brill.com/irp
Inviting individual voice to second language
academic writing
Iga Maria Lehman | orcid: 0000-0002-2092-8119 University of Social Sciences in Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland imlehman69@yahoo.com
Robin Anderson | orcid: 0000-0002-1338-8791 Milan State University, Milan, Italy
rob.anderson.milan@gmail.com
Abstract
Our purpose in this paper is to present the findings of a study aimed at investi-gating how second language (L2) student-writers construct their identities as aca-demic authors in tertiary education. We consider the restraints institutionalized text production can place on the constitution of writer identity, and call for pedagogi-cal approaches to writing to take on board our findings to better help students in the process of finding their unique authorial voice. While the specific socio-cultural and institutional contexts within which people write limit possibilities for their self-representation, we argue that student writers should be encouraged to bring their own life histories and sense of the self to their texts. The study follows the notion of writer voice as proposed by Lehman (2018). She proposes categorising writer voice into three main types: individual, collective and depersonalized. As these three aspects of voice are predominantly cued through metadiscourse features we employed a three-dimensional analytic rubric designed by Lehman (2018) in order to identify and analyze the potential of individual voice in the facilitation and enhancement of academic writ-ing in a second language (see Lehman, 2018).
Keywords
1 Introduction
Writing is not a purely social phenomenon, but is also often a private, soli-tary and idiosyncratic act influenced by different individual aspects of the writer. While specific socio-cultural and institutional contexts, within which people write, limit possibilities for authorial self-representation, writers also bring their own life histories, personalities, goals, and sense of the self to their texts. Two notions which significantly contribute to the understanding of this mediation between the social and the individual are identity and voice.
There has been extensive research into the relevance of identity to language learning, but as early as 1998 researchers such as Gass (1988) were questioning to what extent the concept of identity is relevant to second language acquisi-tion (2la). Most researchers today would argue that it is an essential factor in issues concerning the acquisition and use of a second language (see Spolsky, 1989; Anderson, 1991; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998; Norton, 2001; Cum-mins, 2001; Kanno & Norton, 2003; CumCum-mins, 2003; Norton, 2006; Gao, Cheng & Kelly, 2008). Norton succinctly states 5 reasons why this is so; 1) that it chal-lenges a binary approach to the consideration of 2la, for example, the moti-vated as opposed to the unmotimoti-vated learner and focuses on the multiple posi-tions from which second language learners (2ll) produce language; 2) identity theory has focussed on the power relations in society, discussing the possible marginalisation of 2ll, something which sla theory fails to address; 3) while recognising that institutionalised contexts can and do have an effect on both language learning and use, identity theory highlights the role human agency can play in the process of identity formation in a second language; 4) identity theory views learner motivation as a complex relationship between the 2ll’s identity and her/his commitment to the learning process and the language practices that are involved in that process, and 5) following on from Anderson’s notion of imagined communities (Anderson, 1991), identity research has high-lighted how learners may view the target language community as an imagined, or desired community, offering the possibility for a diversity of identity options (see Norton, 2013).
collec-tive voice is the product of the writer’s struggle for affiliation and belonging to a particular discourse community or communities. The degree of writer affili-ation to these communities’ discourse practices can be seen in to what extent she/he establishes commonality with readers, by the use of explicit signals and references that guide the reader through the text and thereby creates a ‘reader-considerate’ voice. The depersonalized voice is reflected in the acceptance of the channels through which discipline disseminates its knowledge and beliefs, and the reproduction of the community’s textual outputs. This alignment with disciplinary writing strategies is revealed in the choices the writer makes as to when and how to employ these discoursal conventions and in doing so, conceal and obfuscate authorial presence in the text.
Despite much research into identity and 2la, there has been little focus on the formation of student-writer identity as expressed by the voices employed in their academic texts. Second language users in academic contexts are not only exchanging/producing information within the institutional context they find themselves, but are “also organizing and reorganizing a sense of who they are and how they relate to the social world. As such, they are engaged in identity construction and negotiation” (Norton, 2013: 4).
