On Robert B. Kaplan's Response toTerry Santos et al.'s ``On the Future of

Second Language Writing''

DWIGHT ATKINSON

Temple University Japan

As a graduate student under Robert B. Kaplan in the late 1980s, one of the first

things I learned was to love and hate `̀ The Boxes.'' `̀ The Boxes'' were an

unassuming set of copier-paper boxes sitting in one corner of Kaplan's office,

filled to overflowing with dog-eared, hard-to-read, usually photocopied but

occasionally typed or mimeographed papers sent to or collected by Kaplan

during his long career. Many had been sent in response to his ground-breaking

`̀ doodles'' article (Kaplan, 1966)Ða work which has had astonishing longevity

and influence worldwide. Others he had collected himself or through his

colleagues and graduate students. For 2 years, I had the onerous task of

watching over `̀ The Boxes''Ðlabeling a folder for each new paper, keeping

the papers in some semblance of order, cataloging new entries, and tracking

down missing items.

`̀ The Boxes'' represented for me at the timeÐand in some senses still

representÐthe state of the art in L2 writing across the world. It was truly a

miscellaneous collection, with no real governing frameworks, common traditions,

or shared notion of a field to hold it together. In fact, the only two things the

materials amassed there had in common were: (1) that many of them were

purportedly about writing in a second language; and (2) that the writers of those

papers had somehow heard tell of Kaplan and his work, or their work had been

ferreted out by Kaplan or his students. Still, `̀ The Boxes'' comprised a rare and

valuable resource for scholars with an interest in L2 writing.

In Kaplan's response to our article `̀ On the future of second language

writing,'' he makes the valid and important point that ours was a limited view,

focusing almost exclusively as it did on the North AmericanÐor, even more

narrowly, the U.S.Ðcontext. In this sense, I agree with Kaplan that the article

was misnamedÐit should have been called something like `̀ On the future of

second language composition in the U.S.,'' though that doesn't quite suffice

either. All of us, it seems to me, must have been thinking as U.S. university

teachers in terms of our daily concerns and realitiesÐnot surprising given that

most of us were dealing with large numbers of international and language-

JOURNAL OF SECOND LANGUAGE WRITING, 9 (3), 317 ± 320 (2000)

Direct all correspondence to: Dwight Atkinson, Temple University 2-8-12 Minami Azabu, Minato-

ku, Tokyo, Japan. E-mail: dwightatki@aol.com

317

minority students who come to the U.S. university needing to survive what is

quite often a writing-intensive curriculum. But none of this is to suggest that

Kaplan's point is not well-taken.

Where I do take issue with Kaplan is in his characterization of the field of L2

writing in general. In Kaplan's description, L2 writing appears as a relatively

well-established international research field with a critical mass of committed

scholars. In fact, I think the truth is rather differentÐsomething more akin to

`̀ The Boxes.''

Consider the evidence Kaplan gives for his argument. He first mentions the

historic Prague School, then goes on to list 13 people in other countries currently

doing work on L2 writingÐeight of these latter in Scandinavia. Next, he avers

that `̀ there is a significant production of research scholars . . . in universities in

Australia, Finland, Germany, Israel, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, and

Sweden.'' In the paragraph following that, he spreads his net more widely,

managing to haul in nonnative L2 (i.e., English) literatures and translation

studies as a result. Finally, he cites the Japanese Ministry of Education's

professed interest in Japanese school writers' writing in Japanese, and caps it

all off with the nostrum, `̀ Those who cannot remember the past are condemned

to repeat it.''

Whatever this list is meant to prove, all it really shows to my way of thinking

is that, in a pinch, one can scrape together a fewÐsome of them quite marginally

relatedÐscholars and areas of study, which can be roughly construed as dealing

with something like L2 writing. Certainly, I would not argue that there are no

researchers such as those in Kaplan's list of 13 who, beyond the borders of the

U.S., study L2 writing. But the Prague school has not been active in the area for

some time, to my knowledge, if it was ever more than occasionally interested; the

`̀ significant production of research scholars'' in universities across the world is

not documented; tying in translation studies and L2 literatures is nothing if not a

stretch; and throwing in the Japanese Ministry of Education and their interest in

L1 Japanese writing is pure red herring. If this is what the field of L2 writing

really looks like beyond the confines of the U.S. university, then it certainly does

not merit the epithet `̀ field'' at all.

Fortunately, I think the picture is somewhat less spotty than the one Kaplan

paintsÐin spite of himself. First, as Kaplan suggests, there are in fact a number

of researchers across the world who study writing in a second language.

However, numbers of people studying something does not really tell us much

about a fieldÐwhich is substantially more than a bunch of scholars sometimes

studying something somewhat similar.

