Chapters in Books (General Linguistics)

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    Whose voice is right when I wright? Identity in academic writing
    (SUN MeDIA, 2016) Robertson, Catherine
    INTRODUCTION: Paré (2010:40) relates a story of a student who sees the postgraduate journey as being on a bus and says, “I’m not quite sure yet where it’s going. The scary part is that I am the one driving the bus.” I, on the other hand, as a mature student who returned to an academic pursuit after many years, saw my postgraduate journey as far more arduous than a bus trip. I felt as if I had to summit a mountain, the peak of which remained shrouded. Every inch of my climb produced further challenges (not to mention the heady rush of vertigo I experienced most of the time). Sometimes, I had to retrace my steps to find a safer, easier way to keep up the momentum. At other times, I was ready to admit that I was no mountaineer and that I had taken on the impossible. What I found to be the most difficult was to get started; to settle down and write. Something kept blocking me. It did not mean that I had not read sufficiently, that my data was inadequate, or that I did not know what I wanted to say; I simply found starting to write challenging. There is a great deal of advice available to people who have writer’s block. “Just start writing”, people say cheerfully, “and it will all come to you”. Others advised, “Write early and write often” (Lee & Aitchison 2009:94). The problem is that it is only once you have found your way on the mountain, which you eventually do, that this advice makes sense to you.