Our investigative interest, therefore, focuses on an aspect of the relationship between identity and academic writing with particular attention paid to the extent to which institutions can impinge on the emergent student-writer voice, but also on how student-writers’ agency can have an effect on the develop-ment of student-writer voice, which, as we argue, can help L2 student-writers to (re)construct their authorial identity when writing in English. This affirmation is based on the authors’ experiences in teaching writing classes in culturally diverse settings at tertiary level over a number of years.
No stylistic competence can be achieved until the writer establishes her/his authority for the content of the text, thereby presenting her/himself in the role of unique author. In this way, writing gains voice and authenticity as it is fed by the individual experience with which the writer imbues the text. Student-writing is less effective when the majority of the writer’s attention leaks away from communicating meaning and engaging the reader to merely reproducing her/his disciplinary community’s textual outputs, and in doing so, concealing and obfuscating the authorial presence in the text.
2 Identity and voice
identity and 2la. This area of interest, which began in the mid-1990s, reflects the prevailing research trends in the related fields of applied linguistics and sec-ond language studies. One of the leading writers in the field is Norton (1995), who in her seminal article, “Social identity, investment, and language learning”, urged 2la researchers to abandon the notion of viewing individuals and social structures as separate aspects of how L2 students learn, but to observe and analyze the interconnectedness of these two facets in the processes of L2 acqui-sition and learning. Norton drew on poststructuralist theories of identity and employed case study research in the development of her theory of L2 learner identity, which conceives of this phenomenon as being historically and spa-tially situated, multidimensional, and dynamic. Her work attracted particular attention from scholars investigating the relationship between L2 writer iden-tity and writing processes. One such study was Ivanič’s collaborative research project (1997), which investigated writing and identity of mature students and offered valuable insights into how diverse, tertiary-level students create their textual self-representations, and how they come to position themselves as indi-viduals and as members of different discourse communities in their texts. She perceived L2 student academic writing practices as sites of struggle, both for students and for teachers, and emphasized the need for transformative action within institutional, L2 learning contexts.
3 Textual realization of writer identity
Our approach to writer identity is based on the concept of the self as consist-ing of three fundamental aspects: the individual (personal) self, the collective (social) self and the depersonalized (impersonal) self. In other words, an indi-vidual’s writer identity can be affected in three basic ways: (a) in terms of their unique individual traits, (b) in terms of their being members of a group (Sedikides & Brewer, 2001), and (c) in terms of the pressure dominant dis-courses exert on their linguistic outputs. Since writers cannot avoid enacting voices in what they write, each act of writing is a process of “their own on-going identity construction” (Clark & Ivanič, 1997: 159).
The individual self is formed by individuals distinguishing themselves within their social context; which is achieved by actions and outputs, and influ-enced by the person’s cognition, personality and life history. This form of self-representation relies on interpersonal comparison processes and is associated with the motive of protecting or enhancing the person psychologically (Brewer & Gardner, 1996; Markus, 1977; Sedikides, 1993).
By contrast, the collective self is constituted within the social groups with which the individual identifies and by contrasting their in-group membership with relevant out-groups. This form of self-concept is constructed on the basis of discoursal characteristics shared with other individuals or groups. Turner et al. argue that the collective self is a “shift towards the perception of self as an interchangeable exemplar of some social category and away from the per-ception of self as a unique person” (Turner et al., 1987: 50). Consequently, the collective self is related to the motive of protecting or enhancing the in-group (Brewer & Gardner, 1996).
and strategies in order to create a neutral stance. The concept of impersonal logic can be linked to the notion of intertextuality, which according to Fair-clough (2003), fosters the dialogicality of a text by bringing ‘external’ voices into it. Holquist (1981) points out that due to this dialogization, texts become relativized and de-privileged, which leads to the depersonalization and obfus-cation of the voice of the actual writer. The writer is therefore supposed to remain hidden behind the facts and to function as an anonymous medium in the transmission of knowledge. Hyland (2012) further demonstrates this ten-dency in academic writing with his study of self-mention in academic texts, and how, by avoiding it, the authors strive to increase their authorial credibility in the eyes of their audiences.
