Chapter 1: Introduction
This book is about the ways in which writing intersects with identity. ...it presents one overarching argument: Writing is an act of identity in which people align themselves with socio-culturally shaped possibilities for self-hood, playing their part in reproducing or challenging dominant practices and discourses, and the values, beliefs and interests which they embody (31-32)
As Candlin (in his preface to Fairclough 1989) writes:
...we should address our talents as explorers and explainers to those texts which evidence crucial moments in discourse where participants may be placed at social risk during communication, suffering disadvantage in consequence of the inequalities of communication (viii-ix)
Many mature students have obtained regular qualifications for entering higher education at school, and have just delayed taking up their opportunities. Even these people often find academic life in general, and its literacy demands in particular, alienating. The values, beliefs and literacy practices they have developed outside education affect the way they view and undertake academic writing assignments. (5)
I suggest that mature students engaged in academic assignments provide a prime example of such "crucial moments in discourse". They have not had a smooth, interrupted path through the education system like regular undergraduates, so what is demanded of them is unlikely to 'come naturally'. Returning to study represents a turning point in their lives, when other adult commitments and experiences--other social worlds--are juxtaposed with the academic world. In such circumstances they are caught up in conflicting social pressures when writing. Whatever aspect of writing we are interested in is therefore likely to be thrown into sharp focus by studying these writers. (5-6)
...when working with mature students, multiple and conflicting identity in writing is hard to ignore (6).
Referring to studies conducted by researchers exploring identity and participation in academic communities in higher education: "These studies establish that entering higher education as a mature student is associated with change, difficulty, crises of confidence, conflicts of identity, feelings of strangeness, the need to discover the rules of an unfamiliar world. (7)
Interviews and personal accounts such as these testify to the way mature students feel alienated and devalued within the institution of higher education. Their identities are threatened, and they respond either by attempting to accommodate to the established values and practices of the contexts they are entering, or--more radically--by questioning and challenging the dominant values and practices, and recognizing the possibility of change. (9)
In this book I use the verb 'identify' and its nominalization 'identification' to focus on the processes whereby individuals align themselves with groups, communities, and/or sets of interests, values, beliefs and practices. (11)
[Mature students] are at a critical time in their lives, ostensibly re-categorizing themselves as adults-with-higher-education, having for many years been, among other things, adults-without-higher-education. In addition, they have already identified themselves with social groups outside higher education--probably more fully than many regular undergraduates. In this study I view writing as both evidence of these processes and an act which contributes to them. (14)
However, individuals do not define themselves entirely in terms of group membership(s). They also have a sense of themselves as defined by their difference from others they encounter. (14)
The question of similarity, boundaries and difference is a fraught one for mature students. They feel themselves 'the same as' other members of the academic community, but also have strong ties with other groups from whom the academic community might seem to be differentiating itself. The boundary which might help to establish their identity is not at all clear: even as they engage in 'boundary work' to identify themselves with the community they are entering, they feel untrue to themselves. The writing of an academic essay is a particularly powerful instance of such boundary work. (14)
Mature students are likely to be juggling multiple, often conflicting identities in their writing, as I illustrate in Chapters 6, 8 and 10. (15)
the study of identity in relation to the academic writing of mature students (16)
I suggest that there are three ways of thinking about the identity of a person in the act of writing, which I am calling the writer's 'autobiographical self', the 'discoursal self' which the writer constructs in the act of writing, and the 'self as author', referring to a writer's relative authoritativeness. These three 'selves' are all socially constructed and socially constructing in that they are shaped by and shape the more abstract 'possibilities for self-hood' which exist in the writer's socio-cultural context. (24)
- Autobiographical Self: This is the identity which people bring with them to any act of writing, shaped as it is by their prior social and discoursal history...this aspect of identity is associated with a writer's sense of their roots, of where they are coming from, and that this identity they bring with them to writing is itself socially constructed and constantly changing as a consequence of their developing life-history: it is not some fixed, essential 'real self'. The term also captures the idea that it is not only the events in people's lives, but also their way of representing these experiences to themselves which constitutes their current way of being. ... It is difficult to make categorical statements about the nature of a writer's autobiographical self, since it may be below the level of consciousness. The autobiographical aspect of writer identity is the focus of Chapter 7... (24-25)
