necessary details are supplied, ambiguities clarified, misunderstandings corrected, and new information effectively conveyed It is no surprise that at the beginning of academic paper production, authors not have enough awareness of what the readers know Nor are they fully aware what constitutes characteristics of their own setting, as characteristics not invariably exist, but appear as they are to the eyes of specific spectators Consequently, authors may not know how to present their own research meaningfully to the target reader group or groups For authors and readers from vastly divergent cultures, this process of meaningful research presentation is especially challenging Contrastive rhetoric studies have proposed a major difference between traditions of the West and East, that is, ‘‘writer responsibility’’ in the West and ‘‘reader responsibility’’ in the East (Kaplan; see Mohan, 1986, p 571) This difference in communication style might be associated with the conceptualization of ‘‘low context’’ versus ‘‘high context’’ cultures (Hall, 1976, p 79) in intercultural communication In a high context culture, the message is largely embedded in its context and implicitly stated The message receiver (reader) shoulders major responsibility in figuring out meanings embedded in the text, based on contextual knowledge Although a black-or-white classification might be simplistic, it is still helpful to keep in mind the possible impact of cultural traditions on individuals Such differences can be so deeply entrenched in one’s linguistic habitus (Bourdieu, 1991) that it is unrealistic to expect the gulf to be filled before manuscript submission Therefore, editors and reviewers play a vital role in the kind of ‘‘framing’’ Hamp-Lyons talks about They are co-responsible with authors of papers strong in content, in making clear what the readers of the specific journal know, how the research may be couched accordingly, what background information needs to be supplied and assumptions clarified before major themes are conveyed Hamp-Lyons takes pains to work with an author on four or five successive versions of an article that she believes will be valuable to the readership At SYMPOSIUM 701 Tesol Quarterly tesol_symposium.3d 30/12/09 20:05:53 The Charlesworth Group, Wakefield +44(0)1924 369598 - Rev 7.51n/W (Jan 20 2003) present this practice of constructive reviewing and editing is perhaps uncommon, but is by all means to be encouraged and, indeed, expected to become a norm This surely demands a generous devotion of time and patience, which is based on respect for EAL and native English authors as legitimate participants of the academic community, and appreciation of the value of their potential contribution to the discipline The larger the author–reader background gap is, the more demanding the editing and reviewing work It is interesting that very often, a large gap itself points to something truly special that the manuscript may offer Yet it is only when the constructive framing is properly carried out, under the guidance of editors and reviewers, that the contribution can be made We agree with Hamp-Lyons that the product is not ‘‘the same paper’’ as publication in the local language, as was also our position in the earlier paper We further believe that originality pertains, irrespective of the ‘‘research’’ or the ‘‘paper,’’ to the targeted reader group If we look at the academic community of applied linguistics as a community of practice (Wenger, 1998), the gap between EAL authors and readers of major international journals—mostly published in native-English-speaking countries—is to some extent a historical result of uneven or unequal creation, distribution and access of knowledge The underrepresentation of research work in developing countries, as the figures cited by Hamp-Lyons show, indicates marginalized positions of researchers from these countries in the international academic community Hence, in a broad sense, the academic community as a whole, with its history of practice and larger socioeconomic context, is co-responsible for the author–reader gap under discussion When EAL authors have obtained more access in bringing their contribution to the international academic community, and the landscape of research work representation is adjusted, the author–reader background gap might to some extent be reduced Some journals such as TESOL Quarterly have made a valuable point to reviewers that reviewing is an educational process We believe that part of the educational goal or content should be cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication, and the targets should involve not only authors and readers, but also the entire academic community, including the reviewers and editors themselves To summarize, academic discourse is a Bakhtinian process of dialogical co-construction, from which meanings will gradually emerge This nature of co-construction highlights the co-responsibility of authors, editors, reviewers, readers, publishing institutions, and the academic community as a whole Editors and reviewers are not so much gatekeepers of a grand palace as bridge builders across the gap or gulf between authors and readers The interaction among multiple sides, 702 TESOL QUARTERLY Tesol Quarterly tesol_symposium.3d 30/12/09 20:05:53 The Charlesworth Group, Wakefield +44(0)1924 369598 - Rev 7.51n/W (Jan 20 2003) based on mutual respect and the good intention to understand and contribute, constitutes the development of a healthy academic community Liz Hamp-Lyons’ sharing of her experience as a mindful editor and reviewer, and her raising of the reframing issue, is surely a constructive move in this dialogical process THE AUTHORS Yihong Gao is professor in the English Department, School of Foreign Languages, Peking University, Beijing, PRC Currently, she is president of the Association of Chinese Sociolinguistics and vice president of China English Language Education Association Her major research interest lies in the social psychology and social contexts of English language learning Qiufang Wen obtained her doctorate from Hong Kong University She currently works as a professor as well as Director of the National Research Center for Foreign Language Education, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing, PRC Her research interests include second language acquisition, spoken English testing and language learner corpus analysis REFERENCES Bourdieu, P (1991) Language and symbolic power (ed J B Thompson; transl G Raymond & M Adamson) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Hall, E T (1976) Beyond culture Garden City, NY: Doubleday Mohan, B A (1986) Response to Ricento: On hypothesis in cross-cultural rhetoric research TESOL Quarterly, 20, 569–573 Wenger, E 1998 Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Academic Equality and Cooperative Justice FRANC¸OISE SALAGER-MEYER Universidad de Los Andes Me´rida, Venezuela & The issue is whether the submission of the same research paper written in different languages (hence, to different journals) violates the conventions of academic journal publishing/ethics and thus represents a case of self-plagiarism I assume that Q Gao, Y Wen and L Hamp Lyons not refer to research in applied linguistics only but to research in general It is with this in mind—research in general, whether it be in agriculture, the environment, health care, linguistics or education—that I will write my comments to the issue under discussion SYMPOSIUM 703 Tesol Quarterly tesol_symposium.3d 30/12/09 20:05:53 The Charlesworth Group, Wakefield +44(0)1924 369598 - 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