Voice and Socialization in Postsecondary Students’ Narrative Practices

Marta Baffy, Daniel Ginsberg, Mackenzie Price

Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Daniel Ginsberg,

Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University, 37th & O Street NW, Poulton Hall 240,

Washington, DC 20057, USA. Email: dg338@georgetown.edu

Abstract

University students are peripheral participants in various institutional communities,

including the university itself as well as the professional communities for which they are

preparing. As students are socialized to these communities, their processes of identity navigation

become visible in their narrative practices. Using interview and classroom observational data,

this paper examines undergraduate, law, and business students’ self-positioning relative to

institutions and individuals in their academic and professional lives. We conclude that students

envision types of successful members of imagined professional communities, and that their

academic motivation and success depend on their positioning their future selves as tokens of that

type.

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Voice and Socialization in Postsecondary Students’ Narrative Practices

This project on the discursive practices of students working to adopt academic and

professional identities in institutional contexts grew out of a shared interest in tracking secondary

and postsecondary students’ orientations towards the identity of a “successful” student or

professional. Socialization into academic and professional communities, which we see as

communities of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991; Wenger 1998), demands that students be able

to identify, and eventually to adopt, the attitudes, practices, and voices that form the shared

ideologies binding communities and separating them from other groups. Identity construction

while undergoing processes of language socialization is itself an ideological process that brings

students into contact with individuals and images of persons at the center of communities.

Our data comes from three populations of students – undergraduate, law, and graduate

business students – pursuing degrees at a private university in the Mid-Atlantic region of the

United States. We investigate identity construction across data from student interviews and

student participation in class, and borrow from Bamberg’s (2011) dimensions of identity

construction in narrative practices to demonstrate how constructed dialogue (Tannen 2007) and

other uses of social and enregistered voices (Agha 2005) reveal students’ awareness of “what it

takes” to be a successful member of a community of practice. After providing an overview of the

relevant literature, we demonstrate how Bamberg’s framework plays out across our three

contexts, drawing on examples that illustrate dimensions of identity navigation in varying orders.

We conclude that students construct their identities relative to “types” of people who are

positioned as successful members of professional communities.

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Becoming an Insider: Language Socialization and Identity Navigation

Students in postsecondary education can be thought of as legitimate peripheral

participants (Lave and Wenger 1991) in various professional and institutional communities of

practice. First, there is the community of the university itself; like all schooling, colleges and

universities require students to become socialized to academic literacies that may be more or less

familiar to them from their earlier experience (Bernstein 1975; Duranti and Ochs 1986; Heath

1982). Additionally, postgraduate professional programs such as law, medical, and business

schools have the explicitly assigned function of preparing students to take on defined

institutional and professional roles within their discipline; the first step of learning to be a

lawyer, for example, is learning to be a law student. We consider this process of situated learning

as an instance of language socialization, understood as both “socialization to use language and

socialization through the use of language” (Schieffelin and Ochs 1986:163). Thus, not only does

the role of the law student consist primarily of listening, speaking, reading, and writing about the

law, but the ultimate goal is for the student to learn to “think like a lawyer” (Mertz 2007), and to

provide evidence of this way of thinking by talking like a lawyer. In this way, law students

become members of the law community, following Goebel’s (2012) definition of community as a

group of people who are able to recognize and evaluate the authenticity of enregistered signs,

and perhaps to use those signs as a demonstration of their own community membership.

Invariably, language socialization is an ideological process that challenges participants’

prior way of understanding the world, leading them to acquire not merely new ways of

interacting, but new ways of perceiving and understanding their environment (Duranti 2009).

Irvine and Gal (2000:35) define language ideology as “the ideas with which participants frame

their understanding of linguistic varieties and the differences among them, and map those

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understandings onto people, events, and activities that are significant to them.” For our purposes,

we can take “linguistic varieties” to indicate the discipline-specific register to which participants

are being socialized (cf. “socialization to use language”), as well as consider other sorts of

ideology that do not directly concern linguistic variety, but that are enacted through the academic

and professional communities in which participants are involved (cf. “socialization through the

use of language”). Both sorts of ideology are commonly held among members of a profession or

other social group, allowing them to come to a consensus about what constitutes knowledge of

the world (van Dijk 2004). In this context, Charles Goodwin’s (1994) concept of “professional

vision,” defined as “socially organized ways of seeing and understanding events that are

answerable to the distinctive interests of a particular social group” (Goodwin 1994:606), can be

seen as a discipline-specific ideology to which community members are given access through

secondary language socialization.

One component of professional vision consists of the way community members define

membership in the community itself and recognize individuals as members. Although specific

gatekeeping events exist whose successful completion confers professional and institutional

rights on community members – passing the bar exam, for example – community membership

can be viewed as a continuum of centrality rather than a binary distinction. A college senior who

is applying to law schools has taken the first steps toward community membership, and even an

attorney who has been admitted to the bar may be considered less central to the community than

a partner at a firm. This aspect of professional vision codes individuals as tokens of various types

of persons, with each type – the law school applicant, the first-year law student, the junior

associate in a law firm – viewed as more or less central to the community of practice. In our

work with students, we consider not only their developing ideology regarding community

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membership, but also the specific role and degree of centrality that they envision as the goal of

their actual participation in the academic setting, as well as the extent to which they see

themselves as successfully making progress toward that goal. We see students’ imagined roles in

imagined communities as relevant not only to second language learning (Kanno and Norton

2003), but to processes of learning in any educational setting.