Since these three aspects of identity coexist within each individual writer and are located within specific sociocultural and institutional contexts, we argue for the value of viewing identity as a socio-cultural phenomenon that emerges from and is situated in contexts of discoursal interactions which are evolving and multiple. Our approach focuses on the interplay between these three self-representations, which involves specifying the determinants of the formation of each aspect of the self, along with the circumstances that cause one self to take precedence over the other. In this view, the individual, the collective and the depersonalized selves can be seen as complementary, mutu-ally exclusive, or entirely independent. Therefore, although there is a general consensus that all parts of identity are socially constructed, no research has examined which aspect of the writer self in the institutional context domi-nates and the consequent effect this has on the construction of writer voice and learner identity.
4 Assessing voice in the text corpus
These three constituents of writer identity are typically expressed through the employment of specific rhetorical strategies and linguistic exponents, which create the writer’s voice. We employ Clark and Ivanič’s conceptualization of the phenomenon of writer voice as being formed of two aspects; voice as form and voice as content (1997: 151).
ele-ments of the rhetorical situation to their advantage by fulfilling or creating certain role (or roles) in the discourse community” (Cherry, 1988: 265). Voice as form may also include such discoursal choices as appropriateness in the use of argumentative strategies, aspects of discourse organization, such as linearity in both form and content and explicitness. Voice as form reflects those aspects of metadiscursive cueing, which are referred to by Thompson (2001) as interactive resources. These discoursal resources signal how the author is managing the information flow in order to guide readers through the text. They feature such rhetorical devices as frame markers (e.g. first, to sum up), transitions (e.g. there-fore, further), endophoric markers (e.g. as discussed below) and code glosses (e.g. that is to say).
The second component, following on from Clark and Ivanič’s model, is voice as content, or the self as author. This strategy is used to express the authors’ authoritativeness over the text content; however, not as ‘authoritative dis-course’ in the Bakhtinian sense (1981) where discourse is defined as monolog-ical and does not enter into dialogue, but as the one that has the capacity to convince others and to create writer credibility. Self as author is concerned with how the writer positions herself/himself with regard to the text’s propo-sitional content, opinions and beliefs, in other words, how she/he establishes authorial credibility. This aspect of voice documents the writer’s efforts to pro-duce a convincing, coherent and credible text in the specific socio-cultural context.
In a similar way, voice as form has links to Thompson’s concept of interac-tional discourse, which refers to the writer’s explicit interventions in the text to comment on and evaluate the content (Thompson, 2001). It is also echoed in Hyland’s model of metadiscourse (2001a), which includes both authorial stance and engagement features of interaction. Voice as form is expressed in specific interactional metadiscourse resources, which include boosters (e.g. certainly, without doubt), hedges (e.g. possibly, might), attitude markers (e.g. correctly, arguably), self-mentions (e.g. I, me, my, we, us, our), and engagement markers (e.g. consider, note). All these features reveal the writer’s idiosyncratic discourse choices, and thereby contribute to the establishment of authorial authority over the propositional content of the text. This is also the way in which writers establish their academic credibility “by identifying themselves as holding a certain position” (Cherry, 1988: 265).
figure 1 A model of academic writer’s voice lehman (2018)
this is captured by depersonalized voice (‘D’ voice). As we saw above, ‘D’ voice is linked to the dissemination of discipline’s knowledge, beliefs and discourse practices which the author seeks to represent and reproduce.
