ERIC Number: EJ1325818
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2021
Pages: 20
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0026-7902
EISSN: N/A
Discursive Enactment of Agency in Study-Abroad Interviews
Fernandez, Julieta; McGregor, Janice; Yuldashev, Aziz
Modern Language Journal, v105 n4 p877-896 Win 2021
In this article, we examine how meta-agentive discourse was enacted and linguistically encoded with constructed dialog. We analyze interviews with 4 American undergraduate students who expressed their interest in study abroad (SA) and submitted applications but later withdrew them. The analysis centers on the ways agency was assigned to different actors in participants' decision-making processes as mediated by discourses of SA. We demonstrate that in their interviews, the participants primarily assigned agency to (a) themselves by way of self-reports, (b) a 'collective' author by way of vague referents, and (c) SA programs and leadership by way of hypothetical constructed dialog. Notably, discourses about SA were often repurposed in divergent ways within the same interview by multiple participants. We urge scholars examining agency to closely consider the trajectorial and situated nature of meta-agentive discourse in applied linguistics research.
Descriptors: Study Abroad, Student Attitudes, Undergraduate Students, Student Interests, Decision Making, Student Participation, Personal Autonomy, Applied Linguistics, Dialogs (Language), Discourse Analysis
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2191/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A