Practitioners respond to John Flowerdew's ‘The linguistic disadvantage of scholars who write in English as an additional language: Myth or reality’

Abstract

In his 2016 articles (Hyland, 2016a, 2016b), Ken Hyland makes a case for what he terms the ‘myth of linguistic injustice’, calling into question the assumption that ‘non-native’ users of English are at a linguistic disadvantage compared with their ‘native’ counterparts when writing for publication. In response, Flowerdew (2019) argues that Hyland is mistaken in categorically dismissing the extra challenges inherent in academic writing in an additional language, suggesting that while all academic writers may face a common set of challenges, ‘EAL [English as additional language] writers have an additional set of linguistic challenges, which do not apply (to such an extent) to L1 writers’ (p. 257). Here, we aim primarily to respond to Flowerdew yet, as his ideas are intrinsically intertwined with Hyland's initial claims, our article is unavoidably and necessarily a response to both writers and an attempt to contribute to the ongoing and wider discussion of native-speakerism and notions of speakerhood based on our own professional and personal experiences.