- Discoursal Self: A writer's 'discoursal self' is the impression--often multiple, sometimes contradictory--which they consciously or unconsciously convey of themself in a particular written text. ... It is fleeting, insofar that it is tied to a particular text, yet it may leave a relatively permanent impression of the writer on whoever reads the writing. It is concerned with the writer's 'voice' in the sense of the way they want to sound, rather than in the sense of the stance they are taking. ...The writer's discoursal self is the main focus of this book... (25-26) ... Writers construct a 'discoursal self' not out of an infinite range of possibilities, but out of the possibilities for self-hood which are supported by the socio-cultural and institutional context in which they are writing. The constraints and possibilities open to the particular writer interact with the constraints on and possibilities for self-hood which are opened up by a particular occasion for writing. Possibilities for self-hood also socially construct the self as author: there are conventions for whether and how to establish authorial presence which differ from one type of writing to another, and from one social context to another. These conventions influence whether and how actual writers establish themselves as authors in their writing. (28)
- Self as Author: Writers see themselves to a greater or lesser extent as authors, and present themselves to a greater or lesser extent as authors. The self as author is likely to be to a considerable extent a product of a writer's autobiographical self: the writer's life-history may or may not have generated ideas to express, and may or many not have engendered in the writer enough of a sense of self-worth to write with authority, to establish an authorial presence. (26) While I do not devote a chapter of Part Two to this aspect of writer identity exclusively...
- Negotiating a 'discoursal self' is an integral part of the writing process: there is no such thing as 'impersonal writing'. (32)
- Writers create an impression of themselves--a discoursal self--through the discourse choices they make as they write, which align them with socially available subject positions. (32)
- Some discourses are more powerful, and/or more highly valued than others, and people are under pressure to participate in them through adopting them in their writing. (32)
- In spite of these powerful shaping social forces, individual writers participate in the construction of their discoursal identities through selection (mainly subconscious) among the subject positions they feel socially mandated, willing, or daring enough, to occupy. (32)
- Writers bring an 'autobiographical self' to an act of writing. This is shaped by their life-histories and the social groups with which they identify. (32)
- A writer's autobiographical self influences the discoursal self they construct for themselves in a specific piece of writing, and leads them to own or disown aspects of it. (32)
- When people enter what is for them a new social context such as higher education, they are likely to find that its discourses and practices support identities which differ from those they bring with them (33)
Possibilities for Self-hood: "prototypical possibilities for self-hood which are available to all writers in the social context of writing: 'social' identities in teh sense that they do not belong to particular individuals. In any institutional context there will be several socially available possibilities for self-hood: several ways of doing the same thing. Of these, some will be privileged over others, in the sense that the institution accords them more status. (27)
...possibilities for self-hood and the patterns of privileging among them shape and constrain actual people writing actual texts. These possibilities for self-hood do not exist in a vacuum, but are themselves shaped by individual acts of writing in which people take on particularly discoursal identities. (27)
In my view several types of socially available resources for the construction of identity operate simultaneously: it is not just a question of occupying one subject position or another, but rather of being multiply positioned by drawing on possibilities for self-hood on several dimensions. (28-29)
One of the ways of occupying a subject position is by writing. Social, cultural, and institutional posssibilities for self-hood shape all three aspects of the identity of 'actual' writers (28).
Writers construct a 'discoursal self' not out of an infinite range of possibilities, but out of the possibilities for self-hood which are supported by the socio-cultural and institutional context in which they are writing. The constraints and possibilities open to the particular writer interact with the constraints and possibilities for self-hood which are opened up by an particular occasion of writing (28)
...a writer's discoursal self in any particular piece of writing is constituted by their adoption of a particular configuration of possibilities for self-hood which position them in terms of relations of power, interests, values and beliefs. (29)
The three aspects of the identity of an actual writer change, perhaps quite radically, from one act of writing to the next. A writer's autobiographical self is constantly evolving over time. A writer might construct a quite different discoursal self from one text to another, depending partly on autobiographical changes and partly on the different demands of different occasions for writing. A writer may be relatively authoritative in one text, and relatively unauthoritative in another. However, the socially available possibilities for self-hood change much more slowly over time. (29)
This seems like a key point for me--Brad exercised this particular discoursal identity in relation to this particular assignment and text, and not in all of the writing that he did at GSC.
