Linguistic Tools for Written Communication

This book uses a linguistically and stylistically grounded analytical approach to written discourse to explain the patterns that appear when evaluating academic essays, and to explore the potential of 'nativized' linguistic tendencies as strategies in written communication. As 'linguistic behaviour', these strategies constitute a multinorm, and the author argues that comprehensive awareness of a written norm in a multilingual context is not about language rules for ironing out inequalities, but rather about varieties of linguistic practices that construct alternative strategies and patterns in written discourse. The book combines topics such as study skills, English as a Second Language and English for Academic Purposes, but grounds them within a World Englishes and syntactic paradigm, exploring why students write in a certain way due to their linguistic instincts, as well as helping students to see practical examples of what this means from the immediate perspective of sentence construction. It will be of interest to scholars of Education, Language and Linguistics, Study Skills, EAP and World Englishes, as well as students across disciplines who are encountering the academic essay as a form for the first time.