These three types of voice, which may function simultaneously or may be present in one area of the text yet absent in another, can also be mapped onto the three macrofunctions of language proposed by Halliday (1985) (see also Halliday & Hasan, 1985). Halliday’s notion of the ideational function of lan-guage concerns the use of lanlan-guage to represent an individual’s experience, ideas and perceptions of the world, and correlates with the ‘I’ voice. His inter-personal function of language describes how language is used to encode an individual’s interaction with others and to communicate and respond to feel-ings and emotions, and corresponds to ‘C’ voice. Halliday’s textual function, where language is used in order to make a text coherent to readers by the employment of the specific writing conventions of a given discourse commu-nity, necessarily involves a diminishing of an assertive authorial stance and is closely linked to the ‘D’ voice (see Lehman, 2018).
Voice then, is predominantly cued through metadiscourse features and can be identified and analyzed with the use of the three-dimensional analytic rubric which was designed by Lehman (2018) to identify and measure the emergent voices in students’ texts (see appendix 3). This rubric was designed in order to explore how overall writing proficiency correlates with autho-rial voice. The rubric together with the three categories of writer voice as described in this study, made it possible to describe how the writer com-municates and establishes a relationship with the audience, by revealing the extent to which she/he chooses to mark her/his authorial presence in the text.
5 The study
5.1 The purpose
The unique focus of this study, to examine the influence of the institutional context (and power relations inscribed in it) on the textual realization of indi-vidual, collective and depersonalized selves and the consequent effect this has on writer-voice and learner identity, was crystallized into the following three points:
1. What do specific linguistic instantations, which manifest individual, col-lective and depersonalized selves, tell us about the emerging writer-voice and the emerging identity of the second language writer?
3. What conclusions about writer identity can we draw from the research? In order to address the above three questions the study employed the use of two kinds of writing task, free and structured. A comparative, qualitative analysis of these two types of texts enabled us to identify the authorial voice the participants constructed when producing both free and structured texts in English. By analyzing how the three facets of writer self, namely, individ-ual, collective and depersonalized were represented in the texts, we were able to draw conclusions as to what extent the individual voice is constrained by the nature of the writing task and the institutional context. In other words, how much agency do the student-writers feel empowered to apply in the pro-duction of their texts and subsequently in the construction of their authorial identity?
5.2 Method
5.2.1 Materials and participants
To test the validity of the research assumptions, writing samples and inter-views were collected from 13 Polish and Ukrainian students from the Univer-sity of Social Sciences in Warsaw, Poland in the third year of their full-time, first degree in English Philology studies and the fourth and fifth year of their full-time master’s degree in English Philology studies. The sample size of 13 student participants is large enough to allow for preliminary conclusions to be drawn about the relationship between the students’ authorial voice and the constraints made upon it by institutional factors; however, a larger study is envisaged in the near future to confirm the findings.
The free writing sample topic was entitled “The meaning of your name” (see appendix 1) and the structured writing sample topic was entitled “The advan-tages and disadvanadvan-tages of going out to work or continuing your studies” (see appendix 2). The writing prompts (see below) were chosen to trigger a specific writing mode. Prompt-response writing differs from other forms of academic writing mainly in two aspects: it is not interactive and it is completed in one sit-ting. In the present study, the writing tasks were completed by students outside the classroom and within an unspecified amount of time.
5.2.2 Instruments
The voice scoring rubric was used to carry out the analytical classification of selected traits of each type of voice. These discursive resources were then cal-culated for the number of times they appeared in each script (see appendix 4) to determine the dominant voice in each writing sample.
inter-views allowed to investigate the correlation between students’ perceptions of themselves as competent writers when writing in Ukrainian, Polish and in English and the dominant voice employed.
The students were asked the following questions with regards to their per-ceptions of their own strengths and feelings about their academic writing: a) Students’ perceptions of their strengths and weaknesses in writing in
Pol-ish/ Ukrainian and English
– Do you think you are good at writing academic tasks in your native lan-guage? Why? Why not? a. What are your strengths? b. What are your weaknesses?
