2.2.1 Identity construction in spoken academic int...
Spoken academic discourse has received a great deal of attention from researchers in the field of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) developed in the 1980s. Although various genres of spoken academic discourse and various topics and issues have been widely discussed (e.g. Basturkmen, 1999;Camiciottoli, 2004, 2008; Csomay, 2007; de Klerk, 1995; DeCarrico & Nattinger,1988; Deroey & Taverniers, 2012; Don & Izadi, 2011; Jackson & Bilton, 1994;Limberg, 2010; Lin, 2010, 2012; Olsen & Huckin, 1990; Reinhardt, 2010;Skyrme, 2010; Swales, 2004; Thompson, 1994; Tracy, 1997), only a few studies have concerned identity construction in spoken academic interaction. These studies will be reviewed in detail in the rest of this section.
Tracy and Carjuzáa (1993) examine how academics, mainly faculty and graduate students, enact their identities in intellectual discussions. A discourse-analytic method is used to analyze the data collected from a weekly colloquium and interview. They find that participants from all ranks establish their own intellectual identities (e.g. a highly experienced academic, a novice)in distinct ways and their institutional identity is enacted through three major ways: talk and silence patterns, question types, and responses to non-comprehension. In addition, intellectually challenging moves in interaction are more often made by speakers of higher institutional rank and less challenging ones are made by speakers with lower institutional status.
In another study, Tracy and Naughton (1994) probe into how identity work is done through questioning practices in a colloquium by adopting a discourse-analytic approach. Academic presenters in this context are found to make salient three aspects of their intellectual identity, namely knowledgeability, originality and intellectual sophistication. The use of marked and unmarked question forms is related to their knowledgeability,time references and interest queries are associated with an academic’s degree of originality, and the framework problematizing through lexical choices makes intellectual sophistication salient.
Xia (2009), adopting the notion of “discourse identity” proposed by Zimmerman (1998), investigates the identities constructed by the members of the committee in an MA thesis defence in a Chinese context. After analyzing the use of modality and interpersonal meaning expressed in this academic interaction, she finds that five types of identities are constructed by the members of the committee, namely an examiner, a colleague, a teacher and a scholar, and an educator. Furthermore, different members of the committee construct different identities in their interactions with the same student, thus showing the multiplicity of discourse identity. Although Xia (2009) claims that she has discussed these identities based on “discourse identity” as proposed by Zimmerman (1998), the identities constructed by the members of the committee are not actually the “discourse identities” proposed by Zimmerman (1998).
Dong (2012) examines identity and style in supervision sessions between British supervisors and Chinese students by combining Conversation Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis, ethnographic accounts and discourse analysis,qualitative and quantitative analysis. After investigating three levels of identity relations (i.e., interactional, institutional and sociocultural), he finds that supervisors tend to play such roles as topic organiser, questioner,evaluator and adviser while students tend to play such roles as topic follower,answerer, evaluated and advisee. Although his study provides a fine-grained analysis of identity construction and individual styles in one-to-one supervision interactions, it seems that the roles enacted by the participants are so-called “discourse identities” (Zimmerman, 1998) and how and why temporary personal identities are constructed in such kind of academic interactions have not been discussed.
These studies concerning identity construction in spoken academic interaction contain implications for the present study at least in two aspects:the methodology used and the linguistic devices focused on. However, a systematic theoretical framework is still needed to provide an detailed description and an adequate interpretation of identity construction in spoken academic interaction, especially the construction of various temporary communicative identities and the dynamic shift of these identities.