Self-concept Change: A Study Of The First Person Pronouns In Reflective Linguistic Contexts

Self-concept is the combination of an organized complex, and dynamic system of learned beliefs, attitudes and opinions towards their own existence (Purkey,1987). It is learned, dynamic and developmental. According to Vygotsky (1952) and other researchers (Zimmerman and Blom,1983; Engestran,1999), learning is a process of interactions between others and self. In the process of social interaction, people will undergo cognitive conflicts, which can be impetus for changes and development. Lee et al.(2001) proposed a cognitive conflict process model to explain cognitive conflicts, which consists of three stages:the preliminary stage, the cognitive conflicts stage and the stage of resolution of cognitive conflicts. When persons come to realize the existence of cognitive conflict situation, which is inconsistent with their prior cognition, then it would arouse their will to solve the current puzzle by means of action and mental reconstruction. Meanwhile, they will reevaluate themselves in order to achieve knowledge, skills and experience self-conception development. First person (1PP) sentences in students’reflections are an effective media in expressing our "selves", for they enable us the centralization of the subjective multidimensional and multimodal experiential space around our own body (Lowell Gaertner, Constantine Sedikides&Erin M. O’Mara,2008). Changes in their first person (1PP) sentences include frequency of first person pronoun used, choices of verbs after the pronoun and semantic content of the1PP sentences.In my observation on my tutor’s CAIR class mode, we find that stimulation of cognitive conflicts is a major factor of effective class. Only with students’ perseverance and positive attitude while facing frustrations can the new self-conceptions be stimulated effectively. CAIR class mode includes four sequential steps which are autonomous learning, cooperative learning, interactive learning and reflective learning. Students could represent their cognitive structure in various oral and written expressions and experience constant cognitive conflicts from interactions between the teacher and the students, which contribute to the improvement of their mastery on the course and self-growth.The author has carried out an empirical case study in order to follow the trail of process of the cognitive conflicts’occurrence, development and resolution through analyzing the reflections and WAT from students. On the basis of observing students’ changes in the social semantic network on the part of the central core and spreading periphery, we assess their self concept development.The research questions that guide this study are:(1) What are the characteristics of first person pronouns used in reflective linguistic context?(2)How are students’self-concept change represented in reflections?(3)How are the students’self-concept change represented in word association test?(4)What is the relation between the use of first person pronouns and self-concept change?Our conclusions are as follow:(1)Firstly, CAIR class mode does exert impact on students’self concept progress through their constantly going through the cognitive conflicts stages and the cognitive resolution stages. Students have undergone great changes in their cognitive structures, self-concept, etc. The longer the students stay in the culture, the greater are the changes they undergo in their self conception with greater identification with the class culture.(2) Secondly, the analysis of the1PP sentences shows that the more the first person pronoun is used, the greater their self-concept changes are.(3) Self concept change is not that smooth but goes with reactions like rejection, confusion, continuous effort and so on during the changing process. New conceptualization is accompanied with increases of cognitive, emotive, action and awareness verbs, indicating students’self concept change is an integration of minds and actions and a reconstruction of self schema.(4) The social representation of self-concept remains relatively stable with a large changeless conservative part and an even larger neutral part replicating the conservative in different terms. A challenging learning environment like CAIR will have a strong impact on the social representation by tipping the balance between its preexisting polarities and even developing a revolutionary part in it responding adaptively to the requirement of the new learning culture.