Situated Identity Research Articles

Intersecting identities and positionality of U.S.-based transnational researchers in second language studies

ABSTRACTDespite a growing number of Second Language (L2) researchers working in cross-cultural and cross-linguistic settings, issues related to these uniquely situated researcher identities have only scantily been addressed. In order to close this gap, we investigated three U.S.-based Korean female researchers in L2 studies. We sought to understand (1) the ways in which these researchers chose research topics, contexts, and participants; (2) how they related themselves to their research participants; and (3) to what extent and how they negotiated identities in conducting and reporting their research. With theoretical frameworks of positionality and intersectionality of researcher identities, we drew upon a few salient points from multiple data sources such as interviews, published papers, and field notes. We found not only that their research interests stemmed from their life experiences and graduate training, but accessibility, familiarity, and researcher’s self-identification also influenced their research topics, contexts, and relationships with their research participants. Furthermore, researchers’ active positioning themselves in relation to research content, contexts, and participants using their intersecting identities proved to be beneficial to their research. What our findings further suggest is that researchers embrace hybridity and multiplicity of subjectivities and identities in order to make a fair contribution to knowledge construction.

From present to presentation: A philosophical critique of Hartmut Rosa’s “situational identity”

Hartmut Rosa classifies modernity and late modernity in terms of the “speeding up” or “acceleration” of society. External institutions require constant development in order to maintain themselves, ...

One English Language Arts Teacher’s Journey as a Secondary Teacher-Mentor: Life in the Hyphen

This article shares the results of a case study that explored Annie’s socially situated identity as a secondary English Language Arts teacher-mentor over 5 years at an urban school. Annie’s identities as a teacher-mentor occupied the space of the hyphen—sometimes a teacher, sometimes a mentor, sometimes both. Using discourse analysis, we describe how Annie positioned herself and was positioned as a mentor and a teacher. We explore Annie’s transformations informed by figured worlds associated with the Discourses of Mentor and Teacher at College Prep. Annie’s teacher-mentor identity shifted, evolved, and overlapped in this space as she interacted at College Prep and was influenced by institutional and societal Discourses, including students’ home Discourses. The study points to the need for more and perhaps different kinds of support for mentor-teacher/teacher-mentors who work in urban school environments to prepare them to negotiate potential conflicts in their identities.

Habitus, Visual and Cultural Identity: Mean Girls’ Hyperfeminine Performances as Burlesque Pastiche and as Archetypal Female Pariahs

Visual and cultural identities are situated in habitus, social theory on the body and clothing. Framed by narrative inquiry, girl method, and feminist research, I investigated the mean girl experiences of Grace and Hayley, who witnessed hostility alongside an exaggerated policed feminine sartorial aesthetic. White, middle and upper class, managers of members’ social lives and aesthetic performances in designer clothing, mean girls purvey gossip and aggression. Masked by a visual aesthetic of sexualized heteronormativity enhancing their appeal to teenage girls, they incarnate binaried conceptions of gender performativity. Their aggressiveness reflects a third wave postfeminist narrative for which feminism is held responsible and accountable. As neoliberal post-feminist media and cultural constructions, they perform like Eve and wicked fairy-tale stepmothers, as archetypal female pariahs. Schools are sites of identity conflict: Bourdieusian habitus lenses offer possibilities for multimodal inquiries into visual and cultural re/presentations of situated identities in art teaching and learning.

Restorying for transdisciplinarity: A proposed teaching-learning strategy in a context of Human Rights Education

Human Rights Education can provide a context for transdisciplinary boundary talk as a possible way to create cohesion among the multiple disciplines embedded within the Social Sciences. This article presents a teaching-learning strategy, Empathetic-Reflective-Dialogical Restorying, which can be employed to facilitate such boundary talk. Both self-dialogue and self-narrative are used to create open space stories. This provides a platform for restorying as Social Science postgraduate students at a South African higher education institution engage in the space between, across and beyond academic disciplines. Conversation centres on the human right to gender equality as informed by the individual’s substantial and situational identities. The teaching-learning strategy introducing as it does, communities in conversation, communities in dialogue and communities for transformation, can be used to create possible cohesion among both academics and students in the Social Sciences. It also has the potential to be transformative beyond the Social Sciences and indeed, society at large.

