Comments on Naoko Morita's "Negotiating Participation and Identity in Second Language Academic Communities": A Reader Responds . . . Speaking in a Foreign Language Academic Community of Practice: Toward a Holistic Understanding

Abstract

■ Morita's (2004) article Negotiating Participation and Identity in Second Language Academic Communities addresses a number important research needs. Morita's attention to the processes by which six female Japanese graduate students at a Canadian university negotiated their participation and membership in a range academic discourse communities enhances understanding the conditions under which second and foreign language learners are orally engaged in the university classroom, a concern that has received comparatively limited attention in English for academic purposes (EAP) research (Flowerdew & Peacock, 2001). In particular, her attention to the processes by which classroom participants negotiated and established such membership is a valuable contribution to understanding the role power relations in students' incremental movement toward recognition as competent and legitimate members their classroom communities. Methodologically, Morita's contribution represents a welcome addition to recent ethnographic-based research that, along with the work researchers such as Leki (2001), offers the possibility a more holistic understanding classroom participation in second and foreign language academic environments. In applied linguistics, a holistic understanding classroom processes draws on the ethnographer's goal of creating a whole picture the particular culture, cultural situation, or cultural event under study a picture that leaves nothing unaccounted for and that reveals the interrelatedness all the component parts (Hornberger, 1994, p. 688). A holistic account encourages the researcher to move beyond the immedi-