To provide insight into students’ ideologies and their ongoing process of identity

navigation, this study takes a narrative practice approach (Bamberg 2011). Rather than treating

narratives as decontextualized recountings of events and experiences, or as autobiographical “big

stories” of the sort collected in oral history research, the narrative practice approach focuses on

“small stories” (Moissinac and Bamberg 2005) whose function and purpose can only be

understood in the context of their telling. This function, in turn, is inextricably linked to identity:

speakers, when making events (past, present, or fictitious) relevant for the here-and-nowof speaking/listening activities, reveal aspects of who they are … It is at this point wherethe relational work that is accomplished in storytelling practices is opening up glimpsesinto how narrators accomplish this type of relationship management and at the same timeengage in identity practices that result in what we have called a sense of self – probablyeven a kind of sense that endures across interactive storytelling practices (Bamberg2011:102).

In consideration of the kinds of meanings that are at play in this process of identity

navigation, Bamberg proposes three dimensions along which narrators situate themselves in the

performance of a narrative. The dimension of constancy and change across time addresses how

storytellers position themselves as changing more or less as the events of the story unfold.

Importantly, this distinction is viewed as a choice made by the speaker reflecting a particular

interpretation of story events, rather than an objective representation of those events. Second,

sameness versus difference refers to the positioning of social actors as either members of groups

or as distinct individuals. Speakers can align or disalign with the characters in their stories, thus

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creating and recreating social groups and types in ways that are relevant to their self-

presentation. Finally, along the dimension of agency, speakers construe narrative events as

instances of themselves either acting or being acted on by the social world. The identity claimed

by the speaker can then be presented as either something that they have agentively decided to

take on, or something into which they have been forced by circumstance, and for which they are

not responsible.

In order to identify instances of “small stories” through which participants engage in

narrative practices, this paper will focus on the use of “constructed dialogue” (Tannen 2007) and

other footing shifts (Goffman 1981) that participants use to introduce various characters into

their narrative practices. We will consider social characters, biographic persons, and enregistered

voices associated with the professions (Agha 2005) as voiced by undergraduate, law, and

business students. Speakers use the voices of enregistered types, other individuals, and their own

past and future selves to bring characters into their narrative practices to whom they explicitly or

implicitly compare themselves. As storytellers use these characters as points of reference in the

construction of their own identities, the voices situated in the “there-and-then” of narrative

become a crucial resource for identity navigation in the “here-and-now.”

Three Case Studies

The Law Student

The first set of data originates from a 1.5-hour interview with Addie, a full-time law

student. At the time of the interview, Addie was in her second semester of school and the

interviewer had already obtained her law degree. Addie’s relationship with the interviewer was

close, as they had known each other outside of the research/interview context for approximately

four years. The two friends met while interning together at a non-governmental organization the

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summer after the interviewer had just finished her first-year of law school and Addie was just

beginning to express interest in going herself.

Focusing on constructed dialogue, we identified several episodes that illustrate Addie’s

orientation toward, and alignment with, the legal profession and its voice. Two short extracts

have been chosen for in-depth analysis here. In Example 1, Addie has been asked whether she

feels she has changed since starting law school. She provides a detailed response that sheds light

on how she navigates her identity with respect to Bamberg’s (2011) dimension of constancy

versus change; specifically, she constructs an identity that has undergone a particular kind of

change.

Example 1 (Ad: Addie; In: Interviewer)

01 Ad: For me it’s like I’m having a conversation with someone,02 and I’m aware of like all the conditionalities like-03 In: Mmm,04 Ad: I’m like okay so that statement that you- that you just

made,05 there are like a couple of assumptions in that statement.06 So I think of the assumptions07 and then I also think of like well it could be this way if

you think of this.08 Or it could be that way if you think of that.09 Or it could be this way.10 So like it’s a much more like-11 I dunno I see things as less certain and more just

ambiguous and more like malleable kind of.12 Just everything like conversations13 and I’m kind of like you know disam-14 you know I don’t- I- I don’t like think of anything as like

certain.15 In: So it’s like you can make an argument for almost anything.16 Ad: I mean- I’m not at that-17 I’m not smart enough to do that.18 In: No but- but- but the fact that nothing is-19 Ad: Yeah.20 In: Is what you might think it is, right?21 Ad: Yeah.22 Exactly.

Addie starts off her response with a reference to conversations, through which she has noticed

her increased awareness of the “conditionalities” in the statements of others. Her use of the

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adjective aware is the first of several references to her mental processes; in line 6 (I think of the

assumptions), line 7 (I also think of “well it could be this way”), line 11 (I see things as less

certain), and line 15 (I don’t…think of anything as certain), she repeatedly employs the verbs

think and see to represent a changed internal, mental state.

