“The stigmatizing effect of Goffman's stigma label: a response to John Flowerdew”

The way we use words to discuss complex phenomena such as writing for scholarly publication matters greatly, particularly if we are distinguishing between EAL writers and English L1 gatekeepers. In this response to Flowerdew, I argue that using Goffman's concept of stigma to discuss possible discrimination against EAL writers serves only to oversimplify complex issues and to obscure the great diversity within groups that get lumped under the labels of EAL scholarly writers (the “stigamatized”) and L1 writers, journal editors, and reviewers (the “normals”). The realities of scholarly publishing for all writers need to be addressed in less dichotomizing ways.