Beyond Polishing: The Compounding Dynamic of GenAI in Academic Writing

Abstract Generative AI can reshape stance and voice in multilingual student writing, with effects that appear to be shifting over time. Using a random sample of English L2 master’s-level assignments at a UK university from two cohorts (2019 and 2025, N = 25 each), I first compared submitted drafts, then subjected parallel excerpts to GenAI “polishing” prompts. Across both cohorts, the technology consistently reduced hedging, suppressed self-mention, and reframed authorial stance into more categorical and impersonal forms. While these outcomes confirm existing critiques of homogenisation, the more revealing finding is a compounding dynamic. I use this term within an ecological view of writing and technological…