Contrastive rhetoric

International 
Journal of Applied Linguistics,
17(3), 332-354. 
65
Baker, W. (2009). The cultures of English as a lingua franca. 
TESOL Quarterly,
43(4), 567-592. 

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39 
turning their attention to written language, particularly in academic settings. Given 
the extensive use of ELF in both business and academic contexts and the 
accompanying move away from NES norms that this implies, it seems equally 
appropriate that this should apply to both spoken and written forms of 
communication. Here CR/IR has been of great value in contributing to our 
understanding of the variety of rhetorical structures that are employed in the 
composition of seemingly equivalent texts across different social-cultural contexts, 
discourse communities and time frames. With such diversity, the prevalence of 
NES (typically Anglo-American) models of writing practice appears in contrast to 
the linguistic reality of global English communication. As Mauranen and 
Hynninen note
66
, "[i]f we think of successful rhetoric as communicative 
effectiveness, in other words, as communication that convinces its hearers and 
creates a favourable impression, it would seem rather odd to equate features 
preferred by a linguistic and cultural minority with universal effectiveness".
 
This mismatch between the use of English as a global language and the 
homogenising Anglo- American norm focus of much writing practice in academia 
has long been noted and has come under increasing criticism. Many universities 
within Anglo-American settings consider international and have student intakes 
that reflect this in the level of diversity of their students' nationalities. For example, 
in the UK international students make up over 40% of UK postgraduate students 
and 50% of those doing full-time research degrees (UKCISA, 2011). Furthermore, 
EMI (English medium instruction) is becoming the norm for international 
programmes in universities outside native English speaking countries, particularly 
in Europe but also to a lesser extent in other settings, where such programmes have 
a diverse student population and often promote themselves as global in outlook 
(Jenkins, 2011). While we might expect internationalisation to have led to a re-
evaluation of English language policies in academia, in practice this has not 
occurred. Although theorisation of pedagogic practice in teaching academic 
66
Mauranen & E. Ranta (Eds.), 
English as a lingua franca: studies and findings
(pp. 107123). Newcastle: 
Cambridge Scholars Press. 

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40 
writing has moved beyond the deficit model, in which multilingual non-native 
writing was seen as inferior to NES writing, it is questionable how much of this 
has been translated to classroom practices. Academic writing classes typically do 
not focus on the diverse range of writing described in multilingual studies (and 
documented in more detail below). As Horner points out
67
in relation to U.S. 
composition classes in postsecondary schooling , writing practices are still 
"dominated by English-only ideology" despite the multilingual make-up of classes. 
Furthermore, the position of Anglo-American writing conventions is maintained by 
the gatekeeping role in higher education of international examinations, such as 
IELTS and TOEFL, which reward 'native-like' English and penalise other forms of 
English. 
In relation to academic publications and knowledge sharing, the conventions 
of writing are also still very much those of the NES, with alternative approaches 
marginalised, problematized and ignored in mainstream publications. Studies such 
as those by Belcher, Canagarajah, and Lillis and Curry
68
illustrate the difficulties 
that scholars writing in other forms of English or with alternative rhetorical 
conventions have in getting their work accepted in mainstream academic 
publications. In such cases, writers are either forced to conform to Anglo-
American norms and submit to the 'expertise' of NES editors and reviewers (or 
non-native editors and reviewers who choose to enforce these norms) or risk not 
having their work published. Lillis and Curry document the extensive role of 
'literacy brokers' in the production and publication of academic texts by non-
Anglophone scholars in which sentence level 'corrections' are made to texts by 
'language brokers' and with more significant changes beyond the sentence level 
undertaken by 'academic brokers', often US or UK based academics. This 
academic brokering can result not only in changes to the structure of a text but also 
involve important changes to the way knowledge is positioned and presented in 
67
Horner, B. (2011). Writing English as a Lingua Franca. In A. Archibald & A. Cogo (Eds.),