Writer identity construction in EFL doctoral thesis writing
Research on EFL doctoral thesis writing is booming. The literature indicates a link between doctoral thesis writing and identity formation. Despite the call for scholarly attention on doctoral thesis writers, writers of doctoral theses in English as a Foreign language (EFL) settings have not been...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2021
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18121/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18121/1/42461-164850-1-PB.pdf |
| Summary: | Research on EFL doctoral thesis writing is booming. The literature indicates a link between
doctoral thesis writing and identity formation. Despite the call for scholarly attention on
doctoral thesis writers, writers of doctoral theses in English as a Foreign language (EFL)
settings have not been well represented in the previous studies. Moreover, although writer
identity has been proposed as consisting of four aspects, most of the research has mainly
adopted a corpus approach to discuss the discoursal self or authorial identity. To bridge these
gaps, this study explored how multicultural writers at a university in Thailand constructed
identity through EFL doctoral thesis writing and how their multiple aspects of writer identity
interplayed. With the data triangulated from a questionnaire, written narratives, and semistructured
interviews, the study revealed that 1) multiple identities are developed through
writers’ self-adjustment and social acculturation; 2) passive alignment to institutional
conventions leads to an actual distancing from discoursal construction of writer identity; 3)
self-marginalization as EFL learners, negative external voices, and the role of student writer
most hinder the development and representation of the authorial self. The research recommends
EFL learners should be explicitly informed of the notions of constructing an authorial voice in
the writing of doctoral theses. |
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