New Friends

Years ago, during a conversation with one of the colleagues at my home institution, I sensed a slight difference in how each of us referred to people we meet at academic conferences. I said something like "I really enjoy getting together with friends at those conferences."

"Friends?" she questioned. "You mean, colleagues?"

Well, colleagues, yes. But I'd also consider them my friends.

She then mentioned that she wouldn't consider people at conferences "friends" because friends wouldn't be able to critique or challenge each other--and vice versa. We obviously disagreed, but dispite our different views, we remained good colleagues and--yes--friends.

I go to many conferences every year, and one of the reasons that I like going to conferences so much is because I get to know people in ways that I wouldn't be able to know them by reading their work. I find it useful to know people in the field not only as other scholars and teachers but also as people. When I know them as individuals, I feel I can understand their perspectives better when I read and respond to their work.

And even though I have become close friends with some of them over the years, it doesn't stop me from critiquing their work--and them from critiquing mine. We can do that in a civil and friendly ways and still respect each other.

I was recently engaged in a rigorous debate with Paul Stapleton and Rena Helms-Park about the importance of voice in academic writing. It all started with the 2001 special issue of the Journal of Second Language Writing on voice in L2 writing. Shortly afterwords, Paul published an article that, in effect, responded to that special issue; he then collaborated with Rena to further question the role of voice in academic writing.

Since I felt that voice could be defined (as I did in my 2001 article) in ways that has important implications for academic writing, I conducted, in collaboration with Chris Tardy, a study that sought to demonstrate the role of voice in academic writing. Then, Paul and Rena wrote a response to that article, to which Chris and I responded. The conversation on paper, which will soon appear in English for Specific Purposes, was intense.

But then, when Chris and I met Rena at AAAL, we decided to get together and have a drink to get to know each other outside the context of the critical academic conversation. We had a great time. The three of us took some pictures together, and emailed them to Paul Stapleton in Japan.

This week at Asia TEFL in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, I finally had the chance to meet Paul Stapleton. We didn't get to talk too much, but we went to each other's sessions, which I thought complemented each other very well. We also managed to take a picture together.