摘要：Given that STEM professionals must regularly engage in transnational andcross-cultural communication, learning to write in their academic disciplines andprofessions means learning to navigate World Englishes, employ diverse sociolinguisticand rhetorical resources, and negotiate meaning across linguistic and socioculturalborders. Analyzing interviews conducted by using a Grounded Theory method amongengineering faculty members and their graduate students at a large public university inthe US, this article first discusses a few stated beliefs about language and writing thatdon’t reflect realities about communication in the STEM fields. Drawing on theparticipants’ description of teaching/learning and communication practices in follow-upinterviews, the article then offers recommendations to promote the acceptance ofcomplexity and rhetoricity of scientific communication in place of dominant perceptionthat the sciences only use a transparent and universal code of standard English. Further, itrecommends specific ways for writing scholars to shift focus from ideology to practice,arguing that doing so can aid research, program, and pedagogy of writing in thedisciplines (WID) and writing across the curriculum (WAC), thereby helping promotecross-cultural and transnational communication skills in the STEM fields.
