Learner-Language Identities: Linguistic Instantiations of Identity in Additional-Language Student Texts
Doctoral thesis
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http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2385620Utgivelsesdato
2016Metadata
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Sammendrag
The study presented explores immigrant student identity construction in additional-language
academic writing. Examining the English language academic writing of upper-secondary
students in Norway, the project charts the relationship between the students’ linguistic
choices and their attitudes towards textual authority, collective identifications and language
retention and loss. The project unfolds within an Applied Linguistics framework, studying
classroom writing for textual traces of student identity construction. Focussing on identity
markers in the form of personal pronouns and referring expressions, the first two articles
index linguistic choices to authorial presence and to larger social practises of identification.
The first of these articles argues for the importance of task type selection in the production of
authorial identity. The second article suggests that bicultural identity is signalled through
inclusive and exclusive referencing patterns. The third article examines student metaphors of
language acquisition, retention and loss in order to discuss issues connected to student
attitudes towards the migration experience. All three articles argue that textual analysis of
student writing can shed light on the connections between linguistic output and identity
construction.