Voice Construction and Development of a Multilingual Student Writer: A Bakhtinian Perspective

Context and Participant

The present study was situated in a first-year ESL composition class (ENG109) in a Midwestern public university in the US in autumn 2017. I was the class instructor and was assigned to teach three classes of ESL composition classes. Two kinds of students could take ENG109. First, it was available to students who had completed ENG108, a non-credit bearing course focussing on giving students a fundamental grounding in academic reading and writing. Second, it was available to students whose English scores ranked within the top 17^th percentile in the college entrance exam. There were 18 students in each class, most of whom were business and undecided majors.

Shan was the first type of students who had completed ENG108 in the previous semester. My decision to focus solely on the case of Shan was motivated by three concerns. First, following Pomerantz and Kearney (2012), I believe that by focussing on one student, I can offer a more detailed discussion of the extent to which classroom activities might facilitate multilingual student writers in finding, refining, and even changing their existing voices to meet the requirements of an academic genre. My emphasis here is to illustrate how a Bakhtinian view of dialogic voice might complement and extend existing work in the field. Second, among the ten participants volunteered to be part of the study, Shan was one of two students who claimed to change their positions as a result of the scaffolding activities utilized in the unit. Also, she was very enthusiastic about participating in the individual interview which was an important component in the data collection process in both formal and informal settings.

Classroom Pedagogy

Data for the present study was collected in the Public Argument unit of ENG109. The unit was developed using a scaffolded approach focusing on collaboration and eliciting critical perspectives on the writing inquiry: Which name(s) should AISs use when studying abroad? Student voice construction and development were scaffolded using the five primary learning activities: Reverse-position (RP) debate, Weekly Reading Journal (WRJ), group interview, class discussion on model texts, and student sample essays. The unit began with students participating in an RP debate where they needed to work in a group of three or four debating the writing theme. In the debate, students were assigned a position, different from their initial position written in Namestory. In the WRJ, students were required to identify between five to eight potential sources for the essay and submit a reading journal weekly about them. The WRJ was approximately one page (250 words) where students addressed questions related to an author’s argument, the purpose of the text, and types of evidence used. They also could write about their personal opinion and feelings related to the text. The group interview assignment asked students to work in a group of three and interview a total of ten people to further explore the topic.

Data Collection Procedures and Analysis

To explore how classroom pedagogy contributed to Shan’s academic voice reflectively, the study followed Silva’s recommendation on the need to ‘mix modes of inquiry where appropriate to overcome the limitations of any single mode and to add breadth and depth to a study’ (2005: 12) when researching L2 writing. First, I looked at the primary data collected through three data sources:

These three primary data sources served as a basis for the stimulated-recall interview I conducted with Shan at the end of the class. The interview aimed to provide a more contextual understanding of the reflection she wrote in the Final Reflection. In addition to these data sources, I collected all data sources that Shan’s data produced for the Public Argument unit such as WRJs, written drafts, and RP debate documents. These forms of data collection enabled close examination of the complex relationship between classroom pedagogy and the process of constructing and developing an academic voice.

Data analysis initially involved identifying broad categories and factors affecting voice construction and development as elaborated by the Bakhtinian views of voice. Data analysis proceeded in two phases. Initially, a qualitative thematic analysis of the document was followed by iterative readings of three primary data sources: Namestory and Final Reflection to identify relevant factors affecting Shan’s and Chan’s voice construction and development. As initial themes were drawn, I then triangulated across the second data source: Argumentative essay and the individual interview to clarify and corroborate findings. The process of analysis was continuous and ongoing throughout all the phases of data collection as well as after completion of the fieldwork. To reiterate, I was particularly interested in the process of how Shan utilized classroom pedagogy to find, construct, and develop an academic voice as embodied in the argumentative essay. In weaving through Shan’s narratives, I utilize a snapshot approach (Park, 2012) surfacing her voice embodied in the (re-)naming practice that she has chosen prior to starting writing an argumentative essay. It should be noted that I am not claiming objective truth. My interpretation is one of many possible readings of the data.

Initial Stance on Re-naming Practice: Aligning Voices with More Knowledgeable Others

Shan was one among a very few international students who came into my ESL composition class without an English name. Through reading her Namestory, I learned that it is not that Shan has never had an English name but her decision not to use an English name in the US was mediated by several diaglossic (Bakhtin, 1981) episodes with the other.

Shan’s first re-naming experience was when she was only 10 years-old. Her elementary school English teacher, a Chinese national, Ms. Xin (a pseudonym), assigned an English name ‘Sally’ for her. Shan received a second English name ‘Stephanie’ when she was 16 years-old during a one-year exchange programme she participated in at a high school in Charlotte, North Carolina (NC). During the preparation to go to NC, the host mother emailed and asked if she could change her English name to ‘Stephanie’ because she thought the name ‘Sally’ did not suit her. Initially, Shan was reluctant to change. However, after learning the meaning of the name ‘Stephanie’ was ‘crown’, she decided to use the name.