Addie also “re-enacts” and in turn, foregrounds, her thought processes through

constructed dialogue. In lines 04-05, she voices her thoughts upon hearing others in

conversation, saying, Okay, so that statement that you- that you just made, there are a couple of

assumptions in that statement. As Tannen (2007) points out, constructed dialogue rarely, if ever,

provides a faithful rendition of a prior utterance or thought. Indeed, it is possible that Addie does

not actually respond to her interlocutors in precisely this manner – and it is most likely that she

does not explicitly react (i.e., physically speak) to the conditionalities in her interlocutors’ speech

at all. Nevertheless, addressing her imagined interlocutor with the pronoun you (that statement

that you…just made), Addie depicts herself as directly responding to others’ words. In doing so,

she positions herself as capable of assessing the assumptions and ambiguities lying behind their

statements, and perhaps going so far as to communicate it, too.

In lines 07-09, Addie continues to voice herself, but in this case, she explicitly references

her thoughts. She introduces a forthcoming occurrence of constructed “dialogue” in line 07 with,

and then I also think of like. Her use of the verb think demonstrates that Addie is now re-

constructing specifically what goes on inside her head; still, she continues to address an

imagined interlocutor, saying, Well it could be this way if you think of this. In so doing, Addie

presents her thoughts as if she actually spoke them, and thereby injects a sense of agency into her

utterance. Specifically, she portrays herself as one who is not only able to recognize and reflect

on others’ ambiguous statements, but can also point this out to the speakers who made them. In

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this way, Addie navigates the agency dilemma (Bamberg 2011) in her favor, positioning herself

as someone who could actively question others’ statements.

Addie’s repetition of mental state verbs and adjectives (be aware, think, and see) and

constructed dialogue thus work in concert to underscore a particular change that Addie has

undergone: a change in her way of thinking. Accordingly, when in line 15 the interviewer makes

a warranted inference (Schiffrin 1987) that does not jibe with Addie’s self-positioning up to that

point (So it’s like you can make an argument for anything), Addie resists the characterization, or

other-positioning, entailed in the inference. This is likely a consequence of the interviewer’s

decision to employ a verb of action (make an argument), which is in stark contrast to Addie’s

predominant use up to that point of mental verbs such as think and see. Her immediate response

is I mean I’m not at that- I’m not smart enough to do that, indicating Addie’s awareness that

there are limits to what she can do – namely, she cannot make arguments yet.

This short extract illustrates how Addie positions herself vis-à-vis the legal profession at

this early point in her career. While recognizing that she has undergone some change with

respect to her way of thinking, Addie submits that there remain things that she cannot do.

Perhaps the most salient and stereotypical characteristic of lawyers is their ability to argue.

Before her self-repair, Addie begins to say, I’m not at that-, suggesting her recognition that the

making of arguments is one goal, or perhaps an endpoint, that she has yet to reach. However, in

refusing to adopt the interviewer’s other-positioning – that is, that she can make an argument for

almost anything – Addie effectively positions herself as a peripheral participant (Lave and

Wenger 1991) in the legal profession. Addie thus constructs an identity of a novice lawyer: she

has changed to a certain degree, and is certainly on a trajectory toward full membership, but is

just not quite there yet.

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In the next extract, Addie’s self-positioning as peripheral to the legal profession is

perhaps even more conspicuous. Here, she takes on the enregistered voice (Agha 2005) of a

lawyer, employing legal jargon with which the interviewer is familiar, only because the

interviewer attended law school and is a member of the bar. When the interviewer questions her

turn of phrase, however, Addie ultimately resorts to disaligning with her to portray her own self

as an ignorant, peripheral participant in the legal community.

Example 2 (Ad: Addie; In: Interviewer)

01 Ad: How about like customary law you know?02 Like what is the norm,03 In: Cus:tomary international law.04 Ad: In the US you know like not necessarily internationally.05 In: But do we have that here?06 Ad: Mmm, I mean sometimes yeah.07 I think that there are some undeniable American norms that

are reflected in a lot of the08 jurisdictions um but I- I don’t know.09 I’m a 1L1 I don’t know shit you know?10 In: No you do.11 Ad: You graduated from law school.12 In: No- No- I don’t- I don’t mean it like that at all.

In line 01, Addie uses a legal buzzword, customary, to refer to laws that derive from long

custom as opposed to positive (i.e. formally codified) laws. Upon hearing the term, the

interviewer states, Customary international law, adding the word international, to which Addie

responds that she was thinking about the US…not necessarily internationally. The interviewer

contests Addie’s use of the term customary, asking, in line 05, But do we have that here? Addie’s

subsequent response speaks to her understanding of the legal system, yet she still minimizes the

potential significance of her utterance by adding, but I- I don’t know. She then completely

disaligns with the interviewer when she states, I’m a 1L I don’t know shit…You graduated from

law school.

