Name My Names: Investigating International Students' Sense of Identity Through Narrative Name Stories

• In Event: Reading Multiculturalism: Examining Literacy for Multicultural Students

Abstract

The current project adopts critical perspectives and methodology to investigate international students’ name-choice and lived stories within different socio-cultural settings in an American higher education context. Preliminary findings demonstrate that international students instantiate different degrees of reflection when 1) choosing which name to be called in which context; 2) basing their name-choice on self-formative processes; 3) explicating lay philosophies of self-formation as those processes relate self and name. This study provides empirical evidence and hermeneutic justifications for studying identity as, within, and towards self-reflection. It foregrounds validity as an aspect of participants’ autonomy as they take responsibility for the self in reflective internalization of the criteria for name-choice.

Authors

• Dorcas Xingqing Miao, Indiana University
  Presenting Author

• Pei-Jung Li, Indiana University
  Presenting Author