Argument of the Book: Writing is an act of identity in which people align themselves with socio-culturally shaped possibilities for self-hood, playing their part in reproducing or challenging dominant practices and discourses, and the values, beliefs and interests which they embody. (32)
Chapter 2: Discourse and Identity
I am suggesting that social identity consists firstly of a person's set of values and beliefs about reality, and these affect the ideational meaning which they convey through language. Social identity consists secondly of a person's sense of their relative status in relation to others with whom they are communicating, adn this affects the interpersonal meaning which they convey through language. A third component of social identity is a person's orientation to language use, and this will affect the way they construct their message.... The way in which language constructs and conveys all three aspects of social identity for writers is the focus of this book (41).
Genres are shaped by institutionally defined purposes, roles, and the social relationships associated with them, such as 'student' -- subordinate to tutor, applicant -- subordinate to admissions tutor; administrator --sometimes wielding power over academic staff, sometimes subject to their power. So the conventions of genres make available certain roles and role relationships, which people may conform to, or they may resist. (46)
Discourses, by contrast, are shaped by subject-matters and ideologies such as history, skiing, a feminist perspective, a commitment to disabled people's rights. By making particular discourse choices, writers are aligning themselves with particular interests (in terms of subject-matter) and ideologies. In recognizing the way in which writing constructs identities it is important to keep both these aspects of identity in mind. (46)
I have drawn a picture of writers positioning themselves by the discourse types they draw upon. (55)
Chapter 3: Literacy and Identity
...identity as a crucial factor in academic writing. (62)
...written language is different from spoken language insofar that speaking usually takes place in a single physical context, whereas the writing takes place in a different physial context from the reading. This explains why people who are used to making meaning in face-to-face interaction may encounter considerable difficulties when academic writing requires them to communicate without the immediate presence of their interlocutor" (62)
...acquiring certain literacy practices involves becoming a certain type of person. (67)
Mature students are adults who are changing their identity: attempting to take up membership of the academic community which is an addition to, possibly at odds with, other aspects of their identity. They will be encountering literacy practices which belong to people with social identities different from theirs. In order to take on these new aspects to their identities, they need to engage in these practices; in order to engage in these practices they need to be people of this sort. It is a vicious circle, fraught with conflicts of identity. Most mature students are outsiders to the literacies they have to control in order to be successful in higher education. (68)
What distinguishes students is not whether they are or are not literate, but the characteristics of the repertoire of resources they bring with them to the task. (70)
Becoming more literate is in itself an issue of identity. People who feel more at home with spoken language as a way of communicating may have ambivalent feelings about the identities supported by written language. On the one hand, these are likely to be prestigious identities, and so it is in people's interests to develop and extend their literacies. On the other hand, they may be alien identities, and this will get in the way of engaging in the literate practices which support them. For some of my co-researchers, becoming a student entailed taking on the identity of a person who reads and writes, an identity about which some felt more positive than others. (70)
Chapter 4: Issues of Identity in Academic Writing
The notion of discourse communities is particularly relevant to the study of writer identity, because each individual takes on an identity in relation to the communities they come into contact with. Discourse communities are the "social" element in the expression "the social construction of identity": a person's identity is constructed by their membership of, their identification with, the values and practices of one or more communities. One of the ways in which people identify with a community is through the intertextual process of adopting its discourse... (83)
...student writers are not only drawing intertextually on the discourse of the community they are entering, but also on the discourses they bring with them (85).
As readers of student writing, we can approach our students' texts with an eye toward locating the multiple competing and/or interanimating discourses manifest in each. (Recchio 447).
