What is academic literacy?

Academic literacy is an ontology: a fundamental way of being in the world that shapes how knowledge is constituted, experienced, and legitimised. This ontology is inseparable from epistemology—the theory of what counts as valid knowledge—because to be academically literate is to inhabit specific regimes of truth. The skills model assumes knowledge is transferable and neutral; the socialisation model treats it as assimilable norms; both obscure the power-laden epistemologies embedded in disciplinary practices. Only the literacies perspective reveals that literacy is not learned but enacted through ontological positioning within epistemic communities. Thus, academic literacy is neither skill nor habit—it is an epistemologically grounded mode of existence.

Academic writing is never merely about skills or socialisation; it always involves questions of power, identity, and access to knowledge communities.

Academic literacy as an ontology affirms that knowing is culturally situated, relational, and often non-linear—rooted in lived experience rather than abstract individualism. This ontology directly challenges Western epistemologies that privilege objectivity, linearity, and textual authority as universal standards. Indigenous epistemologies, for instance, ground knowledge in land, community, and oral tradition, demanding an ontological shift from individual cognition to collective becoming. To recognise these perspectives is not to diversify content, but to expand the very epistemological boundaries of what counts as scholarly knowledge. Academic literacy, therefore, must be redefined as an inclusive ontology that validates multiple, coexisting epistemologies.

Academic literacy practices are diverse, contested, and situated within specific social contexts that shape how knowledge is constructed and communicated.

Academic literacy as an ontology means that disciplines are not merely methodological domains but distinct ways of being-with-knowledge. Each discipline's epistemology—its criteria for evidence, validity, and reasoning—shapes how its practitioners exist within their field: as analysts, interpreters, or builders of meaning. Interdisciplinary work thus becomes an act of ontological translation, requiring humility across epistemic divides. Students do not acquire new techniques; they undergo transformations in their very capacity to know. Hence, academic literacy is not about crossing boundaries—it is about reconfiguring one's ontological stance in relation to shifting epistemologies.

Students must develop awareness of genre and mode-specific qualities when navigating academic communication contexts.

Academic literacy foregrounds an ontology of meaning-making, identity, and power—not as optional dimensions, but as constitutive of all scholarly engagement. This ontology is intrinsically tied to epistemology: who gets to define truth, whose voice is validated, and what forms of reasoning are deemed legitimate. Writing, then, is never neutral technical performance but an enactment of epistemic belonging—or exclusion. Identity is formed through participation in epistemically regulated communities where authority is negotiated, not inherited. Therefore, academic literacy is not a set of skills to master, but an epistemologically charged way of being in the world.

Meaning is constructed through the integration of multiple semiotic resources, each contributing uniquely to the overall message in academic communication.