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Suresh Canagarajah assumes editorial responsibilities for TESOL Quarterly with the March 2005 issue. Professor Canagarajah teaches postcolonial literature, ESL, and composition at Baruch College of the City University of New York, New York, United States. His research interests include bilingualism, discourse analysis, academic writing, and critical pedagogy, and he has published numerous books and articles. Recently, TQ assistant editor Craig Triplett asked Professor Canagarajah to talk about TQ, the field, and the association.

1. You are responsible for 16 issues of TESOL Quarterly, from spring 2005 through winter 2008. Which topics do you hope to explore?

This is a difficult question for the editor of a refereed journal to answer. Though editors do have their preferred topics, they have little control over sponsoring them because they cannot publish solicited articles. Journals like TQ publish articles that are submitted by authors, which are then refereed anonymously and recommended for publication by specialists in the field. Though editors cannot legitimately solicit articles, they can signal to readers that the journal is open to topics and areas hitherto neglected:

• I intend to help TQ keep up with changes in scholarly research practices. In many disciplines, research has become more participatory, reflexive, critical, and local. The research approaches in TESOL still largely follow the controlled, impersonal, and positivistic mode of traditional modernist inquiry. TQ has to present a wider range of research approaches.

• I intend to help the journal negotiate more boldly the diverse modes of representing research findings. In many journals, introspective or narrative writing sits side by side with the more impersonal articles reflecting the traditional introduction, methodology, results, discussion (IMRD) structure. I would like TQ to be more open to atypical forms of scholarly rhetoric.

• I want especially to increase the representation of qualitative research. In its 2003 report, the TESOL Serial Publications Committee (SPC) makes the following observation:

  There is an increasing shift in the TQ towards experimental research and away from other types of research. While we do not take a stand on what type of research is "better," the field as a whole has experienced a shift towards more case studies, ethnographies, classroom observations and discourse analyses in recognition of the complex nature of language, language learning, and language teaching that may be difficult to capture through experimental research. (Goldstein & Jourdenais, 2003, p. 3)

  I agree.

• I would like TQ to cover research in more diverse teaching contexts. The SPC also notes "how much more frequently higher education settings (including higher education and in-service teacher education) are represented in comparison to pre-K–12, pre-university, and adult settings" (Goldstein & Jourdenais, 2004, p. 3). In addition to teaching contexts outside higher education, I would also like to cover more geographically diverse locations (i.e., classrooms outside Europe and North America) and the educational concerns of marginalized social groups (i.e., relating to race, gender, and regional issues).

• I also want to facilitate a more inclusive international conversation on mutual disciplinary interests. Linguists and teachers in places such as India, Singapore, South Africa, and the Middle East are developing interesting new orientations that fall outside the current paradigms in the profession. Their work gets published locally, if it gets published at all. I intend to be more proactive in accommodating the work of nontraditional researchers. I want to explore ways to mentor new authors, encourage referees to provide more constructive commentary to help these authors in the revision process, and increase TQ's readership outside elite research and academic institutions.

Though saying that TQ can achieve all of this in four years is idealistic, I think that TQ can make some small beginnings toward greater inclusiveness. I must be especially mindful, however, that I work within the conventions of a refereed publication. Therefore, I must emphasize that TQ cannot feature these areas of work if it does not receive submissions that TQ's referees will find publishable. As the editor, I can ensure that such submissions get the attention they deserve, and that the author(s) receives useful suggestions for revision and access to editorial interaction for help and advice.

2. What subject areas do you think TESOL publishers have neglected? Why have these areas languished?

My answer to the previous question reveals the areas that have been neglected. Here, I'll offer some reasons for this state of affairs.

TESOL has featured more quantitative research because the field has had to assert its status as a serious academic discipline. Until recently, the best way to prove this was to construct TESOL's professional knowledge according to quantitative, positivistic, and experimental lines of inquiry. Having established its scientific status, however, the field can now take a broader, more balanced orientation to the knowledge that TESOL practitioners construct.

The second limitation derives from the first: TESOL has neglected local knowledge relating to many non-Western communities because the research approaches that the field has valued have had more currency in European and North American centers of learning. Because many disciplines have begun to question the tenets of modernist, scientific knowledge construction (indicated also by SPC's statement), scholars are now more open to diverse research paradigms. The field is now ready to listen to a wider range of scholars on alternate ways of defining linguistic communication and language teaching.

3. What geographical areas has the field neglected? Why?

TQ has increasingly become open to submissions from diverse regions. Recent issues have featured articles from locations in Southeast Asia, South Africa, and the Middle East. However, the authors are largely expatriate teachers from Europe or the United States. Now TQ needs submissions from local and multilingual authors from these regions.

The reasons for lack of representation are partly discoursal, partly material. The ways that many other communities represent knowledge differ from the ways that are valued in the United States. I have observed differences in even the discourses of European and North American ESOL scholars. British scholars, for example, submit articles that are essayistic or conversational. North American referees who prefer more data-driven and impersonal paradigms for reporting research results are confused about how to evaluate these articles. Scholars from South Asia, like me, write even more personally and casually. No discourse is superior; different academic communities in the field simply prefer different forms of communication.

To add to this difficulty, authors from outside the United States face certain material constraints. South Asian and African scholars often do not cite current publications because their local libraries do not have the most recent journals and books and offer only a limited range of publications. As a result, the scholarship appears dated and thin.