– Do you think you are good at writing academic tasks in English? Why? Why not? a. What are your strengths? b. What are your weaknesses? – Have you ever written in Polish/Ukrainian or in English without it
being required for a course, exam etc.? If so what? Why?
b) Students’ language preferences for academic writing and dominant voice – Can you compare doing academic writing in your native language to that in English? Do you prefer to do academic writing in L1 or L2? Which language do you most often write in now?
– Did you find these writing tasks in Polish/Ukrainian and in English challenging? In what way?
The collected data was coded according to these recurring themes. Subse-quently, Pavlenko and Blackledge’s (2004) conceptual framework for three identity options, imposed, assumed and negotiable (see below), was applied to investigate the influence of self-positioning tendencies on the emergent voices of the Polish and Ukrainian L2 student-writers.
5.2.2.1 Imposed identities
Extract from interview # 10:
I am good at academic wring because I know the rules. Before I knew how to structure essays it was difficult to write. But I am still struggling to avoid writing from my own point of view, although I know I am not supposed to. If I wanted to sound like ‘me’ I’d use different words.
5.2.2.2 Assumed identities
Assumed (or non-negotiated) elements of her identity are those constituted, according to Hall (1990), in the process of imaginative production of identity, with which individuals are comfortable and view as core parts. We related these identity aspects to the ways students identified themselves with other dis-course community members, in particular with their teacher-reader. This iden-tity option enabled students to activate a specific voice to get access to their disciplinary discourse, and ultimately to create a feeling of belonging. In most cases my interviewees expressed their preference for writing in English and a willingness to satisfy the expectations of their teacher-reader by re-employing the learnt discourse features and values. In this way, they assumed a ‘reader-friendly’ voice, referred to as C type of voice.
Extract from interview # 7:
I like writing in English. As I’ve already told you I know the rules. I haven’t learned them in Ukrainian. Even now I don’t know the rules for writing in Ukrainian. And I think that there are some differences. I like the fact that I know how to write to please my teacher, to make her understand me and get a good grade.
5.2.2.3 Negotiable identities
Negotiable identities are the ones that can be and are contested and resisted in order to integrate fragmented, decentered, and shifting identities experi-enced by L2 writers in their desire for a unified and coherent identity. They emerged when our interviewees positioned themselves as disagreeing with cer-tain aspects of their disciplinary community’s writing conventions because they went too much against the grain of what they considered as good writing in their first language. These aspects of writer identity which were influenced by L2- rhetorical adjustments, created I type of voice, characterized by inten-tionality and strong authorial stance.
Extract from interview # 3:
6 Findings
The combined application of two research instruments: (1) the quantitative analyses of the writing samples, and (2) the qualitative interpretations of inter-views created the framework with which the corpora was analysed. From our analysis of the text corpus (see appendix 5) we found that, in the case of structured academic writing, a large majority of the texts reveal a writer voice devoid of any unique authorial presence. In the sample of 13 scripts, 11 featured the dominant, depersonalized ‘D’ voice, 1 respectively voices ‘C’ and ‘D’, and only 1 ‘C’ voice. We also found that, on average, a higher number of discursive resources was used to signal voice ‘C’ than voice ‘I’; however, the highest num-ber of discursive resources was used to signal voice ‘D’.
Negotiable aspects of writer identities emerged in the free writing samples when student-writers positioned themselves as authoritative authors. In the sample of 13 scripts, 11 featured the dominant, individual ‘I’ voice, 1 ‘C’ voice and 1 ‘D’ voice. Moreover, on average, a higher number of discursive resources was used to signal voice ‘C’ than voice ‘D’, and the highest number of discursive resources was used to signal voice ‘I’.
