Academic writing and identity: An ethnographic study of a basic writing class.

摘要

This dissertation reports findings from an ethnographic study of writing and identity in a basic writing class at a two-year college. Grounded in a theoretical frame where both identity and literacy are defined as socially constructed, the study examines the social construction of identity for basic writing students. Data collection, which occurred throughout the sixteen-week semester, consisted of participant observation, the recording of field notes, audio taping and videotaping of class sessions, interviews with participants, and the collection of artifacts. Selected classroom literacy events and the written texts of three students were analyzed using sociolinguistic and microethnographic methods. The analysis focused on (1) the moment-to-moment construction of identity as people interacted with one another during interactions in the classroom, and (2) the social positions created as a result of the linguistic choices students made in their written texts. Findings from this study indicate that the students positioned themselves very differently in their written texts than they did in their face-to-face interactions. During class discussions, specifically those conversations in which they discussed the subjects of their essays, students positioned themselves as engaged, knowledgeable, and interested participants. However, in their written texts, through the use of such linguistic techniques as nominalization, third person inanimate subjects, passive verb constructions, intransitive verbs, and low affinity modality, students positioned themselves as detached, unengaged authors, and they tended to position themselves and others as having little sense of agency. Students' written texts were weak, in part, because they attempted to distance themselves from the content of their essays. These findings suggest that issues of writing and identity should be discussed and examined by students and teachers in writing classrooms. By acknowledging that literacy is inextricably connected to issues of identity, teachers can begin to help students make choices about how they want to position themselves in their texts as well as in their interactions.