Xenolexia's positivity: the alterity of academic writing and its pedagogical implications

ABSTRACT

This paper develops the pedagogical implications of xenolexia, a concept introduced as a phenomenon in the learning and teaching of academic writing (Beighton, C. 2020. “Beyond Alienation: Spatial Implications of Teaching and Learning Academic Writing.” Teaching in Higher Education 25 (2): 205–222.). Complementing this theoretical base, this paper examines xenolexia's positivity and its ability to both analyse and propose specific academic writing pedagogies in today's challenging HE context(s). Drawing on data from students/teachers of academic writing (n = 33), this paper uses xenolexia aetiologically and practically. Aetiologically, I identify and categorise different sets of practices in terms of the way they respond to this positivity as two pedagogical tropes: the material and its affective counterpart. Practically, I discuss pedagogical practices associated with these tropes in the light of the data. My conclusions about the extent to which each contributes to the development of academic writing link the latter to the current context of teaching and learning in higher education, challenging approaches based on identity with more productive material, affective alternatives.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• academic literacies
• xenolexia
• space
• pedagogy

Acknowledgements

I remain grateful to colleagues and students from Canterbury Christ Church University and Bristol University for their participation in this project. Special thanks are due to my daughter Elena for drawing my attention to the widespread importance of the issues mentioned here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 To be precise, xenolexia, defined as “confusion when faced with unusual words”, was proposed for inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary but rejected on the grounds of infrequent use. https://isismagazine.org.uk/2011/08/the-oed-word-room/ By recuperating it specifically in the context of academic literacy and pedagogies I hope to grant it more currency.

2 More detail can be found in Beighton (2016a, 2020).

3 No reference to positivism in any form is either made, intended or implied.

4 The term is derived, via dynamique in French, from dúnamai in Greek. Meaning “I am able”, it expresses the potential or capacity to do things, not the things themselves.

5 Emergence is the (much abused) technical term which refers to the development of complex forms through simple rules. In far from equilibrium systems, chaotic or Brownian motion is often observed prior to the (temporary) establishment of phase transitions by attractor states, serving to underline a complex system's non-teleological tendency to order (Alhadeff-Jones 2008; Mason 2008a; Fenwick 2012).

6 A Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) is the UK's benchmark teaching qualification.

7 For an account of the importance of space in this regard, see Beighton (2020).

8 Dialectical synthesis used here in the common Fichtean sense of a new state sublated from a previous opposition.