Addie’s remarks suggest that she may feel the interviewer has attempted to challenge her

with the question posed in line 05 (But do we have that here?). Significantly, instead of accepting

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the challenge and defending her views, however, Addie seemingly “submits” to the interviewer

and invokes her novice status (I’m a 1L). In doing so, she draws a contrast between herself and

the interviewer, and simply takes for granted that she “knows” less because she has not yet

finished law school. This is an explicit recognition on Addie’s part that she is a peripheral

participant and hence different from her friend.

Discussion

As the foregoing examples illustrate, Bamberg’s dimensional approach to identity

construction illuminates the nature of a student’s socialization within the context of law school.

Addie’s narrative practices reveal that she sees herself on a trajectory of change, but still has a

ways to go. She not only positions herself as unable to engage in practices that might signify full

membership (i.e., she cannot make an argument for anything), but she also disaligns with the

interviewer, who, if not a full-fledged member of the legal profession, is closer than Addie (I’m a

1L, I don’t know shit…You went to law school). Still, Addie also constructs a somewhat agentive

persona, even if only in her reported thoughts, by positioning herself as capable of thinking

about, recognizing, and potentially pointing out assumptions and ambiguities in the things that

other people say (Okay so that statement that you…just made…it could be this way if you think of

this…or it could be that way if you think of that). In this way, Addie builds an identity of a novice

lawyer who has not yet achieved member status in the legal profession, but has some idea of how

to do so.

The Business Students

The second set of data comes three students – Leroy, Tracy and Sam – enrolled in the

Executive Masters in Leadership (EML) program housed in our focal university’s business

school. This data, taken from interviews and recordings made in class, was collected as part of an

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ongoing ethnography of the EML program. This program is designed for students of varying

educational backgrounds with an interest in “advanc[ing] their leadership skills and gain[ing] a

deeper understanding of management strategy” (EML Program Website). Because students are

encouraged to consider how they will take lessons from the EML into their professional lives

after graduation, it is not uncommon for students to reference their current professional identities

and activities in their classroom interactions. Thus, we treat evidence of identity construction in

relation to professional identity as one piece of evidence that students are incorporating multiple

social voices into their narrative practices and identity construction.

Our first example from the students in the EML program is from Leroy, senior Human

Resources (HR) manager at a financial services organization. In Example 3, Leroy is giving a

three-minute “persuasive presentation” to his classmates. In his speech he makes a case for

incorporating HR personnel into an organization’s executive leadership. He argues for the

creation of these positions by explaining that most people are misinformed, or unaware of what

the duties of HR professionals really are. Further, he claims that while some of America’s highest

grossing firms have the type of HR executives he is arguing for, most do not. Identity

construction in this example falls under sameness versus difference, as Leroy uses constructed

dialogue to reinforce his own identity and footing as an expert, in contrast with the identity he

establishes for his audience.

Example 3 (Le: Leroy)

01 Le: There must be (.)02 a senior officer (.)03 at every organization (.)04 that represents the HR department,05 Now you may say well, where I work maybe I have one of

those.06 Um but what if I told you an interesting stat,

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In lines 01-04, Leroy has arrived at the central point of his speech, and anticipates a

possible objection from the audience to his proposal; in their professional lives they may have an

HR professional with a senior management position. Leroy gives a voice to that objection using

constructed dialogue (Well, where I work maybe I have one of those). In voicing his classmates,

Leroy shows his awareness that their professional experiences are informing how they receive

his presentation, and whether or not they can be persuaded by his argument. The introduction of

their voices and objections helps to create coherence in the rhetorical event of making a

persuasive argument, and one way Leroy creates this coherence is through discourse markers.

The discourse marker well reveals a speaker’s need to establish coherence in talk. In this

case coherence needs to be established between Leroy’s perspective on his industry, which is

based on his experience as a professional, and his classmates’ own professional identities and

experiences. In line 05, well is used a response marker and shifts the center of the utterance from

Leroy’s perspective to that of the audience and positions the ideas in his presentation as

something to which the audience can respond. As a response marker, well suggests that a

speaker’s utterance is unsatisfactory and has not met a listener’s expectations (Schiffrin

1987:121, 123). When Leroy attributes well to his audience via constructed dialogue, he

positions them as not sharing his perspective, in addition to being misinformed about what HR

professionals really do. By referencing workplaces (where I work maybe I have one of those) the

constructed dialogue points to the audience’s professional experiences as the source of their

objections. This experience then falls in direct contrast with Leroy’s experience, which has

already been positively evaluated earlier in the speech and will be validated with statistical

evidence later on. The end result is that with constructed dialogue Leroy is able to reinforce his

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footing as an expert, in contrast to his classmate’s misconceptions and unfounded objections to

his arguments.

Although our analysis has used constructed dialogue as evidence of identity construction

up to this point, this is only one of the ways that students reflect their participation in a process of

professionalization and socialization. Reporting speech or thought via constructed dialogue is

only one way of incorporating external, social voices into student’s narrative practices. The rest

of this analysis will focus on students’ footing shifts and interactions with social voices outside

of constructed dialogue as a part of their identity construction along Bamberg’s dimensions.