To my mind, an organized academic field is a group of scholars who not only

study similar phenomena, but who also share certain common epistemological

assumptions, a reasonably similar vocabulary, common theoretical and practical

concerns (and similar research questions), common markers of disciplinary

affiliation, means of reproducing themselves academically, and common channels

318 ATKINSON

of communication via established academic foraÐconferences, journals, Internet

bulletin boards, Ph.D. programs, etc. If this is the case, then Kaplan's ragtag

collection seems more like the loose set of often personal relationship-based

networks that comprised early nineteenth-century natural philosophy (not quite

ready at that time to be called what we now call `̀ science''Ðsee Atkinson, 1999;

Bazerman, 1988). Or what Kuhn (1962/1970) called the `̀ natural history'' phase

of a paradigm.

In fact, there is something approaching an organized academic field of L2

writing, or at least its beginningsÐand it is, it seems to me, substantially North

American. The establishment in 1992 of the Journal of Second Language

WritingÐa U.S.-based journal with U.S. coeditors and a largely North American

editorial boardÐwas one milestone in its development; so is the Purdue Con-

ference, now in its second year. Further, publications on the topic of L2 writing are

coming largely out of the U.S.; for example, the three main introductions to

teaching L2 writingÐFerris and Hedgcock (1998), Leki (1992), and Reid

(1993)Ðwere all published there, and are all written by Americans.

I do not mean to belittle the efforts of those beyond the borders of the U.S. and

CanadaÐthey are clearly important ones. Nor am I unaware of the hegemonizing

power of `̀ center'' academic communities over `̀ periphery'' ones, especially in

the area of academic publishing (Canagarajah, 1996). But I am somewhat less

credulous than Kaplan that what exists amounts to a recognizable international

field or subdiscipline. One of the main reasons it does or is on the way to doing so

in the U.S., perhaps, is simply a historical accidentÐthe increasing importance of

composition and writing in undergraduate studies in the U.S. university over the

past half-century, and the corresponding development of a large, active, and fully

institutionalized field of L1 composition. Much in L2 writing research and

teaching in the U.S. has been derivative of L1 compositionÐand only recently

have scholars begun to focus on the potential consequences of differences in the

two contexts.

Kaplan states that `̀ Where one stands depends significantly on where one

sits.'' I believe the arguments in his response are also covered by this statement.

As one of the few pioneers of a recognizable field of L2 writing (or its

beginnings, at least) who did not take their lead primarily from L1 composition,

he has an interest in portraying it as an international movement. In fact, the

contrastive rhetoric hypothesis has held perhaps its greatest allure for those in

nonnative-English-speaking contexts abroad, forced as they are to look EFL

writing in the eye to try to understand why it at least sometimes looks

`̀ different''Ðoften subtly out of sync with what one might expect from a

`̀ native'' perspective. It is thus understandable why Kaplan might want to

configure L2 writing as a robustly international field.

Even in the U.S., however, I believe that the state of the field or the state of

the art is still rather tenuous. To say why is basically to recap what I said in our

articleÐa point that Kuhn first brought academic attention to almost 40 years

ON KAPLAN'S RESPONSE TO SANTOS ET AL. 319

ago: that fieldsÐlike societiesÐwhich do not reproduce themselves across

generations die out. Kaplan takes issue with this notion in his response, pointing

out that academic programs which support things like L2 writing tend to come

and go, that research scholars do not `̀ spring full blown into eminence like

Athena from the head of Zeus,'' and that his own academic biography illustrates

the truth of these contentions. He goes on to argue that even if top researchers in

the field are not producing Ph.D. students, they are producing MA graduates

who can then go on to do Ph.D. work elsewhere. He also states that the

researchers themselves are still producing research, and their MA graduates

frequently are, as well.

I find this a less-than-rosy pictureÐone that is hardly conducive to the

development of an organized discipline of L2 writing. It is something of a

hodgepodge, and though it probably does reflect some part of the current state of

the `̀ field''Ðand certainly Kaplan's own experience in this fieldÐit does not

bode well for the future of L2 writing research. As I said in our article, I have no

solutions, and even more than that I sincerely hope my understanding is wrong.

But the thought of an organized (if penumbrally) L2 writing studies going the

way of the U.S. Shaker community keeps me pessimistic about the future of the

field, and keeps me wanting to share my view with others.

REFERENCES

Atkinson, D. (1999). Scientific discourse in sociohistorical context: The philosophical

transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1675±1975. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Bazerman, C. (1988). Shaping written knowledge. Madison, WI: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.

Canagarajah, A. S. (1996). Non-discursive requirements in academic publishing, material

resources of periphery scholars, and the politics of knowledge production. Written

Communication 13, 435±472.

Ferris, D., & Hedgcock, J. S. (1998). Teaching ESL composition: Purpose, process, and

practice. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Kaplan, R. B. (1966). Cultural thought patterns in intercultural education. Language

Learning 16, 1±20.

Kuhn, T. S. (1962/1970). On the structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: Univ. of

Chicago Press.

Leki, I. (1992). Understanding ESL writers: A guide for teachers. Portsmouth, NH:

Boynton/Cook Publishers.

Reid, J. (1993). Teaching ESL writing. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Regents/Prentice-Hall.

320 ATKINSON