Critical Issues in EAP: Exploring the Theoretical Landscape

Emerged during the second half of the twentieth century as a variety of English for Specific Purposes and later developed to become a major field in its own right, English for Academic Purposes (EAP) has greatly increased in importance and considerably diversified theoretically, methodologically, and pedagogically since the 1990s. This is largely due to the multitude of changes that our world has undergone at social, political, and economic levels and so do the contexts within which EAP has operated as well as the proliferation of new epistemological positions. Against this backdrop, this chapter examines the political and ideological issues permeating EAP, in order to set the stage for introducing the ‘critical turn’, with the purpose of juxtaposing Critical English for Academic Purposes (CEAP) with the ‘mainstream EAP.’ It is followed by an exploration of both diverse viewpoints and debates in the EAP literature, ranging from the pragmatic vs critical view and support service vs academic field view to normative vs ethnographic view and accommodationist view and transformative view, that have served to problematize the wider context of EAP including social, institutional, and disciplinary social structures and practices, and recently emerging perspectives within the theoretical landscape of CEAP.