‘Clearly you have nothing better to do with your time than this’: A critical historical exploration of contributions to the BALEAP discussion list

Abstract

Language teaching associations have very rarely been the subject of academic research and the few publications that do exist tend to focus on uncritically exploring the benefits of association for its members. One promising means of examining the evolving identity and agency of a profession is to closely examine the online discussions that take place among the members of such associations over time. This study explores the debates, discussions, and disagreements of BALEAP members through an examination of a corpus of BALEAP discussion list postings from 1998 to 2021 while also noting who contributes and who does not. The study uses both thematic and discourse analysis of posts and has three aims. The first is to provide a historical overview of the issues and topics that practitioners discuss, their concerns, agreements, and disagreements. The second is to investigate the identity of BALEAP, through a critical reading of recurrent discussions that emerged (and still continue) when The British Association of Lecturers in English for Academic Purposes changed its name to ‘BALEAP’ in 2010. The third aim is to explore identity and agency with a focus on the ongoing debates and tensions about the roles of private providers in EAP in the UK and elsewhere. The paper concludes with a discussion of our principal findings in relation to practitioner identity and agency with suggestions as to why and how the interests and concerns of the practitioner deserve more concerted analysis and attention of the whole EAP community.