“Most of us are not feeling well”: exploring Iranian EAP practitioners’ emotions and identities

Abstract

Although theory and research on English for Academic Purposes (EAP) practitioners have grown recently, there is little documented research on their emotions and identities. This study explored the emotion of 12 Iranian EAP practitioners and their role in their identity construction. Adopting a narrative inquiry methodology, the study examined the practitioners’ emotions across the Zembylas’s (2002) three-dimensional framework of teacher emotions and their role in the practitioners’ identity construction. Data analyses revealed that while the practitioners consider recognition from students as contributive to their positive emotions and identities, sociocultural-ideological discourses and power relations negatively influence their emotions and identities. Such idiosyncrasies were viewed to create huge dissonances between the practitioners’ self-images and their professional sense-making at personal, interpersonal, and macro-structural levels. The study offers implications regarding EAP practitioners’ emotions and identities situated within sociocultural localities of EAP instruction.