Language, disciplinarity and identity: an autoethnography of an international interdisciplinary doctoral student
Abstract
Purpose
While higher education has been encouraging interdisciplinary research, few studies have been conducted to understand how interdisciplinarity shapes the identity construction of scholars, especially doctoral students who may already strive to socialize into academia.
Design/methodology/approach
Therefore, this study adopts the approach of autoethnography to analyze my lived experience of developing disciplinary literacy and constructing interdisciplinary identity as a Chinese international doctoral student at a North American university. Communication theory of identity (CTI) is the theoretical framework through which I understand the negotiation among my personal, enacted, relational and communal identities while communicating my research through diverse literacy practices.
Findings
This autoethnography reveals that interdisciplinary doctoral students can flexibly use discursive resources from different disciplines and literacy practices in both English and their first language to dynamically create interdisciplinary identities communicable to different discourse communities. Their identities in different disciplines can develop simultaneously, rather than suppressing one for the development of the other as they do interdisciplinary research.
Originality/value
This study first extends current scholarly discussion of disciplinary literacy to a less-investigated setting, i.e. doctoral education in higher education. Second, it adds an additive and current layer of interdisciplinarity to the existing understanding of international doctoral students’ identity construction. Third, it helps to understand how the development of disciplinary literacy can facilitate disciplinary identity construction and how disciplinary identity construction can facilitate the development of disciplinary literacy.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This manuscript was developed based on the final project of Nature and Relationship of Academic and Non-academic Literacy, a course instructed by Dr Brian Huot at Kent State University. I would like to thank Dr Huot for his comments on this project and the insights and encouragements I received from him during the classes.
Citation
Yu, C. (2024), "Language, disciplinarity and identity: an autoethnography of an international interdisciplinary doctoral student", Qualitative Research Journal, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-02-2024-0047
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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