The following examples come from an interview with a student, Tracy, who came to the

program while working for a nonprofit organization. In Example 4, she is explaining to the

interviewer what attracted her to the EML program.

Example 4 (Tr: Tracy; In: Interviewer)

01 Tr: Currently I work in the nonprofit sector02 So I have a pretty good handle on the internal workings of

managing a 501c3.03 Which tends to be little different.04 Than general corporate America.05 In: Mmhm06 Tr: But I felt like there’s enough emphasis on team building,

and leadership strategies that it would07 also have some relevance to my current duties.08 In the non-profit sector.09 But also would give me a little bit greater understanding

of how the corporate world operated.10 In: I see.11 Tr: So I could eventually um consider shifting12 one day.

Bamberg (2011:103) writes that speakers can make claims about characters relevant to

the real time narrative event by referencing the character’s past or future self. In Example 4,

Tracy builds connections between her present self, and her past and future selves as she explains

what drew her to the program, how it intersects with her work, and how it will shape her

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professional future. Each use of I as a self-referring pronoun points to another figure or character

in Tracy’s discourse (Goffman 1981:148). These characters and their actions are displaced

temporally from her present self, who is enrolled in EML and working in the non-profit sector.

Each shift between I’s or figures corresponds to a shift in Tracy’s footing in this example.

Lines 01-03 establish the center or background of Tracy’s identity construction: she

marks her location in the storyworld with the temporal marker currently in line 01 and explains

to the interviewer that she works in the nonprofit sector. In line 02 she comments that she has

established a stable identity as a member of her current professional community, and there is no

indication here that her status as a member of the nonprofit sector community will change. She

gives further evidence of this in line 03 when she refers to her organization as a 501(c)(3), which

is a nominalization for a tax exempt non-profit organization, using the relevant section number

from the U.S. tax code. The contrast between Tracy’s voice and another voice representing her

professional community is less transparent here than an instance of constructed dialogue would

be, but the use of this referring term does show that her professional community of practice has a

particular voice that members of the community can weave into their own speech. By

establishing herself as a stable member of that community, Tracy takes up a footing as a

professional at the current center of her discourse.

Tracy’s next use of self-referential I in line 06 (But I felt like there’s enough emphasis on

team building) changes her footing and presents another displaced figure. This I is located in the

past, looking forward at the potential value of the EML curriculum. In considering how the

program would connect to her work, Tracy is exhibiting an early sense of one of the common

ways EML students view their education: as a source of knowledge and information they can

integrate into their daily professional lives. Lines 06-08 reflect this as well.

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In lines 11-12 (So I could eventually um consider shifting one day) Tracy’s use of I shows

her looking forward to her future self, after leaving the EML program. She reveals that she hopes

to shift and leave the non-profit sector for the corporate, for-profit sector. This shift in time

accounts for another footing shift in Tracy’s interview. Taken together, her changes in footing

using embedded I’s allow Tracy to construct an identity as someone undergoing a change in

thinking, and as someone who wants to make a career change in the future. These changes are all

contrasted against the constancy she maintains as current professional in the non-profit world,

looking for guidance and inspiration from her graduate education.

The final extract comes from Sam, another student in the EML program. Example 6

depicts a narrative Sam contributed to a class discussion on success that took place on the

program’s second meeting. On this occasion the instructor had presented a study out of another

MBA program, reporting that five years after graduation, the students with the highest GPAs

were not the graduates who had been the most successful, meaning that they had advanced and

been promoted the furthest in their organizations. The EML class discussion focused on the idea

that being successful and advancing in a company takes more than exceptional qualifications.

Example 6 (Sa: Sam)

01 Sa: An example ( ) some of my family friends.02 Who have come from India.03 And they might have all the degrees and all the education

and things like that.04 And they get jobs at Deloitte and all these big name

corporate companies.05 But they don’t necessarily move up the ladder because of

these reasons.06 You know they’re not out playing golf with you know their

manager.07 They’re not out shaking hands and making friends in you

know different aspects of their organization.08 They are the people who make that company RUN.09 And uh it’s really interesting when you think about it.10 That communication and that networking is really what

separates people from the workforce.

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While Tracy’s interview is full of self-referential I’s representing footing shifts and the

construction of a reflective, experiencer identity that is less agentive, Sam uses this class

contribution to identify two distinct types of professionals based on the type of agency they

display. In lines 03-04, he introduces characters into the story world by listing their

qualifications. They have all the degrees, all the education…and all the smarts and these

qualifications help them get highly coveted jobs. Capitalizing on intelligence with the proper

education to secure jobs with notable firms like Deloitte would normally be a career path that is

positively evaluated. And none of these accomplishments comes without hard work or action.

However, Sam has removed the agency from these activities by describing them as things that

his family friends either have or get. By removing the agency from them, he is negatively

evaluating this career path.