Apparently, her second English name ‘Stephanie’ was short-lived once she started an English class with Ms. Ana, a high school English teacher in North Carolina. On the first day of class, Ms. Ana lectured about the importance of using a given name in the US:

‘I hope that all international students can use your own real name, I do not like you in English name. I will try my best to read it. If I can’t read it, I will learn how to read it, so don’t you worry that I can’t read it.’ All of my classmates and I were surprised when she said this. Then, she continued, ‘The name represents you, the English name is your alternative. Why do you use an English name? … because you want to integrate into US society? But you lose your own name in the process’ (Namestory).

Ms. Ana’s ‘speech’ of the need for international students to continue using a cultural name and her willingness to learn how to pronounce cultural names had an empowering effect for Shan’s sense of cultural identity and her decision to use a cultural name in the US. She concluded her Namestory by describing her commitment to using a cultural name in the US:

I totally agree with her, …[a cultural name] represents ourselves. Why should we lose ourselves and choose a false alternative? Although I do not think by using an English name, I will lose anything and … at a disadvantage. My [cultural] name is from my parents, which has their hope for me. And I want to be myself.

On a first glimpse, Shan’s decision to repeat Ms. Ana’s words seems to give the impression that she ‘espouses the values, beliefs and practices which are associated with that voice’ (Ivanič, 1998: 216). However, it is interesting to note that rather than using a statement to restate Ms. Ana’s words, Shan changed Ms. Ana’s statement into a question (‘Why should we lose ourselves and choose a false alternative?’) which might illustrate a conflicting sense of identities. The negative conjunction ‘although’ might index her soft resistance mainly because her previous experiences of using an English name did not corroborate Ms. Ana’s fears.

For Bakhtin, the voice of the other is vital in understanding the self. Braxley (2005), however, warned that ‘with so many [other] voices echoing in her head she may find it difficult to make herself heard’ (2005: 14). This is how I read Shan’s Namestory. I was unable to distinguish her voice from those of the more knowledgeable others because she seemed so eager to align her (re-)naming practice to those of the others. For this reason, I remembered feeling curious about how she was going to use these diverse experiences when forming an academic voice: Which voices of the others would she ‘listen’ to and develop into her academic voice? Certainly, from the way she ended the Namestory, we could easily predict she would continue Ms. Ana’s voice since she appeared committed to it. Most importantly, I was curious about the extent to which the writing process would give her a more agentive role in constructing and developing an academic stance.

Developing a (Changing) Position through Dissenting Voices of the Others

When asked during the interview why she did not develop her initial position into an academic stance, Shan admitted that she was not confident of being able to sustain the initial stance to fill a 1000-word essay, the requirement of the argumentative essay for the course. While Shan’s changing stances depicted in the Namestory seemed to be spontaneous and immediate to align her voice to more knowledgeable others (e.g. teachers, native English speaker (NES) host mother, and NES teacher), the shifting stance she experienced in the writing classroom was, in her words, ‘gradual and slow’.

Shan started to reconsider her initial position when preparing for the RP debate. She was assigned to the debate group arguing for the use of an English name; a position different from her initial position. In the interview, she admitted feeling annoyed because being in the group would mean she needed to ‘do more work’ and rethink her initial position. For the debate, each member needed to contribute one supporting reason for the group argument. Shan decided to choose ‘having an English name makes it easy for Americans to pronounce and remember’. This proposal for debate would support the group argument for the use of an English name. Shan was able to locate three credible sources to support the argument. Although at this point her stance had not yet changed, preparing for the debate had located Shan in a place and allowed her to reimagine the value of having an English name and thus, she was ‘forced’ to begin to see this position in a new light.

It was not until she again watched the video Day in the Life of an Asian/Ethnic Name, an assigned task from the previous unit, that she decided to change her position. When asked further what specific details in the video prompted her to change her initial position, Shan cited a critical incident narrated by Spurthi, an Indian-American immigrant. In the video, she mentioned that her name was often mispronounced when she ordered coffee at Starbucks despite her repeated effort to spell it phonetically. Spurthi’s experience triggered a similar experience for Shan. Although the Starbucks incident did not result in Spurthi even considering changing her name, Shan used a somewhat similar lived experience to illustrate the need to use an English name. This is how she framed the incident in the argumentative essay:

Once I went to Starbucks with my friends for coffee,

‘Name?’ the barista asked.

‘Shan,’ I said firmly.

‘Can you spell it?’ Although my given name is Shanshan Yuan, I generally only use ‘Shan’ for the convenience of ordering things.

