Moments and mechanisms of intervention along textual trajectories: Norm negotiations in English-medium research writing

Abstract

Abstract Academic text production usually includes various people intervening in the text at different stages of the writing and evaluation process. By focusing on trajectories of English-medium research papers, this article explores the moments and mechanisms of intervention in the text production processes, as well as the associated norm negotiations. The study takes a dynamic approach to text analysis, with focus on tracing the text histories of the research papers from the perspective of how the writing is regulated by different actors and in different ways at various stages along the trajectories. The data include two detailed text histories, covering research interviews with authors and their colleagues, copies of several drafts of the texts, language revisions, written comments from different brokers (reviewers, editors and colleagues), and recordings of research group meetings around writing. The findings illustrate how various evaluation mechanisms and practices function to enable and restrict interventions by specific actors, and how these actors may evoke different evaluating authorities. It is concluded that the moments of intervention serve as sites for (re)negotiating norms and appropriateness criteria.