Self-representations And Identity Construction

Identity construction is currently receiving a growing amount of attention in the literature on academic writing.As an academic writing genre,the personal statement is one of the high-stake documents submitted by the writers who are applying for further study.It is intended to help the applicants to gain admission through the construction of the desired writer identity of an eligible and unique candidate who would fit with the target program.The previous research mainly focuses on the rhetorical structure in terms of move analysis with little attention paid to writer identity construction.The present study aims to explore identity construction in personal statement writing through integrating the writer identity construction framework into genre analysis of the personal statement.Three main research questions are to be addressed as follows:1.What multiple self-representations are projected in different moves of Chinese university students’ personal statements?2.How are multiple self-representations integrated into the desired writer identity of an eligible and unique candidate for the target program?3.Why do personal statement writers present their multiple self-representations for identity construction in the chosen manners?The present study examined the successful personal statements written by Chinese university students who were applying for Master degree programs in English-medium universities as international students.A multi-method approach underpinned the study by incorporating the descriptive quantitative statistics into the qualitative analysis.This approach involving textual analysis,the multiple case study,semi-structured interviews along with thematic coding and frequency count,overcame the weakness of using move analysis as a single instrument to examine the multi-faceted and multi-dimensional identity construction in personal statement writing.By means of convenience sampling and network sampling,105 valid authentic personal statements were collected.Eight informants were randomly solicited to participate in the multiple case study.Follow-up interviews were then conducted with the eight participants in the hope of debriefing what they wrote in the personal statements,how they composed the texts and constructed the desired writer identity,and why they wrote in the chosen manners.On the basis of Burgess and Ivanic’s writer identity framework,the operational analytical framework of the present study was tentatively proposed to give a more adequate examination of the collected personal statements.The framework encompasses the integration of autobiographical self,authorial self,discoursal self,and available possibilities for selfhood into writer identity construction across timescales.The primary objective of this study is to investigate what multiple self-representations are involved in different moves of the collected personal statements.The findings show that there are seven major moves involved in the collected data,which range from the most frequent to the least as motivation(s)for applying,future plans,academic experiences,showing attitude,extra-curriculum experiences,inspiring experiences,and personalities and attributes.It is also observed that a distinctive self is represented in each of these seven moves.They are,accordingly,the motivational self,the aspiring self,the academic self,the confident self,the versatile self,the inspired self,and the worthy self.The motivation(s)forapplying with the motivational self within and future plans with the aspiring self within are displayed in all the collected data,which might suggest that they were the obligatory moves and distinctive selves.The second objective of the study is to examine how multiple self-representations are integrated into the desired writer identity.Findings from the study reveal that the personal statement writers were able to construct the desired writer identity with multiple self-representations integrated across timescales by making different discoursal choices.They tended to bring autobiographical self into their writing by narratives of personal experiences with ensuing insights and reflections.They tended to display authorial self by references to themselves(self-mention)and others(name-dropping).They tended to present discoursal self by explicitly using positive words to create a self-image and/or by implicitly suggesting a self-image through the past experiences,the current state and anticipations for the future.Multiple self-representations are integrated into the coherent writer identity in three ways.The first is to incorporate autobiographical self and authorial self into discoursal self in the personal statement,thus making it possible to present one’s self-image in the writing from different angles.The second is to project self-representations across three timescales with the past experiences,the present act of writing and the future plans involved,thus forming a continuous timeline to integrate multiple self-representations into the coherent writer identity.The third is to achieve both conformity and distinctiveness in writing.The writers tended to display their match with the target program on the one hand;on the other hand,they had to exhibit their uniqueness from the application pool through their personal experiences,their unique personalities and attributes,their specific motivations for applying,and their different expectations for the future.In addition to the unique propositional content of the writing,the writers also tended to project multiple self-representations dynamically.The dynamism in their identity construction was revealed not only by the dynamic generation of meaning but also by their strategic deployment of moves and multiple self-representations in a medley of juxtaposing,embedding,sequencing and highlighting.The third objective is to offer a justifiable interpretation to expound why the personal statement writers presented their self-representations in the chosen manners.The findings show that the writers’ perceptions of personal statement writing and of their self and identity exerted considerable influence on their textual composition and writer identity construction.The writers’ perceptions were in turn shaped by various available possibilities.First,the personal statement should be written within the generic boundary defined by its own generic features.The personal statement carries with it five prominent features of being academic,occluded,componential,representational and promotional.Although each of these features delimits identity construction in its own way,the personal statement tends to present the best of the writers’ real self,or the relevant self.The personal statement should also be written to meet the institutional requirements,which requires the writers to customize the texts to the expectations of the target readers and the target programs with special attention paid to the disciplinary identity construction.Furthermore,sociocultural factors exert influence on identity construction.Consciously or unconsciously,the writers might display and give different weight to their non-native-speaker identity,gender identity and ethnic identity in writing.Personal statement writing has helped the writers to heighten the perceptions of self and identity in their identity construction in two ways.Retrospectively,they were able to get a better understanding of their self and identitybecause they had to repetitively reflect upon their past experiences so as to choose the most relevant ones to narrate in their personal statements.Prospectively,they were able to envision their possible future identities through making future plans.Despite being constrained by a variety of factors,personal statement writers tended to take the initiative to seek scaffolding from the more experienced and the more professional.The writers were able to exercise their own agency to compose the personal statements and to construct their desired writer identity.The previous studies investigate the personal statement mainly by means of move analysis,which does enable us to have a better understanding of the rhetorical features of the personal statement.However,few of them have closely examined self-representations and identity construction involved in the personal statement genre.Therefore,the present study bridges the gap by exploring not only what multiple self-representations are projected in different moves but also how multiple self-representations are integrated dynamically into the coherent and unique writer identity across timescales as well as why the desired writer identity is constructed in the chosen manners in the personal statement genre.To conclude,the findings of the present study contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the personal statement as an academic writing genre.Pedagogical implications and practical suggestions for future research are identified at the end of the paper.