BAAL 2026: Isabel Herrando-Rodrigo and Suganthi John explore how the expert’s identity is transformed when disseminating science

InterGedi members Dr Isabel Herrando-Rodrigo and Dr Suganthi John delivered a presentation at the 59th Annual Conference of the British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL 2026), which took place between September 1st-3rd 2026 at Aston University (Birmingham, UK).

In their paper, titled “Recontextualising the expert: Writer identity and digital visibility in The Conversation“, Isabel and Suganthi conducted an anlaysis concerning the use of first-person pronouns and hyperlink destinations. Their aim was to investigate how writers’ identity is shaped and shifts when recontextualising expertise to diverse digital publics, identifying four prominent roles across a dataset of multidisciplinary texts from The Conversation.

You can read their abstract below:

Recontextualising the expert: Writer identity and digital visibility in The Conversation

Increasing demands for public engagement have intensified scholarly interest in how specialised knowledge is recontextualised beyond traditional academic genres (Engberg & Maier, 2020; Luzón & Pérez-Llantada, 2022). This paper examines how such recontextualisation transforms writer identity in The Conversation, a hybrid digital genre that negotiates academic authority with journalistic accessibility (Zou & Hyland, 2019). Drawing on frameworks of writer identity (Ivanič, 1998; Matsuda, 2015) and first-person pronoun use in academic discourse (Harwood, 2005; Tang & John, 1999), we analyse 30 articles across Health, Economy, and Life Sciences.

Through the combined analysis of exclusive first-person pronouns and hyperlink destinations, we identify four recurring writer roles: Autobiographer, Researcher, Proposer, and Advocate. Although writers predominantly inhabit the Researcher identity, the affordances of digital platforms enable the emergence of less conventional academic identities that foreground personal experience, societal engagement, and advocacy. We argue that digital recontextualisation not only reshapes scientific content for broader audiences but also transforms the visibility and legitimacy of the writer.

A key contribution of this study is our hyperlink analysis, which reveals how digital affordances mediate identity visibility. Hyperlinks serve a dual function: enhancing the credibility of the research while reinforcing academic persona through external validation. On this basis, we propose a continuum of writer (in)visibility, ranging from non-hyperlinked pronouns to hyperlinked autobiographical markers.

Overall, our findings suggest that digital recontextualisation does not merely reconfigure knowledge but transforms the expert, enabling hybrid identity performances that extend beyond traditional research article norms. This study contributes to EAP and discourse-analytic research on digital genres and the evolving practices of academic self-representation.

References

Engberg, J., & Maier, C. D. (2020). Getting ready for the next steps: Multimodal and hypermodal knowledge communication in academic context. In S. Maci, M. Sala, & C. Spinzi (Eds.), Communicating English in specialised domains (pp. 225–241). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Flowerdew, J., & Wang, S. H. (2015). Identity in academic discourse. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35, 81–99. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026719051400021X

Harwood, N. (2005). “We do not seem to have a theory…” Inclusive and exclusive pronouns in academic writing. Applied Linguistics, 26(3), 343–375. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/ami012

Ivanič, R. (1998). Writing and identity: The discoursal construction of identity in academic writing. John Benjamins.

Jacobs, G. (2019). Unwriteable discourse? Co-crafting the language of science news. In C. Thurlow (Ed.), The business of words (pp. 52–66). Routledge.

Luzón, M. J. (2013). Public communication of science in blogs. Written Communication, 30(4), 428–457.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088313493610

Luzón, M. J., & Pérez-Llantada, C. (2022). Digital genres in academic knowledge production and communication. Multilingual Matters.

Matsuda, P. K. (2015). Identity in written discourse. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35, 140–159.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0267190514000178

Mur-Dueñas, P. (2024). Digital dissemination practices: An analysis of explanatory strategies in the process of recontextualising specialised knowledge. Discourse and Interaction, 17(1), 94–114.

Tang, R., & John, S. (1999). The “I” in identity. English for Specific Purposes, 18, 23–39. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0889-4906(99)00009-5

Zou, H., & Hyland, K. (2019). Reworking research: Interactions in academic articles and blogs. Discourse Studies, 21(6), 713–733. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445619866983