Understanding The Discursive Construction Of A Teacher's Multiple Identities In English Classroom Teaching

The last ten years have witnessed the emergence of a significant strand of teacher development, teacher identity. In the broad sense, identity can be understood both as an individual sense of self and as a collective notion of belonging to a social category (Wenger, 1998: 146). Therefore, teacher identity can be seen both as a personal experience of selfhood and as a collective categories "embedded within the larger historical and cultural story of education" (Cooper & Olson, 1996: 85). Now researchers in fields as diverse as anthropology, linguistics, psychology, sociology, gender studies, and social studies have explored some predominant themes in teacher identity study, among which the multiplicity of teacher identity is now receiving more and more attention. Meanwhile, contemporary approaches view identity as a discursive construction, and it is represented, shaped through the social and discursive practices that are available to individuals and groups at particular moments. What's more, the discursive construction of identity can be conceptualized further through a number of different data analysis frameworks. In relation to the understanding of teacher identities, the more familiar analytical approach has been generated from different versions of discourse analysis.The purpose of this study is to gain an in-depth understanding of the discursive construction of a teacher's multiple identities in English classroom teaching. Specifically, it attempts to answer two questions: what multiple identities the teacher in this study has constructed and how she has constructed these identities in discourse. To answer the questions, a senior middle school English teacher whose English name is Angela, has been chosen for a case study and been observed for about 7 months. At first transcriptions of Angela's classroom discourse have been categorized to show the teacher's three identities, and then they have been further analyzed in the analytical framework from the perspectives of self reference, modality, topic analysis, politeness and exchange structure (mainly informed by Fairclough), to explore the ways she constructs her identities discursively.Study findings reveal that the teacher's identities are an interwoven convergence of multiple dimensions, including the professional, personal and relational identities. Each identity has specific meaning in the local context and is realized through the use of varying discursive rules. Professionally, the teacher projects herself as a teacher with authority through the use of the exclusive 'We', the high modality, the academic topics, the low degree of politeness and the IRF structure. Personally, the teacher positions herself as an authentic individual through the use of the pronoun 'I', the subjective modality and the speaker's personal topics. And relationally, the teacher takes on her identity as a member of class community through the use of the inclusive 'We' the low modality, the shared topics and the high degree of politeness. These multiple teacher identities interplay with each other during the process of discursive construction.The theoretical and methodological implications of the present study are primary in its exploration into the middle school teachers' multiple identities from the discursive perspective in English classroom teaching, which gives us a holistic view of teacher identity. It also implies that the core concern of teacher education is to develop teachers as whole and integrate persons. In the view of the limitations of the study and the potentiality of the research perspective, suggestions are made for theimprovement for further studies.