Identity negotiation within peer groups during an informal engineering education program: The central role of leadership‐oriented youth

AbstractAs part of ongoing efforts to support a diverse and robust engineering workforce and ensure that children and adults from all communities have the engineering and design thinking skills to succeed in a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)‐rich world, identity has become a growing focus of research and education efforts. To advance our understanding of engineering‐related identity negotiation within informal STEM education contexts, we conducted an in‐depth, qualitative investigation of six adolescent girls participating in an afterschool engineering education program jointly run by two community‐based organizations and a science center. Building on the Identity‐Frame Model developed through our prior work, analysis of videotaped program sessions and secondary data from participants, program facilitators, and parents highlighted the important role that leadership‐oriented youth played in shaping the identity negotiation of participants during the programs, both in the ways they recognized and positioned the situated identities of other youth and through their influence on the activity frames that defined the nature of the engineering activities. These findings extend prior classroom studies and suggest a new lens to help teachers and program facilitators support identity negotiation for youth in STEM education programs.

Situational Identities along the Raiding Frontier of Colonial New Mexico

Situational Identities along the Raiding Frontier of Colonial New Mexico

Advice-Giving Roles and Strategies in Selected Faculty Member-Graduate Student Advising

In mentoring graduate students, it is hard to deny the ubiquity of graduate student advising. Faculty members, who are usually engaged in advising to tease out problems and suggest solutions, could often times be faced with negative attributions concerning faculty members’ competence, as well as receive unaligned responses rather than collaborative understanding of issues or recommendations. While previous studies on advising may have focused on specific, intricate, discourse particles and microscopic perspectives on advising, studies on advice giving exchanges that depart from these dimensions are insufficient. To fill in this lacuna, this paper proposes to explore strategies and participation roles in which faculty members assume in selected doctoral dissertation advising. Through discourse analysis, specifically focusing on discourse and situational identities grounded in identities-in-interaction (Zimmerman, 1998), the study illuminates some of the many advising roles and advising strategies that are revealed as legitimate, aligning doctoral student learning experience. In particular, advising roles and advising strategies, as illustrated in this study, link social and institutional context by proposing some of the many trajectories of how both faculty members and graduate students understand the relevance of advising exchanges. By focusing on these exchanges, the paper will also contribute to the growing body of literature on a range of different factors that may constitute advising in terms of content and manner in which advising takes place.

Reversal of Participation Roles in NS-NNS Synchronous Telecollaboration

In this article we investigate data from digital interactions between native speaker (NS) and non-native speaker (NNS) dyads of English during synchronous computermediated communication. As opposed to most studies into the NS–NNS interface, we reversed the expert-learner participant roles: during the task performance, the NS was the (cultural) learner and the NNS the expert. Our aim was to observe the influence of these reversed participant categories on participant behavior and task performance, i.e., to see if NNS behavior as described in earlier studies also applies to the NSs in a similar apprentice position during a cross-cultural exchange, and vice versa. We found that, in both video calls and written chats, the NSs and NNSs behave in a similar manner when cast in both apprentice and learner roles. We conclude that, in task design and telecollaboration practice, the situated identities of the participants should be taken into account.

Disclosing Bisexuality or Coming Out? Two Different Realities for Bisexual People in The Netherlands

ABSTRACTThis study challenges the coming-out imperative and understands coming out as a normative practice in which people need to confess their nonheterosexuality toward others. Interviews with bisexual participants, 31 bisexual men and women who are living in The Netherlands, reveal that they prefer to disclose their sexual identity in mundane situations, spaces, and practices and only when they understand it as relevant. Instead of focusing on strategic and conscious decisions—the focus of most studies on (bisexual) coming out—the authorI proposes an approach to explore disclosures by analyzing people's doings and sayings to understand the emotions, moods, attitudes, stances, actions, and consciousness that are in play when people disclose, or not disclose, their bisexual identity and/or desire toward others. Finally, the author makes a case to differentiate between coming out and sexual identity disclosures as both occupy a different position in the social and sexual lives of participants as respectively a practice and as actions.