Other material constraints make writing for publication itself a luxury. Periphery scholars are burdened with teaching overloads that prevent them from engaging in sustained research and writing for publication. They do not have sophisticated computer and Internet resources to help them compose effectively, network with scholars in other parts of the world, or negotiate with publishers.

4. You have mentioned that you want to provide wider global access to TESOL Quarterly, to authors as well as subscribers. How do you intend to accomplish that?

This matter is not completely within the editor's control. It is primarily a question of marketing. TQ will not get relevant submissions if the scholars outside North America do not have access to the journal. The TESOL Board of Directors and the central office have to consider relevant steps that will give international scholars greater access. A few publishers have already taken the lead. Oxford University Press and Multilingual Matters offer countries with limited resources a three-tiered pricing structure for their journals. TESOL has to explore such practices to enhance TQ's distribution. TESOL should also consider marketing TQ at a discounted price to its international affiliates such as TESOL Egypt, TESOL Hungary, and many others. The association could send a free issue or unsold back issues free of charge to selected university libraries in periphery communities. Ironically, some of these proposals were made almost twenty years ago by the U.S. physicist Michael J. Moravcsik (1985), who led a lifelong mission to redress the inequalities in communication between center and periphery academic communities. Although Moravcsik proposed a new structure for world science and technology to the United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development as far back as 1979, not much headway has been made in implementing his suggestions.

There are, however, a few steps that an editor can take to address these limitations.

• I am currently arranging to provide representation to communities that are currently underrepresented on the TQ Editorial Advisory Board. I am inviting scholars from Kenya, China, Finland, and Mexico, for example, to serve on the incoming board. Furthermore, I have invited a scholar from England, Adrian Holliday, to serve as the book reviews editor. I cannot think of a non-American scholar serving in this position since the journal's inception. These scholars will give TQ greater visibility and encourage submissions from their communities, as well as helping to evaluate submissions from other regions with greater sensitivity.

• I have also initiated a mentoring procedure for promising submissions from underrepresented communities. Currently, scholars from the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, and Nigeria are availing themselves of this opportunity (without a commitment from TQ to publish their work). They are being mentored by American referees who initially read their articles.

• Because I myself straddle two different academic communities--South Asian and North American--I am able to suggest to multilingual authors how they might negotiate the differences in discourse. I am also able to effectively mediate between international authors and North American referees in making publishing decisions.

• And, finally, a minor act of personal generosity: TESOL gives 10 complimentary copies of each issue to the editor. I have identified remote universities in countries such as Mexico, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, and India where I will send my complimentary copies (after I keep a couple in the field office for official purposes). I hope this will encourage readership and submissions from these regions.

5. Given the vital link between language and culture, how can ESOL teachers and researchers facilitate cross-cultural communication in English while respecting individual cultural contexts?

The answer depends on how tolerant readers are in accommodating differences in discourse in scholarly communication. There are reasons for optimism. Many academic journals are interested in representing different modes of writing and voice. This development augurs well for cross-cultural communication in English. While TESOL professionals use the same medium--English language--they can use diverse styles, conventions, and rhetoric to represent their research and pedagogical knowledge. As I teach postcolonial literature to students in New York City, I see how creative African, South Asian, and Caribbean writers can be in using the English language and how receptive mainstream readers can be when they are patient and sensitive.

6. The tension between authorial voice and the readers' desire for stylistic predictability and comprehensibility is longstanding in academic writing. How do you anticipate balancing the sometimes conflicting needs of writers and readers?

I believe that this always involves a process of negotiation (like everything else I have said here). Writers have to work within the existing rhetorical conventions to subtly work out their individuality. In one sense, this practice is as old as human communication. Human beings are adept at using a commonly shared system of language, conversational rules, and communicative conventions even as we express our unique identities. This negotiation is perhaps a bit more difficult in scholarly writing because this recent genre of communication has tended to be relatively more uniform and intolerant of difference. But the changes I have already identified--questioning the modernist assumptions about knowledge construction and the IMRD structure of research writing--have led to a more open environment in scholarly communication where readers are more willing and better prepared to negotiate divergent discourses.

7. How do you envision TESOL's future?

I have a dream that one day TESOL will be so internationalized that it will hold its annual convention outside the United States; that its conference registration will be so affordable that teachers from developing countries will attend in bigger numbers; that TESOL publications will be priced so that teachers and students who badly need them will have access to them; that the association's enterprise for financial soundness will be matched by its activism on behalf of dying languages, language-minority communities, and underfunded schools; that TESOL will strive to have all the varieties of English accepted as a single language family and will help speakers negotiate their differences with harmony; that multilingual English language teachers and researchers will participate equally with monolinguals in constructing the norms that define the field; that little black, brown, and yellow children (and all the shades in between) will join hands with little white children and say that English belongs to all of them and provides them with a promising future.

REFERENCES

Goldstein, L., & Jourdenais, R. (2003, February). TESOL Quarterly analysis: Volume 36 (2002), issues 1–4 [unpublished report of TESOL Serial Publications Committee]. Alexandria, VA: TESOL.

Goldstein, L., & Jourdenais, R. (2004, March). TESOL Quarterly analysis: Volume 37 (2003), issues 1–4 [unpublished report of TESOL Serial Publications Committee]. Alexandria, VA: TESOL.

Moravcsik, M. J. (1985). Strengthening the coverage of third world science. Eugene, OR: Institute of Theoretical Science.