My own view of writer identity starts with the same assumptions as Ritchie's and Recchio's: that the student writer's "own" discourse is not something totally original, but a "rich stew" of the discourses with which s/he is familiar. (85)
This is a crucial insight, because the one thing that characterizes most of the writers I worked with was a sense of inferiority, a lack of confidence in themselves, a sense of powerlessness, a view of themselves as people without knowledge, and hence without authority. For some, this was the legacy of a working-class background. For others, it was associated with age or gender; for all, it was associated with previous failure in the education system and an uncertainty as to whether they had the right to be members of the academic community at all. On the other hand, there are some who bring authority of different types into the academic institution from different domains, such as business, local politics or parenthood: authority which often goes unrecognized by the academic community. (88)
Writer identity is, surely, a central concern for any theory of writing in two senses: what writers bring to the act of writing, and how they construct their identities through the act of writing itself. (94)
[Goffman] claims that people employ complex strategies to manipulate the impression they convey of themselves. (99)
In terms of written communication, writers' discoursal choices--and hence, self-representation--will be constrained partly by teh discourses to which they have had access adn partly by what they anticipate will create a good impression in the mind of the readers, especially if the readers exert any power over the writer, as they do over students writing academic assignments. (99)
"Unintentional expressions" of identity, however, pervade all human action. This is one of my reasons for claiming that no writing is ever 'impersonal': whether writers like it or not, they are "giving off" an impression of themselves through their social action of writing, from the large-scale action of being involved in an act of writing of any sort, through the many social, cognitive and physical practices they engage in in order to do it, to the moment-by-moment linguistic choices they make in constructing their written message. (100)
Goffman points out that individuals have little control over the expression that they "give off", and that this is likely to be what others use to form their opinion (6). ... As I argue throughout this book, writers are usually unaware that they are "giving off" an impression of themselves in this way. (100)
Goffman: "when an individual projects a definition of the situation and thereby makes an implicit or explicit claim to be a person of a particular kind, he automatically exerts a moral demand upon the others, obliging them to value and treat him in the manner that persons of his kind have a right to expect. he also implicitly forgoes all claims to be things he does not appear to be and hence forgoes the treatment that would be appropriate for such individuals. (11-12, qtd on p. 101).
...but in the academic community writing is the dominant form of social action for giving evidence of our selves (101).
I am claiming that writing is an act of identity in which both discourse-as-carrier-of-social-values and discourse-as-social-interaction play a part. (104)
...the ways in which their identities are inscribed in writing practices (105)
...I have been focusing on issues of identity which, in my view, contribute to a more dynamic way of understanding academic literacies as multiple, shifting and open to contestation and change. I have been emphasizing the dangers of thinking about entering academic discourse community as a process of initiation into powerful discourses, and suggesting instead that there is always tension and struggle at the interface between the institution and its members. Students bring into institutions of higher education multiple practices and possibilities for self-hood, all of which have the potential to challenge the status quo. The act of writing a particular assignment is a social interaction in which all these issues are brought into play. (106)
Part Two: Overview
…the overarching argument that writing is an act of identity in which writers align themselves with interests (in both senses), values, beliefs, practices and power relations through their discourse choices (see the end of chapter 1 for a more detailed outline of this argument). (109)
academic literacy is not a neutral unproblematic skill which students simply have to acquire, but a multiple, complex and contested set of social practices which should be given more explicit and critical attention by all members of the academic community (109).
Chapter 6: Writing and Identity
Student members of the academic community are, on the whole, receivers of knowledge rather than contributors to it. (143)
...discoursal positioning as a student of... (145)
persona
The identity which she owns, that of an academic who makes a radical feminist analysis of social conditions, is up-played and down-played at the same time. It's here, but it's at the end. (149)
Interesting to note that with Tony, it was the opposite--he only tacked on the academic piece, at the end, where he felt it absolutely necessary to nod in this direction. For most of the rest of the piece, he is constructing a professional identity.