Dealing with Borderland Complexity. The Multisided Views of Local Individuals in the Norwegian–Russian Borderland

ABSTRACT Against the background of the transnational Barents Cooperation, the article explores the multisided views of borderland locals in Kirkenes. Based on semi-structured interviews, there were seven, partly contradictory, perspectives on Russians and a local orientation towards Russia. The same individuals expressed views that went beyond either endorsement, resistance or ambivalence on increased borderland integration. Rather, interviewees integrated several perspectives in different combinations to simultaneously express sentiments as different as skepticism, pragmatism, historical gratitude and local pride. The emphasis on multisided statements differs from some previous border studies that emphasize positioned and situational borderland identities and borderland experiences. Following Kurki (Kurki, T. 2016. Personal Trauma versus Cold War Rhetoric in the Finnish-Russian Borderland. In The Dynamics of Cultural Borders, ed. Anu Kannike and Monika Tasa. University of Tartu Press, 76), I argue that the repertoire of perspectives people related to conveyed layered meanings of the border that reflected a complex present and different historical periods. Beyond borderland contexts, paying attention to individuals’ expressions of different perspectives can contribute to increased understanding of seemingly contradictory attitudes.

Do people turn to visible reminders of group identity under stress?

AbstractHow do people cope with stress? Research suggests that people have a number of strategies, including turning to the groups to which they belong, increasing feelings of identification and affiliation. We examine a novel extension of this strategy: adopting visible reminders of one's group identity. In two experiments (Ns = 103 and 194), we explore whether students are more likely to use an artifact that displays their university identity in situations of high, compared to low, evaluative stress. In Experiment 1, students were more likely to choose a university‐branded pen (vs. an identical unbranded pen) to complete exam questions when their performance would be evaluated versus not. In Experiment 2, we found the tendency to use a university‐branded pen in the face of evaluative stress emerged only among people who found the evaluation personally relevant. In addition, we present converging results from two observational studies suggesting that students are more likely to wear clothing that signals their university identity on exam days compared to control days. These findings suggest that people may turn to visible reminders of group membership when facing evaluative stress. Although we found no consistent evidence for a psychological mechanism underlying this effect, we speculate about theoretically relevant possibilities.

It's a War Out There: Contextualized Narratives of Violent Acts

PurposeTo examine how individuals operating in violent environments draw on cultural and personal narratives of place and self to make sense of routine preparations for violence. MethodsData are based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 17 individuals involved in street crime and assaultive violence in St. Louis, Missouri. Participants had engaged in violence within the month prior to being interviewed. We used chain referral methods to identify and recruit them. ResultsParticipants portrayed their neighborhoods as warzones and themselves as people who succeed in these environments due to preparedness for violence and personal capacity for violence typified by street soldiers. They used this situated identity to explain preparations for violence including: readiness to see threats and respond quickly, selecting allies for fights, and arming themselves. ConclusionsThe implications of our findings for the study of narrative criminology are discussed including how place and identity narratives facilitate an understanding of self in action that is both after-the-fact sense-making and crime conducive.

Conservatism as a situated identity: Implications for consumer behavior

Insufficient attention to political ideology as an organizing axis reduces predictive power. Jost (2017 – this issue) makes a significant contribution by outlining and documenting a set of relationships among personality factors, attitudes, values, and conservatism. The value of this approach is highlighting the possibility that ideology sticks when it fits features of the individual and hence has an enduring quality. This approach needs to be balanced by consideration of the power of the immediate situation to define what an identity means and the potential universality of many features associated with conservatism. We discuss both issues using identity-based motivation theory as our organizing framework.

Using Place-Referenced Approaches to Extend Language-Minority Youths’ Problem-Solving Abilities and Literacy Engagement

We examine an action research initiative focusing on youths who were born and/or began formal schooling in Canada but raised in homes where the societally dominant language was not extensively spoken. Concepts of place and situation were used as heuristics to extend secondary-level students’ problem-solving abilities and literacy engagement and—using activities revolving around youths’ locations within family, school, and community ecologies—to stimulate reflection on their personal and socially situated identities. The structure of secondary schooling, including its engagement of placemaking processes, is not conducive to the promotion of pedagogies that beneficially support the learning of this student cohort.

