Doctoral students’ English academic writing experiences through metaphor analysis

Abstract

Doctoral students are expected to contribute to their academic community by presenting their research findings in an internationally acceptable manner and to submit their dissertation. Students from non-English-speaking backgrounds might face challenges when writing publishable papers and dissertations in English. The aim of this study is to explore conceptual metaphors doctoral students used for characterizing their English academic writing experiences during their doctoral studies. A survey was conducted in the spring of 2022 inviting all non-native English-speaking doctoral students. They were asked to finish the sentence: “Writing an academic paper in English is like …..”. A total of 255 doctoral students (125 females; 127 males; 3 not stated) studying at 14 Hungarian universities volunteered to participate. They were from 49 countries and used 52 mother tongues. The metaphor dataset was analyzed following Lakoff and Johnson’ (1980) theoretical framework. Ten conceptual domains emerged from the dataset: WORK, TEXT PRODUCTION, CHALLENGE, STRUGGLE, CHANGING PLACES, ACTIVITIY, NOURISMENT, EASY TASK, CONSTRUCTION, and COMPLEX PROCESS. Only four students shared very negative metaphors on their experiences; whereas most students’ metaphors reflected optimism, even though they implied various demanding features of English academic writing. Students’ metaphors offered new authentic insights into their emic perspectives on their lived experiences.