In the interviews the Polish and Ukrainian students discussed different ways in which they approach their L2 academic writing tasks by choosing identity options which are either imposed (and therefore non-negotiable), assumed (and therefore not negotiated) or negotiable (and therefore unacceptable). However, in their corpus writing samples they predominantly employed the rhetorical strategies of appropriation of disciplinary resources, rather than strategies of negotiation or resistance. From the interview data we found that the use of the dominant L2 writing strategies is tied to social aspects of their identities, developed through students’ past and current experiences with aca-demic writing, both in their mother tongue and in English, and also to exposure to discipline-specific English texts and discussions with other members of their disciplinary community.
7 Discussion
partic-ular institutional discourses. These imposed aspects of writer identity are the outcome of students’ decisions to follow the dominant rhetorical and stylistic strategies of the discourse community. It becomes obvious then that student-writers equate linguistic and writing competence with sounding ‘academic’, and in order to achieve such voice, they produce texts which are in line with disciplinary sanctioned writing rules and norms, and devoid of personal, sub-jective elements.
The findings of the free writing samples show that when given the oppor-tunity to produce texts which are not restrained by institutionally determined, rhetorical expectations, students feel free to adopt a self-assured and assertive way of writing, which is typical of I-writing, and characterized by intentional-ity and strong authorial presence. Moreover, we found that when freed from institutionally sanctioned writing conventions, students’ texts display a desire to use language to establish and maintain an interaction with their audience, and to communicate and respond to feelings and emotions, which is reflected in the textual presence of the ‘C’ type of voice.
From the present study it emerges clearly that L2 writers feel obliged to adopt and employ the rhetorical strategies they have encountered in the aca-demic discourse and very likely have been actively instructed to reproduce in their texts. In the structured writing prompt the number of discursive resources to signal the individual self-numbered 14 over the whole corpus, as opposed to 182 in the free writing task. The number of discursive resources to signal the collective self in the structured task numbered 89 over the whole corpus as opposed to 62 in the free writing task, and the number of discursive resources to signal the depersonalized self in the structured task numbered 201 as opposed to 39 in the free writing task. It is evident then that L2 students’ academic writing mirrors their perceived and/or received notion of what constitutes aca-demic writing in their discipline.
8 Considerations for future pedagogic practices: The role of I-writing in the formation of student-writer voice
influ-ence of the experiinflu-ence of writing from a personal perspective (referred to as ‘I-writing’) on the construction of authorial voice, “I invite them [students] to write as though they are a central speaker at the center of the universe-rather than feeling, as they often do, that they must summarize what others have said and only make modest rejoinders from the edge of the conversation” (Elbow, 1995: 80). Deprived of this experience, they will otherwise be test-takers, not writers.
However, Elbow’s belief in the importance of I-writing in the formation of student-writer voice has raised some objections. Bartholomae, for example, in his response to Elbow’s views declares, “I begin by not granting the writer her ‘own’ presence in that paper, by denying the paper’s status as a record of or route to her own thoughts and feelings. I begin instead by asking her to read her paper as a text already written by the culture …. I begin by being dismissive” (1995: 85). He argues that critical writing, not personal narrative, is central to effective academic writing. For Bartholomae, a university’s goal is to teach stu-dents to do what academics do, and this can only be achieved through working with and reproducing key texts, which would naturally involve understanding and employing others’ terms, and struggling with problems of quotation, cita-tion and paraphrase.
This discussion as to the role and importance of individual input in aca-demic writing has a long history. In his diachronic study of what acaaca-demic discourse expects students to know and write, Connors (1987) takes a less radi-cal position than Bartholomae, by pointing out that from Ancient times to the present there have been two fundamental positions on this issue. He observes that Ancient rhetoric was a public discipline and therefore to argue from per-sonal opinion was considered both arrogant and intellectually inferior (Con-nors 1987: 167). This view on what constitutes effective rhetoric continued until the middle of the 19th century, when an impersonal line of argument was super-seded by an individual perspective, which was characterized by the uniqueness of the writer’s own experience and views. Connors concluded that today, sub-sequently, we are faced with the problem of what kind of writing should be taught to tertiary-level students, “honest personal writing” or “writing that gets the world’s work done” (1987) (see also Elbow, 1995; Macrorie, 1984; Britton, 1970).