In lines 05-07 Sam contrasts these actions and continues to evaluate them negatively. He

claims in line 05 that despite their qualifications they are not successful, based on the

classroom’s definition of success, because they do not move up in their organizations (They don’t

move up the ladder…). In 06 he begins to list a series of things his relatives do not do, and all

these activities are hinted at as being agentive. By using negation along with verbs and actions

like playing golf, shaking hands, and making friends, Sam is able to highlight the importance of a

certain type of agency for success (i.e., advancement) in the professional realm. In his mind the

people who construct an agentive identity when it comes to social activities are actually the ones

who are able to succeed, instead of people who pursue agentive acts that only benefit themselves

like getting the right education. By highlighting one type of agency and removing the agency

from other actions, Sam is able to support the final point in his narrative, that there are different

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types of people in organizations. There is a workforce that makes a company run (line 10), and

people who take advantage of networking and communication (line 10) in order to succeed.

In this example of narrative practice Sam constructs identities for the characters in his

narrative along Bamberg’s dimension of sameness versus difference. The identities of the

socially agentive successful professional and the less agentive “unsuccessful” yet qualified

professional represent two different social groups, whose actions are evaluated differently.

Although Sam does not introduce himself as a character in this story world, we can infer a degree

of self-positioning based on the boundary he alludes to between himself and his family friends

who immigrate to this country from abroad. In describing their career paths as well as the

activities they do not do, he suggests that he has some insider knowledge about their trajectory –

although we have no way of knowing how far removed he is from this type of experience.

Discussion

All three students in the EML program use professional experiences as resources for

identity construction. In each example discussed here, there is a reference made to a professional

identity that is current and constant in the “here and now.” Tracy contrasts her current self with a

desire to change aspects of her professional identity as a result of her participation in the EML

program. She also constructs a student identity for herself that is reflective and non-agentive.

Sam’s narrative practices point to two distinct types of professionals, who are differentiated

based on the type of agency they exhibit. Leroy uses constructed dialogue to show his

professional identity is different than that of his classmates.

The Undergraduate Calculus Student

The data considered in this section consists of excerpts from an interview with “Sophie,”

an undergraduate humanities major. The interview took place in the context of an ethnographic

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study of a drop-in tutoring center hosted by the Department of Mathematics, where students

taking commonly required courses such as Calculus I and Probability and Statistics could get

extra help from undergraduate majors and graduate students in the department. Sophie was

approached for an interview because she attended the drop-in center frequently for help with her

calculus homework. In the three excerpts chosen for in-depth analysis here, the use of

constructed dialogue is prominent, as in each case Sophie takes on a variety of voices to explore

one theme in depth.

The first constructed dialogue episode occurs about fourteen minutes into the recording,

following Sophie’s observation that, among the students in the class, it seems to her that those

who make a greater effort do not always get higher grades. The interviewer asked her how she

felt about that.

Example 7 (So: Sophie; In: Interviewer)

01 So: It’s really frustrating (.) because02 I’m really trying03 and my teacher (.) didn’t, I I had to tell him to his face

like04 look, I’m- I’m really struggling, and he, it was like a

surprise to him05 like ↑hello: do you think I’m just sitting in your class

not paying attention?06 I’m trying, so07 it’s it is frustrating at times but08 you just suck it up and just get through it (.) I guess09 In: Was this like after ↑class or did you go to his office hour10 So: I go to his office hours,11 I mean I’ve gone once or twice and,12 I- I’ve gone to him and been look, I have an F in your

class, what else, I go to the math center all the time, Ihave a tutor, what-

13 what do you suggest I do,14 oh ↑you’re not studying the right way,15 here’s some MIT practice (.) problems16 w- <there’s a big> difference in those two levels

Among the dimensions of identity navigation identified by Bamberg (2011), the most

salient here is the dimension of agency. Initially, Sophie voices her professor’s view of her as

20

non-agentive – until he is told “to his face” that she is making an effort in his class, he doesn’t

realize it. She challenges him (Do you think I’m…not paying attention?), immediately denies the

claim, and later goes on to give several examples showing that it is not the case (I’m really

trying, I go to the math center all the time, I have a tutor); not only does she give examples of

active steps she has taken to become a more successful student, but she voices herself as actively

challenging her professor’s misconception.

While Sophie demonstrates some agency in the form of sticking up for herself and

making positive attempts to improve her situation, ultimately she cannot fully claim agency as

Bamberg defines it, as being “strong, in control, and self-determined” (Bamberg 2011:106);

instead, this example demonstrates Sophie’s “construction of a victim role” (Bamberg 2011:106).

She is unable to learn the math on her own or even with her tutor’s help, and turns to her

professor for suggestions. In the event, the suggestion that she receives from him is not helpful or

appropriate. She is told that she is not studying the right way, but left with no indication of what

the right way might be. In the end, stripped of her agency and given no way to regain it, she

characterizes the frustration that she feels as a feature of the institution itself.

The next excerpt occurs about ten minutes later as part of a response to the interviewer’s

questions, “What kind of expectations do you have when you go into the tutoring center? How

do you expect it to go?” Sophie answers by explaining why, in order to understand the material,

she needs additional help beyond her professor’s lectures; in the following transcript, he refers to

the professor, while they are the tutors in the drop-in center.