Persona
the process of accommodating to readers' expectations is central to the discoursal construction of identity (157)
...it was also part of the mainly (but not entirely) subconscious process of constructing an impression of herself as knowledgeable: a highly valued quality in the academic discourse community. (165)
This chapter brings together a number of complimentary methodological approaches around a single case-study. In the first section I gave biographical details of Rachel's life, derived from successive and extensive interviews, conversations, and meetings. In the central part of the chapter I presented detailed linguistic analyses of the discoursal characteristics of extracts from Rachel's writing using Halliday's Functional Grammar (1994) as my main analytical tool... In the later sections of the chapter I drew on other parts of these discourse-based interviews to discuss her sense of owning or disowning these discoursally constructed identities, and the role or her anticipation of the readers in her self-presentation. (168-169)
OVERVIEW: Chapters 7 and 8 form a pair in that they document what my co-researchers said about factors which influenced how they portrayed themselves in their writing. In chapter 7...I discuss the way in which the resources on which writers draw are themselves socially and discoursally constructed by their life experiences. In chapter 8...I consider these choices from the point of view of social interaction: the way in which writers select (consciously or unconsciously) among the discourses on which they are drawing according to their allegiances and sense of the discoursal self they want to convey, and the influence of their readers... Chapter 7 is concerned with what writers bring with them from the past to the act of writing; the first part of Chapter 8 is concerned with the self which is discoursally constructed at the moment of writing; the second part of Chapter 8 is concerned with the way in which writers anticipate a future moment when readers construct an impression of them on the basis of their writing. (122)
Chapter 7: The Origins of Discoursal Identity in Writers' Experience
In this chapter I propose that the discoursal repertoires which writers bring to the act of writing--the 'voices', in Bakhtin's terms--are rooted in their experience, and particularly in their encounters with real people and real texts. (181)
All our writing is influenced by our life-histories. Each word we write represents an encounter, possibly a struggle, between our multiple past experience and the demands of a new context. Writing is not some neutral activity in which we just learn like a physical skill, but it implicates every fibre of the writer's multifaceted being. Who we are affects how we write, whatever we are writing, whether it is a letter to a friend or a dissertation. (181-182)
'Who we are' means, firstly, the subject positions and social relations which are set up for us as a consequence of our social class, ethnicity, gender, physical build, abilities and disabilities, and the way these are constructed in the socio-cultural context in which we live. (182)
I am suggesting, following Vygotsky's theory of the social nature of cognitive development, that a writer's 'autobiographical self' at any moment in time is the product of their past experiences and encounters in all their richness and complexity, shaped as they are by their social opportunities and constraints. (182)
...I suggest that writers take forward into the next moment of their lives the elements represented in italics in Figure 7.1: interests (in both senses), ideas, opinions and commitments, 'voices', sense of self-worth, and practices, including literacy practices. Byinterests I mean, mainly, the topics people are interested in, but the word has a second meaning, too: what it is in people's interests to be doing. With ideas, opinions, and commitments I include attitudes, values, and beliefs in relation to a wide range of issues, depending on the writers experiences and on the other people they have encountered and been influenced by, and the allegiances they have formed as a result. Voices can mean the same as 'ideas and opinions', but it has another meaning which is the main focus of this chapter: voices in the sense of ways with words, accents, grammatical, lexical and broader discoursal choices, feeling 'at home' in particular genres and discourses. People's life-experiences also create theirsense of self-worth: their sense of status in relation to others in a range of social situations. Finally, people bring with them from their past experience a set of familiar practices, including literacy practices, on which they will draw during a new act of writing. (182-183)
As people write, they have no alternative but to draw on the voices with which they are familiar: to write in ways that they have acquired through their life experience. Some wriers have an immense repertoire of voices, of 'styles', from which to choose; some bring to the act of writing a set of contradictory voices: a repertoire shaped by a very varied life. (184)
The discourse types on which writers draw have entered their consciousness in some way, through specific spoken or written interactions. (185)
An aspect of this process which emerges strongly from the data is that in most cases the writers have expressed a desire to identify with the individual from whom they acquired a discourse characteristic. This desire to identify is motivated either by an admiration for something about that individual or, when the individual is their tutor, a desire to please the tutor by appearing to hold the same values and thereby get good marks (186) THIS IS TONY!!!
...some of my co-researchers were able to identify the actual texts or events which were being echoed by some aspects or sections of their writing. (186) And this is like when Tony makes the connection during our follow up interview to/with his run-reports--"everything I write is..."