Discourse Analysis of Microteaching : Dynamic Identities and Situational Frames

Ryoo, Hye-Kyung. 2017. “Discourse Analysis of Microteaching: Dynamic Identities and Situational Frames”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 25(2), 165~196. The present paper is based on a discourse analysis of Microteaching speech events of Korean pre-service training students taking a teacher training course in college. The purpose of this study is to look closely into what really is going on in the discourse of microteaching events in terms of the participants' identity enactment and framing of situations. Fifteen pre-service training students' microteaching lessons were video-taped and transcribed to examine detailed discourse features. The results of the qualitative analysis of the discourse revealed frequent dynamic shifting and enactments of identities in momentary situational frames. The participants in the present study were able to act on diverse situational frames by orienting to locally-managed situated identities.

The interactions between facilitator identity, conflictual presence, and social presence in peer-moderated online collaborative learning

Research has focused on the significance of social presence in online learning. However, peer interaction does not always result in positive emotions and feelings; it can trigger tension, distress, and anger within a learning community. Therefore, conflictual presence, as a carrier of negative valence within presence, is also a critical element when it becomes inimical to online discussions. Drawing upon the socially situated identity theory and using discourse analysis, this study presents an authentic case where conflictual presence, social presence, and identity negotiation were intertwined throughout the entire life of an online learning community. Findings reveal that students craft their discourses to fashion themselves as a certain kind of facilitator and participant. Implicit and explicit identity negotiation is ubiquitous in discursive interactions and can lead to tension and conflictual socio-relations at times.

Becoming a (green) identity entrepreneur: Learning to negotiate situated identities to nurture community environmental practice

This paper explores the relationship between ‘green’ identity and community environmental practice. It focuses on the ways in which professional community development facilitators and lead members of community groups attempt to actively shape how environmental projects are locally received. Drawing principally on identity, social sustainability and social practice theory scholarship, it reviews the often very personal and place-specific ways in which appeals to green identity are variously understood and applied, or are actively avoided, by community group leaders. Individuals who have become skilful in negotiating and influencing the presentation of environmental projects to the local community are understood here as (green) identity entrepreneurs. Arguably, it is the situated entrepreneurial skilfulness of lead individuals in negotiating the multiple and evolving (green) identities circulating through any one project, which plays a significant part in determining its subsequent impact and longevity. In understanding the contribution of (green) identity entrepreneurship, however, its relational association with everyday practices, routines and meanings of community and place is brought to the fore. The paper also considers how divergent external interpretations of what constitutes legitimate environmental practice at a local level further shape project identity. The discussion is informed by evidence drawn from a qualitative study of 17 community groups and 7 professional environmental support officers participating in a Welsh Government led programme aimed at facilitating ‘community action on climate change’.

Epistemic management in the material world of workplace: A study of nursing shift handovers at a Japanese Geriatric Healthcare Facility

This study investigates how nurses working at a Japanese geriatric healthcare facility report, confirm and reconstruct information concerning care receivers during routine handover meetings. Through a sequential and multimodal analysis of the video-recorded handovers, the study investigates how the participants manage the intricate balance between their obligation to sustain the accuracy of records and their orientation toward respective situated identities as reporters and report recipients, by tactfully using linguistic and other semiotic resources. Our analysis demonstrates how the participants incorporate various evidential markers as a resource to present different kinds and levels of access they have to particular pieces of information and to indicate their epistemic stance. Further, it uncovers how the presence of documents that contain information regarding care receivers, available for inspection during the interaction, impact the ways in which outgoing nurses construct their reports, as well as the ways in which incoming nurses initiate repair. The study thus contributes to a growing body of research that investigates epistemic management in institutional settings, as well as to the advancement of our understanding regarding Japanese evidential markers in use.

Characteristics of identity in life choice situations

Characteristics of identity in life choice situations