"I Am Like a Lost Child": L2 Writers' Linguistic Metaphors as a Window Into Their Writer Identity.

Shizhou Yang,Yinyin Peng

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.648667

Abstract

The past two decades have witnessed a burgeoning literature on L2 writers' identities, especially their discoursal identities. In contrast, little attention is paid to the writers' felt sense of self when they write in an L2, which is an integral dimension of their autobiographical self. In this article, we provide empirical evidence of the nature of this aspect of L2 writer identity. To illustrate, we analyzed linguistic metaphors elicited from three groups of L2 writers (N = 83), majoring respectively in Thai, Japanese, and English in a Chinese university. Descriptive analysis shows that, due to challenges in content, language, organization, and cultural differences, a majority of L2 writers, especial Thai and Japanese L2 writers, experience a diminishing sense of self when they write in L2. In contrast, some L2 writers, especially English L2 writers, find writing in an L2 liberating, revealing the impact of their individual learning trajectories and pedagogical practices on L2 writers' felt sense of self. Findings suggest that L2 writers' identity work is both complex and dynamic. L2 writing teachers can utilize the metaphor questionnaire as a tool to facilitate their learner needs analysis and to raise L2 writers' metacognition.

Highlights

Second language or L2 writers’ identity has become a prominent issue among L2 writing and composition scholars in the past two decades (Harklau, 2000; Hyland, 2002, 2012; Li, 2007; Cox et al, 2010; Liu, 2011; Yang, 2013; Canagarajah, 2015, 2020; Zhao, 2015)
They used a wider range of metaphors, including both other humans and inanimate objects, than the Thai L2 writers: When I write in Japanese, I feel like an anti-Japanese soldier. . . (J1) When I write in Japanese, I feel like a file compressing software. . . (J8) When I write in Japanese, I feel like Doraemon dreaming of running into a mouse. . . (J12)
L2 writers may struggle in how to express their ideas in an L2. This is evident in the following responses from the Thai and Japanese L2 writers: When I write in Thai, I feel like a tiny little bird, which wants to fly high but cannot, because I have a small vocabulary, and my grammar is not good. (T6) When I write in Thai, I feel like a middle school student, because all I write is simple composition, which hardly has long compound sentences with modifiers. (T17) When I write in Japanese, I feel like a dog that looks at the Kana submissively and helplessly. (J18) When I write in Japanese, I feel like a primary school student, who cannot say anything in a complete sentence and whose writing is filled with simple sentences. (J14)

Summary

Introduction

Second language or L2 writers’ identity has become a prominent issue among L2 writing and composition scholars in the past two decades (Harklau, 2000; Hyland, 2002, 2012; Li, 2007; Cox et al, 2010; Liu, 2011; Yang, 2013; Canagarajah, 2015, 2020; Zhao, 2015) Based on her analysis of published L2 memoires, Li (2007) claimed that all bilingual writers go through two phases of belonging in their relationships with their multiple languages and cultures. The majority of L2 writers who learn to write in an L2 within their home countries, who are less proficient in L2 writing, and who do not write to publish, may need additional points of

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