...the insidiousness of the discoursal construction of identity. People can acquire a particular form subconsciously through intertextual encounters, and then when they use it in their own writing they position themselves (to some readers) in ways of which they are unaware. (198)
The examples in this section so far have illustrated something which is intuitively obvious: that writers draw on discourse characteristics they have encountered during the lectures, seminars, reading, and assignment setting processes which are part of their course, and/or courses. My co-researchers were also able to give insights into origins of their discourses in intertextual encounters from further afield: in their lives outside, beyond and before higher education (203).
...the actual intertextual origins of some portions or aspects of their writing (211).
I suggest that there is a similarly rich history behind every piece of writing, if only every writer had the opportunity to reveal it. (211)
Different aspects of a single essay may originate in widely diverse events in the writer's history, both within and beyond the academic discourse community. (212)
...noticing and adopting a discourse is often associated with strong feelings of identification with the individuals who use it. People may be roused to such strong feelings by admiration for and desire to identify either with individuals, or with what they stand for, or a mixture of the two. It often involves strong feelings at the moment of encounter--very personal, committed, aesthetic, emotional, and/or sensual, even physical feelings. (212)
...access to discourses is not random or arbitrary, but socially constrained: all people do not have equal opportunities to hear, read, try out and gradually adopt discourses and their associated identities. Rather, the social worlds in which people move define these opportunities, and consequently restrict the discoursal resources people have available for self-presentation. It is not just a question of accidents of individual biography, but the differential opportunities whicha re shaped by class, gender, and race. (213)
Chapter 8: The Sense of Self and the Role of the Reader in the Discoursal Construction of Writer Identity
Sometimes the writer's interests, values and beliefs coincide with their reader's: the person they desire to be coincides happily with the person they are demanded to be. However, this is not always so and some of my co-researchers felt constrained to present themselves in ways which, in retrospect, they preferred to disown. (217)
Some writers accommodate willingly to their readers' expectations as regards the conventions of academic writing and the identities these set up: a happy coincidence of desire and demand. Some resist the pressure to conform, and are determined to establish what they see as their own identity against the odds. Others are somewhere in between, having a love-hate relationship with academic community membership. (217)
None of the writers except possibly Justin consistently owned the impression they felt they were conveying of themselves. Most of them felt ambivalent about identifying themselves with what they saw as the dominant ideologies of the academic community. All of them wanted to associate themselves with some aspects of academic community membership: for example to present themselves as knowledgeable and thoughtful. But many of them felt that the conventions forced them to dismiss other aspects of their identity, for example, being committed, caring, or funny. (234)
...identities in a state of flux (241)
Writers cannot portray themselves to readers in a straightforward way. The impression they convey is influenced partly by their own commitments, and partly by what they consider to be their reader's values. People do not always know how they want to present themselves, and it is not always in their best interests to show their colours openly. Consequently writers often create a 'discoursal self' about which they feel ambivalent, owning some aspects of it and disowning others. (251)
Writers must anticipate simultaneously the reader's responses to the content...and the impression the readers will gain of them from the writing. (251)
Chapter 9: The Discoursal Construction of Academic Community Membership
Many parts of the essays are organized according to the problem-solution pattern discussed by Hoey (1983 and elsewhere).
Hoey, M. 1983. On the Surface of Discourse. London: Allen and Unwin.
Hoey, Michael. "Overlapping patterns of discourse organization and their implications for clause relational analysis in problem-solution texts." In Cooper, Charles R.; Sidney Greenbaum (Eds.),
Studying writing: Linguistic approaches. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage (1986): 187-214.
