Latina/o Undergraduate Students' Negotiation of Power and Identity in Academic Writing

• In Event: 61.086 - Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: 61.086-14 - Faculty and Student Perspectives on Current College Writing Issues

Abstract

This study examined four undergraduate Latino students’ perspectives on academic language and their negotiation of identities when writing academic texts in their second language, English. The two theories that comprised the framework of this study - Gee’s discourse theory and the academic literacies model- helped to shed light on the identity conflicts and power relations surrounding the ways participants understood academic language and represented themselves in academic writing. The analysis of interviews and students’ writing samples led to the following findings: (1) Perspectives on academic language; (2) “Playing it right”; and (3) Struggling to negotiate identities.

Author

• Luciene Soares Wandermurem, The University of Texas - El Paso