‘Yeah, S-H-A-N.’

‘Ok, Thank you!’

After a few minutes, I heard the barista shouted: ‘Shale.’ I heard two Americans standing next to me laughing. I also laughed with them, wondering who would have the awkward name. I waited but after five minutes, I have not heard my name yet and that cup of coffee with ‘Shale’ was still there. Again, the barista called, ‘Shale,’ and suddenly, I realized that this cup of coffee might be mine. I approached the cup and it was the same order that I had. I was very embarrassed to take the coffee away in their laughter. Based on this experience, it is necessary for Chinese students to have an English name when they go to places that ask for their names like Starbucks because it can save them from unnecessary embarrassment.

(Argumentative Essay)

Despite several grammatical problems in the text, what is significant is the way Shan’s argument appropriates Spurthi’s incident and populates it – to use a Bakhtinian term – with her meaning and makes it part of her voice. In other words, Shan’s argument drew on Spurthi’s experience not because of its textual authority but because of the commonality of the experience that she believed her readers could relate to. In ‘creating’ the lived experience (Hesse, 2014: 53) at Starbucks, Shan included emphatic details – not found in Spurthi’s narrative – that might construct a particular feeling for CISs, her primary target audience. These details included ways to make her cultural name more accessible (e.g. enunciate her name, deliberately ‘chop’ her cultural name, and spell it clearly) and two hostile American characters. In the introduction of the essay, Shan even included a picture of a Starbuck’s cup with the mispronounced name ‘Shale’. Collectively, these emphatic details may have been triggered by her desire to further convince the target audience and thereby she positioned herself as knowledgeable about the issue.

Appropriating the Other’s Voice to One’s Voice

In addition to supporting one’s position using a lived experience and credible sources, students are required to collect evidence using a group interview to provide further evidence for their positions. Shan admitted this was the first time she had been asked to support her position using primary research. Her prior experience in writing an argumentative essay was for examination purposes where she needed to support a position based on prior experiences, common knowledge, and imagination. Her reflection demonstrated the struggle of integrating the data gathered through the group interview with her own voice:

When I started to write the body paragraph from the primary data, I just described the data, for example, 97% of the students believed that the probability of using Chinese and English names for obtaining a job was half and half. This kind of writing seems out of date and traditional. After I read the sample paragraphs about reporting primary research, it taught me to express these data in new ways. Then I went to the Writing Center where the mentor gave me some advice about signal words. Based on these understandings, I revised my topic sentence to ‘Among the twelve interviewed participants, Qinyu Li, a Chinese student, was the only students who believed that although the use of Chinese names leads to fewer interviews, adding English name can increase interview chances.’ This new writing technique will not only make readers feel interested but also make them more aware of the results of the investigation (Final Reflection).

Shan’s reflection drew attention to two primary struggles many L2 writers experience when expressing an academic voice. First, the literacy practice Shan received from her previous education – describing the interview data quantitatively – might contradict the academic position she wanted to take. Second, Shan was aware that to highlight the type of evidence that would appeal to her readers required ‘new types of mental activity’ (Ivanic, 1998: 199) through identifying several dialogical processes – such as, textual dialogues with sample texts and visiting the university writing centre – that could shed light on the one participant, Li.

Presenting interview data qualitatively allowed Shan to highlight Li’s voice which otherwise might remain hidden if she reported the finding quantitatively:

Among the twelve interviewed participants, Li, a Chinese student, was the only students who believed that … using English name can increase the chance to be invited for a job interview […] because lots of foreigners do not know how to pronounce Chinese names correctly. Using a Chinese name also made job applicants not be stereotyped as speaking bad English. During the interview, Li shared a story of her sister, a highly educated student but never invited to any job interviews. She believed this was because ‘most people are willing to choose people with the same background and culture as themselves, even if some Americans have no higher education.’ Li’s response is totally different from the other eleven participants. She seemed to know from her sister’s experience that English names have a big impact on job interviews (Argumentative Essay).

Liu pointed out that one issue for multilingual English writers when writing an academic paper is to imagine and address a somewhat ‘alien, abstract discourse community’ (2008: 95). I found that selecting a writing theme drawn from students’ lived experience helped students to better envisage this community. Although one might argue that Shan’s rhetorical decision to focus solely on one participant might not be significant from a quantitative perspective, Shan’s decision to ‘fill’ the research paragraph with Li’s story might stem from Shan’s familiarity with the kind of information that might appeal to her target audience, the CISs, who may have planned to get on-campus jobs.

Shan’s struggle to integrate primary data in her argument seems to capture a dilemma ESL students encounter when doing academic writing. They want to write in ways that the other voices can seamlessly be aligned to their voices, yet there is often a disjuncture between the other voices drawn either from primary data and/or sources and their own voice.