P302.S78 1986
In this chapter I have discussed discourse characteristics in the eight writers' essays which lead me to identify them as academic discourse, and to see the writers positioned within the academic community, more specifically within the social science sub-community. (279)
In terms of the dimensions of writer identity which I introduced in Chapter 1, I am claiming that one aspect of each of these writers' 'discoursal self' was academic community membership. By participating in these particular discourse practices, the writers took on the persona of a member of the academic community. (279)
Chapter 1o
The available discoursal resources for self-representation
Snatches of different discourses can be patched together, and this is what leads to the shifts and contradictions in the discoursal self which I discussed in chapter 8. (281)
The way in which writers draw on discourse conventions which are not exclusive to the academic discourse community (282)
The intellectual project of these fields of study is, I suggest, to attend in detail to the plots, characters, images and forms of these works [cultural creations, including film, architecture, street theatre and television series], identifying their significance in terms of their cultural context... These are what Macdonald (1989) calls conceptually-driven rather than data-driven fields of study in which interpretive skill is highly valued (289)
...individual writers often shift identity within a single piece of writing. Positioning
By adopting a voice associated with a particular field of study, a writer is aligning herself or himself with its objects of study and knowledge-making practices. (295)
I suggest that there is a continuum between types of writing in which the writer has higher status and therefore more power than the reader, and types of writing in which the power relations are reversed. To illustrate this, I draw a broad working distinction between two types of writing in the academic community at opposite ends of this continuum: an essay for assessment, in which the role of the writer is to be a student, an apprentice, still on the margins of community membership, and an article for publication, in which the role of the writers is to be an insider with the "special write to speak": to contribute to the knowledge-making projects of the community. This is not a watertight distinction: the evidence here shows the two genres leaking into each other in the writing of second year undergraduates, and reveals contradictions between the two writer roles they set up. (297)
The task of writing an essay which has ben assigned and will be assessed by a tutor positions writers as students rather than as contributors. (297)
The social purpose of an academic article is quite different. Broadly, it is to make a contribution to knowledge, although the nature of this contribution differs from one field of study to another. (300)
...taking on the persona of fully fledged membership of the academic community (301).
I associate four characteristics with what Bartholomae calls "being insiders, ... granted a special right to speak". (301-303)
- Uses of the first-person
- Unattributed assertions
- Presupposed shared knowledge
- Making claims
All of the writers...seemed on the whole to be discoursally positioned as students, as members of the community who do not yet have the privilege of "being granted a special right to speak." (303)
While discoursally positioning themselves predominantly as students, these writers are occasionally trying on the clothes of the expert. (303)
...the way in which different possibilities for self-hood are inscribed in the discourses of different fields of study. (334)
In this same chapter, I suggested that there may be a relationship between writers' life histories, their sense of self-worth, the way in which they are discoursally positioned by their writing, and ideologies of authorship in the academic community. (334)
Chapter 11
My central focus has been on what I have been calling the 'discoursal self': the portrayal of self which writers construct through their deployment of discoursal resources in their own written texts. (327)
In this chapter, I address the question: 'So what?' Why is 'writer identity', and more specifically, 'the discoursal self' of interest in the study of language, literacy and writing? Perhaps more important: How might an understanding of 'the discoursal self' contribute to the improvement of teaching and learning about writing in higher education? (327)
In each of Chapters 7-10 I make specific claims about the nature of the 'discoursal self', and how it is connected with the other three aspects of writer identity, which I summarize here:
Chapter 7
--Writers bring their autobiographical self to the act of writing, and with it many resources from their life-history, specifically:
experiences, including direct and indirect encounters with people
interests
ideas, opinions, and commitments
a personal repertoire of 'voices' (discourses and genres)
a sense of self-worth
a personal repertoire of practices, including literacy practices
--The discoursal resources out of which writers construct their discoursal self are the product of actual intertextual encounters in the writer's life history. (328)
Chapter 8
The construction of a writer's discoursal self is mediated by social interaction. That is, the actual writer-reader relationship in which an act of writing is embedded influences how writers portray themselves through their discoursal choices. (328)
Chapter 9 and 10
A writer's discoursal self is constructed by the socially available possibilities for self-hood to which s/he has access, and the patterns of privileging among them (329)
Chapter 10
--Academic discourse is not monolithic, and hence there are not one but many socially available possibilities for self-hood within the academic community (329)
--Writers creatively recombine the discoursal resources at their disposal in order to construct the unique discoursal self which they present in their writing (329)
It is important to bring the writer into the picture in relation to other elements in a social view of writing. As I argued at the end of Chapter 4, considerable attention has been paid to the context, the reader, the task, goals and purposes, and processes, but researchers other than Cherry have neglected the writer, perhaps for fear of seeming overly romantic and 'a-social' by discussing the individual who produces the writing. I hope that my approach restores the various aspects of 'the writer' to their place as a legitimate object of interest in a social view of writing. (329)
...the interplay between the autobiographical self, socially available possibilities for self-hood, and the discoursal self. (330)-- My purpose is to examine the interplay between...