Example 8 (So: Sophie)

01 So: I mean a lot of it we do get the basics in class02 but when it gets to the more complicated03 he’s like oh well of course you do this, mm, mm04 that took me like twenty minutes to comprehend why you

would even do ↑that step, so

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05 how am I supposed to know this and twenty steps later youget to the ↓answer

06 like I: can’t even get the first of twenty, so (1.1)07 it’s they understand that though, they even struggle with

it like08 oh ok well ↑this is what we’ll do first09 me- why10 oh well this. ↑oh duh! and it- even if you don’t get it the

fifth time11 ( ) they draw it out and they specifically say this what

you’re doing, and it it ↑most of the time it clicks12 and if it doesn’t then it’s just13 it doesn’t14 no matter what you do

Sophie begins in line 03 by voicing her professor as considering the course content to be

simple and obvious, disregarding the possibility that his students might not agree; in this way,

Sophie’s lived experience of struggle is discounted by the professor’s offhand certainty. This

erasure leads Sophie to minimize her control of the situation, and therefore her responsibility for

the outcome. When the tutors are voiced, beginning in line 08, the difference is striking. The

professor tells Sophie what you do, and offers no further elaboration. In contrast, the tutors align

with the student, explaining to her what we’ll do, and then construct teaching as a process that

begins with what we’ll do first. By implying that additional help and advice will be forthcoming,

the tutors are voiced as committing to a more extended teaching-learning interaction. Regardless

of the ease with which the hypothetical student understands the math, the tutors are willing and

able to give point-by-point explanations and answer questions in detail.

Why does Sophie find the tutors so much more capable as teachers, compared to the

professor? In line 07, when she introduces her tutors, she points out that they understand that the

course content is not transparent to her and needs to be broken down in detail, because they even

struggle with it themselves. Bamberg’s (2011) dimension of sameness and difference is relevant

here; the lack of complete understanding is something that she has in common with her tutors,

but that separates them all from the professor. Their different specialist/nonspecialist status

22

notwithstanding, she positions herself and her tutors as all being “the same” as a result of their

student roles, distinct from the professor, who has lost sight of what it means not to understand.

Notably, Sophie does not orient to the institutional typology that construes tutors as well

as professors as representatives of the Department of Mathematics, and by extension, of the

discipline of mathematics. Taking calculus is for her an institutional requirement, a sort of

gatekeeping encounter that she must pass in order to continue with her non-mathematical goals.

Since she has no ambition of becoming a more central member of the community, she sees no

need to better understand the professor as its representative, and instead finds fault with him for

not seeking to understand her. Although the tutors, as mathematics majors, are participating in an

academic program that will in some sense make mathematicians of them, this is less important to

Sophie than the fact that right now, during her brief encounter with the discipline, their status is

peripheral enough that she feels they can relate to her. Thus, she constructs a type of “people who

struggle with math” and situates her tutors as well as herself within that group, despite the fact

that her tutors’ newcomer status is only temporary.

The final excerpt occurs near the end of the interview. Sophie is responding to a small

story the interviewer told about his own experience as an undergraduate math student, in which

he did not understand the course content when it was first introduced, but came to understand it

later in the semester.

Example 9 (So: Sophie; In: Interviewer)

01 So: I w- I wish that happened with calculus. ↑Sometimes when I<look

02 back> I’m like,03 how did I not ↑understand that!04 because every time you do a new section it’s like oh this

is impossible,05 and you look at the previous section and go, ah that’s so

↓easy now.06 In: right07 So: because you’re looking at it as, this is so hard and that,

23

08 In: mhm09 So: I already ↑understand it ↓somehow.10 In: so you ↑do get it eventually.11 So: eventually,12 you get the basic concepts and it’s, ↑oh well duh,13 that makes so sense or something’s,14 like simpler theorems that you had issues with,15 In: uh huh16 So: you now can manipulate them in more complicated, (1.1)17 versions and it’s- it’s easy for you to do. but now you’re

tryna (1.5)18 do everything else in the problem besides that tiny chunk.

In this excerpt, Sophie gives two accounts of the learning process, first in response to the

interviewer’s story, and a second time in response to his confirmation-seeking utterance in line

10. When she voices herself through constructed dialogue in lines 03–05, 07, and 09, Sophie

expresses the difficulty of the course content as a feature of the problems themselves: oh this is

impossible, that’s so easy, this is so hard; only in line 09 does she attribute her success to her

own understanding. The student herself does not change; rather, as you learn, problems that had

been complex become simpler.

In line 09, a footing shift (Goffman 1981) occurs. While relative difficulty had been

situated mainly in the course content, it now comes to be described as a function of the student’s

ability. Sophie enacts this shift when she says I already understand it, and the interviewer takes

up this framing when he revoices her in line 10. She goes on to make it clear that the ability of

the student, not the complexity of the material, is the primary explanation for what seems easy or

hard; in line 14, the theorems are simpler, but “you” had issues with them in the past, so they

were difficult at that time. Now, however, as a result of “your” improved understanding, it’s easy

for you to do, even in more complicated versions.

