The process of learning to write at university often involves the process of creating a new identity which fits the expectations of the subject teachers who represent a student’s new discipline. The author’s explicit appearance in a text, or its absence, works to create a plausible academic identity, and a voice with which to present an argument.
Creating such an identity, however, is generally very difficult for second language students. This is partly because these identities can differ considerably from those they are familiar with from their everyday lives, or previous learning experiences, but also because students are rarely taught that disciplinary conventions differ. In short, if we simply assume that academic writing is universally impersonal, we disguise variability, and this may have the effect of preventing our students from coming to terms with the specific
demands of their disciplines. Instead of equipping learners with the
linguistic means to achieve their rhetorical invisibility, then, we need to
guide them towards an awareness of the options that academic writing
o¤ers.