The disciplinary identity construction of international graduate students: Positioning across contexts

International graduate student numbers continue to grow in United States institutions of higher education. Numbers increased 7.2% in the 2012-2013 academic school year, with a total of 819,644 international students studying in the United States, 38% (311,204) in graduate programs (Institute of International Education, 2013). Building on past research exploring the disciplinary socialization of international graduate students, this dissertation uses narrative inquiry to explore how three international graduate students, Mei-Hui, Carlos, and Lili, co-construct their disciplinary identities. This research contributes to the field of applied linguistics by examining identity construction in situ through analyzing language use across discipline-specific contexts (e.g., interactions with advisors and colleagues), the non-discipline-specific but academic context of the ESL writing class, and the personal context of the life story interview to examine how students situate themselves interpersonally as members of their disciplines.;To this end, I draw specifically on positioning theory (Davies & Harre, 1990, 1999), in which day-to-day interaction is viewed as locating individuals "in conversations as observably and subjectively coherent participants in jointly produced storylines" (Davies and Harre, 1999, p. 37). Positioning allows us to view every utterance as a piece of an ongoing narrative, which allows us to understand an individual's positioning over time and space as pieces of their individual life stories and as constructions of their identities. I use a discourse analytic approach with a Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) lens to allow me to understand more deeply "the piece of language, where it occurs, the person who chose to use it in that function, and the culture that surrounds the person and the message" (Butt et al, 2000, p. 29). Through a deeper understanding of the identity negotiations of these three international graduate students, including their struggles and successes, both content area and ESL professionals are provided portraits of the diverse experiences of this growing population and can re-consider ways in which we can serve them more effectively.