Linguistic Discomposure: Disruptive Learning Narratives and Lacan in a Short Study Abroad Program

• In Event: Disruptive Learning Narrative Framework: Analyzing Race, Power and Privilege in Post-Secondary International Service Learning

Proposal

Studies on distress in international study abroad programs tend to fall into two large, but related, categories. First, many detect a self-authoring process by which an individual faced with a situation of cognitive dissonance may choose a more active role in self-formation by consciously deciding to ‘author’ their own fate, while still cognizant of real-world limitations (Pizzolato, 2005). This first approach seems related to and is perhaps an outgrowth of the phenomenon described by Markus and Nurius’s (1986) theory and study of what they call ‘possible selves’. Here, they discuss past conceptions of self, present conceptions of the self and future ideas about the self as they affect people’s behaviours. These selves seem like a less self-directed version of Pizzolato’s more self-determining, self-authoring model. The second kind of description centres around the traditional definition of cognitive dissonance and – much like the first – sees the moment of disorienting or challenging experiences as an opportunity for personal growth on the part of the individual. That is, the dissonance created in an encounter with ideas that challenge the self as previously conceived is processed and resolved into personal change and growth that integrates the new idea or circumstance (Trilokekar & Kukar, 2011).

Rather than being mutually exclusive, these two theories of self seem contiguous, and go a long way to explaining the efficacy of study abroad programs for personal growth. They seem to fall just short, however, of fully describing observations I made in a five-week study abroad program called ‘The Catalyst’, run out of a consortium of Midwestern universities. During the program, I observed something much more like a disturbance of the wholeness of the imaginary register by the symbolic experiences of cognitive dissonance and its subsequent resolution. This was especially true since many of the experiences were centred around language, or its absence. Lacan saw the psyche as being structured like a language. As I observed students studying in London and Paris, I began to think about their distress. I wondered whether I could see their disturbances through the lens of Lacan. Specifically, Lacan posits the imago being confronted and disrupted by the linguistic register of the symbolic, and sometimes even the real. In the process of considering Disruptive Learning Narratives (DLN) as a lens for viewing these experiences, I wanted to know if there was a way to understand this process as a psychological and a linguistic phenomenon that parallels the theoretical framework of DLN (Blinded for peer review process). I tested this hypothesis in the context of the language differences students would be facing in three weeks of direct instruction, finding some compelling qualitative results in students’ personal narratives about their experiences. These results strongly suggest the linguistic nature of the self-concept as well as how the self-concept is challenged in a specifically linguistic way on study abroad experiences.

Author

• Michelle Parkinson, University of Wisconsin, River Falls