as autonomous artifacts but as open interwoven forms backed by belief sys-tems and highly independent with both oral and written channels” (Heath, 1993: 124). Following on from this, we see the purpose of education as being twofold: endowing students with the discipline-specific, linguistic tools neces-sary to participate in the discipline’s discourse community, and perhaps more importantly, helping them find their own voice, which is often formed first in personal writing. We feel that I-writing has an important part to play in chang-ing the academic experience from a space, in which “students succeed only if their class or cultural identity is stripped away in favour of a middle-class or cultural habitus, generating the feelings of loss and alienation” (LeCourt, 2006: 30–31), into a space where students can find their individual voice, from which they can construct their academic identity.
9 Conclusion
Considering academic writer identity as having the three aspects of individual, collective and depersonalized voice, and locating it within the broader frame-work for authorial self-representation, has enabled us to show that inviting and facilitating the development of individual writer-voice has a liberating power for L2 student-writers. This view emphasizes the role human agency can play in the construction of academic writer identity. In exercising their agentive power, L2 writers, who struggle to communicate from one identity position, are able to re-evaluate their position in the social context in which they write and claim identities with which they feel comfortable. This perspective also allows for the reassessment of the relationships within the following traditional duali-ties: individual-social, self-other, native-non-native speaker which, when their dominance is not challenged, can obstruct the process of L2 writer identity for-mation.
To sum up, the power that institutionally sanctioned rhetorical conven-tions have over L2 student-writers’ outputs has important consequences for their emergent writer identities. It is clear that often student-writers do not feel legitimated by the institutional and disciplinary contexts to take a strong authorial stance and establish authority for the content of their writing. These limitations restrict the students’ agentive power to search for new linguis-tic resources from both L1 and L2, which could allow them to resist these imposed identities and enable them to negotiate authorial identities they iden-tify with.
emerges when student-authors are empowered to incorporate their interests, convictions, and personalities into the text (National Writing Project & Nagin, 2003). However, the study findings reveal that this unique voice, one that is true to itself, i.e., fitting the needs and intentions of the writer, as opposed to those of a particular audience, does not occur in the structured writing sam-ples of the study corpus. If we want students to take on the power of agentive writers we should not sabotage the essential dynamic of being the writer, which entails having the opportunity to speak in her/his own voice. In considering the process of voice acquisition by student-writers, Kramsch (2001) accentuates the key role of English language teachers, who are charged with the respon-sibility to “help students not only become acceptable and listened to users of English by adopting the culturally sanctioned genres, styles, and rhetorical con-ventions of the English speaking world, but to gain a profit of distinction by using English in ways that are unique to their multilingual and multicultural sensibilities” (2001: 16, bolding ours).
The present study also addresses Elbow’s call for academic researchers and teachers to “[…] step outside of either/or thinking (usually adversarial) and work out a both/and approach that embraces contraries. Such thinking can often release us from dead-end critical arguments that are framed by the unex-amined assumption that, if two positions seem incompatible, only one can be valid” (Elbow, 2007: 13). In this way, Elbow evokes a more inclusive view of approaching academic writing which can contain the private, personal and individual as well as the social dimension of language and writing, all of which can be found in students’ authorial self-representations.
valu-able resource for non-native users to recover their identity as L2 writers. As Kramsch and Lam observe,
Written texts offer non-native speakers opportunities for finding textual homes outside the boundaries of local or national communities. The uses of literacies in today’s global, multicultural economy are likely to alter our notions who is native and who is native. Indeed they make non-nativeness in the sense of ‘outsideness’ one of the most important criteria for creativity and innovation.
kramsch & lam, 1999: 71
Finally, as the results of the study draw attention to the power of cultural and institutional contexts to facilitate or restrict identity construction of L2 aca-demic writers through their textual self-representations, it is hoped that these findings can influence pedagogical approaches to developing writing skills in a wider area of academic endeavours.