I think this position is greatly enhanced by viewing writing as a site of struggle in which writers are negotiating an identity. This perspective foregrounds the autobiographical self which writers bring with them to the act of writing, and throws into question which subject positions they might want to occupy, and which they might choose to resist. Writers may not be willing to compromise their identity by becoming party to the dominant practices of the community. (331-32)
There is no such thing as 'impersonal writing'; rather, every written text is, among other things, a statement of the identity of the writer, and hence in itself a form of social action. Through the discoursal construction of self in writing, students can assert or negate particular versions of self (in addition to asserting or negating particular representations of the world), thereby contributing to the reproduction or contestation of patterns of privileging among subject-positions within the academic community. (332)
In my view, the guiding questions I was asking are worth pursuing with different groups: what versions of self are these writers constructing for themselves discoursally, which do they own and disown and why? (333)
Another complimentary line of research which would be worth pursuing would be to look at how the same person constitutes their identity differently in different settings, both through their writing and through other semiotic means. This would be particularly interesting because it would put academic literacy into perspective: a person's identity is bound to prove much more diverse on such evidence, and it would be possible to trace interplay between different aspects of their lives. (335)
I have come to see every act of writing as, among other things, the writer's struggle to create a discoursal self which resolves the tension between their autobiographical self and the possibilities for self-hood available in the academic community. (336)
I have therefore published some of the ideas here in a shorter form (Ivanic, 1995 and a revised version as Chapter 6 in Clark and Ivanic 1997). (336)
Ivanic, R. 1995. "Writer Identity". Prospect: The Australian Journal of TESOL 10: 1-31.
Clark R. and R. Ivanic. 1997. The Politics of Writing. London: Routledge.
Bringing identity explicitly onto the agenda in the learning and teaching of writing transforms it from a local 'fix-this-essay' undertaking into a much more broadly conceived project." (338)
For example, a discussion of subject positioning would focus on socially available possibilities for self-hood, but would also include attention to the writer's sense of who s/he is and where s/he is coming from (autobiographical self), of being positioned as relatively authoritative or lacking in authority, and of the discoursal self which each invididual writer is constructing in their own writing. (338)
Learner writers need to be aware that writing is an extremely complex social act, and it is not their weakness which causes them to get stuck with it. Not just people who are construed as 'learners', but everyone has to face the difficult task of deciding how to present themselves in writing: which discourse types and associated identities to accept, and which to reject.Students need to develop a critical awareness of their own life-histories, and the sorts of social constraints which may be responsible for any difficulties they have with acquiring particular discourse types. If someone is able to blame the inequities of society for the fact that a certain discourse doesn't' come easily to them, and recognize the political implications of this inequity, they are likely to stop taking the blame on their own shoulders for the difficulties they face. This might be a lot more enabling than thinking that they must just try harder. (339)
part of the autobiographical identity which women, older people, Black people, homosexual and bisexual people, and working class people might bring with them to their studies is their sense that they do not have the right to a voice in the academic community. (340)
Complex negotiations of identity lie beneath the surface of what may appear at first glance to be 'inadequate' academic writing. (343)
---
In the next section I show how the linguistic characteristics of essay construct a multiple, sometimes contradictory discoursal self for Rachel. (131)
In this section I show how Rachel moves between at least seven different subject-positions in her essay Family Case Study--some major, some minor; some of which she identifies with, some of which she feels ambivalent about, and some of which she rejects... I show how these identities manifest themselves in specific discoursal choices (she has a comment here about Halliday's functional grammar). (132)
I am suggesting that the discoursal elements which I focus on in these sections construct a workplace identity rather than an identity associated with the academic community (133).
Work-place discoursal and generic characteristics constitute most of the essay, interspersed with academic discoursal and generic characteristics, and with snatches of others along the way. (152-53)
Student members of the academic community are, on the whole, receivers of knowledge rather than contributors to it.” (p. 143)
In spite of these powerful shaping social forces, individual writers participate in the construction of their discoursal identities through selection (mainly subconscious) among the subject positions they feel socially mandated, willing, or daring enough, to occupy. (32)
