Abstract:
Inspired by Fairclough’s suggestion of the idea of
commodification in higher education, particularly in terms
of “the marketization of the discursive practices of
universities” (1993, p. 143), the author of the present
paper proposes a theoretical basis within which the
constitutive functioning of academic discourse in the
mentioned process can be understood. In this attempt,
Althusser’s chain of interpellation is proposed as a
rigorous conceptual framework to demonstrate the
interdependence of the different components of academic
life. As the major contribution of the present argument,
the adapted schema demonstrates a dynamic relationship
among university as an institution, academic
communicative events, academic practice, academic
discourse and the identities of the participants of academic
context. The paper is concluded with some implications
of the argument for EAP research and pedagogy.
Machine summary:
All implied in the above-mentioned accounts of the nature of recent developments in academia is that commodification of higher education displaces the creation and dissemination of knowledge from the social sphere to the sphere of economic production (Neave, 2002 as cited in Obamba, 2009) and that scientific work can only be supported in conditions of surplus and it is the allocation of surplus which links universities and academic communities to their host societies (Hyland, 2009).
THE CONSTITUTIVE/CONSTRUCTIVE FUNCTIONS OF ACADEMIC DISCOURSE WITHIN THE PROPOSED MODEL Fairclough (1992a & 1992b) was one of the first discoursallyoriented linguists to discuss commodification trends in higher education, particularly in terms of "the marketization of the discursive practices of universities" (1993, p.
This is something which has not escaped the sharp and critical attention of academic discourse researchers: Taylor (2001) and Lynch (2006) argue about the commodifying force of marketization in the development of peer review tradition and consequently promotion of written academic genres (particularly written research genres) and decline of the significance of oral and instructional genres in universities: There is a strange irony in the fact that a lecture given to a professional body such as head teachers involving several hundred people or a publication of one's lecture for that body is not counted as a relevant academic event, whereas a seminar to one's peers where 10 or 20 people does count as an academic exercise and the subsequent paper is counted no matter how specialized, small or self-selecting the peer audience may be for the journal/conference proceedings in question.