This evolution can be interpreted in terms of Bamberg’s (2011) dimension of constancy

and change across time. In the first telling of the story, the implication is that the student herself

does not change; rather, the problems themselves come to seem easier in comparison to newer,

24

more difficult material. As the course progresses, the pattern repeats itself, with each new section

appearing “impossible,” and the student never feeling that she is changing at all, regardless of

how easy the previous sections seem in retrospect. In line 09, however, Sophie shifts the

emphasis from the difficulty of the problems to her own increasing understanding. Despite her

growth of understanding, though, the difficulty of the course itself remains constant, as the

passage of time and the structure of the syllabus require “you” to move beyond that tiny chunk

that “you” understand. As a result, despite having mastered individual concepts and techniques,

Sophie never experiences the more profound change that would constitute a growth in self-

confidence or a developing sense of self; for those who “struggle with math,” Sophie sees no

way of becoming a “math person.”

Discussion

Bamberg (2011) characterizes identity navigation through narrative practices as an

individual’s struggle, not only to put their identity into words, but even to choose the appropriate

aspect of their identity to be presented in the context of the telling. In Sophie’s resolution of this

dilemma, she chooses to present herself as a hard worker who, perhaps for the first time, is

finding that her hard work is not enough to bring her academic success; she may have agency

over her own actions, but the outcome is still beyond her control. The position of poor student is

one that she has been forced into, and for which she denies responsibility. Instead, she blames

her professor, who is too different from her to give her the guidance she requires; what she

doesn’t understand, he takes for granted, and he is incapable of bridging this gap. As a result, the

extent to which she is able to participate in the socialization process is limited. While she may

acquire proficiency with certain mathematical techniques, which she describes as manipulating

theorems, she never achieves a real sense of understanding.

25

While Sophie frames her lack of agency as a consequence of her helplessness in the face

of institutional power, she also maximally disaligns herself from the mathematics community of

practice, which offers another explanation for her failure to be socialized to this community.

Unlike the law and business students considered here, Sophie’s participation in the academic

setting is not undertaken with the goal of becoming a member of the relevant community, but

instead is a requirement that she has submitted to involuntarily in order to obtain the ultimate

goal of a B.A. degree in the humanities. Goffman’s (1957; 1961) work on total institutions is

informative here; he contrasts, on the one hand, religious institutions whose inmates are selected

for the seriousness of their vocation, and on the other hand, prisons and mental hospitals whose

inmates have been involuntarily committed. In the latter case, “staff’s version of the ideal inmate

has least chance of taking hold among the inmates” (Goffman 1957:82). Like a prisoner or a

mental patient, Sophie has no intention of becoming more like the institutional representatives

who are responsible for her, but is merely “marking time” until her requirement has been

fulfilled. This aspect of her identity motivates her grouping of her tutors along the sameness

versus difference dimension with herself, rather than with the university. Viewing mathematics

education as something you suck it up and get through, she positions all students as alike in their

not-knowing, rather than different in their educational goals.

Conclusion

As this paper has sought to demonstrate, the discourse of undergraduate, law, and

graduate business students reveals varying orientations towards an identity of a “successful”

student or professional. In our exploration of identity construction in narrative practices we see

two distinct ways of becoming a token of a type. Law students and business school students

display an orientation towards some sort of professional identity. Addie the law student portrays

26

herself as learning to think and behave like a lawyer. Students in the EML program reference

their existing professional identities and how they connect to what they are learning in class. In

contrast, Sophie, the undergraduate math student, is not orienting towards a professional identity.

Instead, she constructs an identity that is non-agentive, highly disaligned from the mathematics

community of practice, and relatively constant over time, rather than moving toward full

participation. Overall, participants’ narrative practices provide insight into their academic and

professional goals by positioning their future imagined selves as more or less full participants in

the relevant professional community.

These expressed aspects of participants’ identities give insight into their academic

performance in classroom settings. Addie’s self-positioning as a thinker rather than a doer

indicates a sense-of-self that is likely related to her reluctance to participate in class (expressed in

data not presented here). Sophie’s persistently poor grades in calculus relate to her non-agentive

self-positioning; she is “not a math person” and she feels that there is nothing she can do about it.

In fact, we would suggest that any student’s academic performance can only be fully understood

in the context of larger trajectories of identity navigation. Students’ success or failure to learn,

considered in a more narrowly cognitive sense as the acquisition of skills or information, is just

one component of the broader language socialization processes through which they define and

develop their membership in communities of practice.

Notes

1 “1L” is a colloquial term for a first-year law student.

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Appendix

The following notational conventions, adapted from Schegloff (2007), have been used in

the transcripts in this paper.

Line break: intonation unit boundary

. Falling intonation

? Rising intonation

, Continuing intonation

- Cut-off or self-interruption

:: Prolonging or stretching of preceding sound

word Stress or emphasis, indicated by loudness and/or higher pitch

Sharp rises or falls in intonation

>word< Quicker or rushed talk

<word> Slowed or drawn-out talk

(2.4) Length of a silence in tenths of a second

(.) Micro-pause of 0.2 second or less

( ) Non-transcribable segment