Bridging theory and practice: what Legitimation Code Theory brings to the academic literacies approach

Universities across international contexts are experiencing an increased need to support postgraduate research writing. The academic literacies approach, which raises important questions around diverse disciplinary knowledge and ‘ways of knowing’, as expressed in writing, is increasingly being employed by academic developers to develop support programmes. Despite its affordances, the academic literacies approach has been critiqued for its limited pedagogical design, with calls for additional complementary frameworks to extend its conceptual offering into practical application. This paper proposes Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) as one such framework. Using doctoral writing to illustrate, the paper shows how LCT's concepts elucidate many of the principles offered by academic literacies in more accessible ways. Such analytical tools provide academic developers with an important first step in understanding how disciplinary knowledge and knowing is encoded in writing. Based on these insights, they are better equipped to support postgraduate students in their writing endeavours.