Beyond the Human-AI Binaries: Advanced Writers' Self-Directed Use of Generative AI in Academic Writing

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wang, Chaoran, Xu, Wei, Tan, Xiao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Wang, Chaoran
Xu, Wei
Tan, Xiao
author_facet Wang, Chaoran
Xu, Wei
Tan, Xiao
contents This study explores the self-directed use of Generative AI (GAI) in academic writing among advanced L2 English writers, challenging assumptions that GAI undermines meaningful learning and holds less value for experienced learners. Through case studies, we investigate how three (post)doctoral writers engage with GAI to address specific L2 writing challenges. The findings revealed a spectrum of approaches to GAI, ranging from prescriptive to dialogic uses, with participants positioning AI as a tool versus an interactive participant in their meaning-making process, reflecting different views of AI as a mechanical system, social construct, or distributed agency. We highlight the ways AI disrupts traditional notions of authorship, text, and learning, showing how a poststructuralist lens allows us to transcend human-AI, writing-technology, and learning-bypassing binaries in our existing discourses on AI. This shifting view allows us to deconstruct and reconstruct AI's multifaceted possibilities in L2 writers' literacy practices. We also call for more nuanced ethical considerations to avoid stigmatizing L2 writers' use of GAI and to foster writerly virtues that reposition our relationship with AI technology.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_12165
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Beyond the Human-AI Binaries: Advanced Writers' Self-Directed Use of Generative AI in Academic Writing
Wang, Chaoran
Xu, Wei
Tan, Xiao
Computers and Society
This study explores the self-directed use of Generative AI (GAI) in academic writing among advanced L2 English writers, challenging assumptions that GAI undermines meaningful learning and holds less value for experienced learners. Through case studies, we investigate how three (post)doctoral writers engage with GAI to address specific L2 writing challenges. The findings revealed a spectrum of approaches to GAI, ranging from prescriptive to dialogic uses, with participants positioning AI as a tool versus an interactive participant in their meaning-making process, reflecting different views of AI as a mechanical system, social construct, or distributed agency. We highlight the ways AI disrupts traditional notions of authorship, text, and learning, showing how a poststructuralist lens allows us to transcend human-AI, writing-technology, and learning-bypassing binaries in our existing discourses on AI. This shifting view allows us to deconstruct and reconstruct AI's multifaceted possibilities in L2 writers' literacy practices. We also call for more nuanced ethical considerations to avoid stigmatizing L2 writers' use of GAI and to foster writerly virtues that reposition our relationship with AI technology.
title Beyond the Human-AI Binaries: Advanced Writers' Self-Directed Use of Generative AI in Academic Writing
topic Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.12165