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A Appendices
A.1 Appendix 1: Free writing sample
prompt: What does your name mean? Freely? Write about names: names you like, names you don’t, how a name can affect a person’s life, how you feel about your own name, why your parents chose your name, etc.
A.2 Appendix 2: Opinion-giving essay
prompt: These days young people are often faced with a dilemma; whether to leave their studies and go out to work or to continue their studies and get higher qualifications. Think about all the advantages and disadvantages of each deci-sion and make notes as below;
Advantages of continuing studies Advantages of work 1. Higher earnings in future 1. Better earnings now
2. 2.
3. 3.
Now pick one of the two choices and write a 250-word essay outlining the advantages and disadvantages of that choice. Be sure your thesis statement clearly states the overall theme of your essay and the topic sentences introduce your separate arguments.
A.3 Appendix 3: Voice scoring rubric
‘I’ voice ‘C’ voice ‘D’ voice
Discursive resources that commu-nicate the individual self
Discursive resources that commu-nicate the collective self
Discursive resources that commu-nicate the depersonalized self singular self-mentions:
I + opinion verb—e.g. I think/ believe/suppose
plural self-mentions: we, us, our
e.g. The internet has improved
pronoun references:
(cont.)
‘I’ voice ‘C’ voice ‘D’ voice
expressions of perception + me— e.g. it seems /appears + me it is clear/certain/obvious + to me; my + noun phrase—e.g. my + view/opinion is …
boosters:
e.g. certainly, without doubt, for sure
attitude markers: e.g. arguably, unfortunately, undoubtedly
1st, 2nd and 3rd conditionals to express opinion*
If Britain leaves the EU, it will affect the other 27 countries. If you studied harder, you would get better grades.
If you hadn’t gone to the confer-ence you wouldn’t have met Mrs Perfect.
*Modal verbs in conditional sen-tences carry full ideational weight which is concerned with the use of language to represent experi-ence and ideas, and individual perceptions of the world. The communicative purpose of modal verbs in this use is to position the reader with respect to the writer’s point of view and her/his value judgement referenced in the text.
our ability to communicate with other cultures.
reader engagement markers: e.g. consider, note that, you can see, you will agree that frame markers - express struc-tural relations at paragraph and sentence levels:
e.g. my purpose here is, first / sec-ond / third, finally, to conclude transitions—express semantic relations between clauses: time relations:
e.g. after, before, by the time, meanwhile;
listing additional ideas: e.g. most importantly, one / another reason is, also, addi-tionally, however, but, thus, and, moreover;
giving examples:
e.g. as an illustration, specifically / particularly, such as, namely, in other words.
e.g. one, you, your, he, his, him, she, her, they, their, them, (*peo-ple)
passive forms
e.g. it is believed / thought; e.g. It is considered as one of the most important discoveries of modern times.
evidentials —direct and indirect speech
e.g. Anderson argues that, “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”.
e.g. X states / argues / thinks, according to Y
hedges modal verbs: might, may, could, can adverbs:
A.4 Appendix 4: Voice evaluation sheet Script number Number of discursive resources to signal the individual self ‘I’ voice Number of discursive resources to signal the collective self ‘C’ voice Number of discursive resources to signal the depersonalized self ‘D’ voice Dominant voice Script# Script# Script#
A.5 Appendix 5: Raw data
Script number Number of discursive resources to signal the individual self ‘I’ voice Number of discursive resources to signal the collective self ‘C’ voice Number of discursive resources to signal the depersonalized self ‘D’ voice Dominant voice
opinion giving essays
(cont.) Script number Number of discursive resources to signal the individual self ‘I’ voice Number of discursive resources to signal the collective self ‘C’ voice Number of discursive resources to signal the depersonalized self ‘D’ voice Dominant voice Script# 12 1 7 10 D Script# 13 0 11 15 D
free writing samples
