Self-mention and the projection of multiple identity roles in TESOL graduate student presentations: The influence of the written academic genres

The purpose of the present study is to shed some light on the subtle interplay between oral and written academic genres in the context of graduate student academic presentations. The analysis was based on a corpus of successful TESOL graduate student academic presentations (n = 20) with a focus on the genre identity roles students encode in their uses of the first person singular pronouns and determiner (I, me, my). The analysis pointed to three main categories of roles (genre roles typical of academic writing, socially-motivated roles, and speech event roles) which comprise the set of identity roles that characterize student presentations as a genre. It also revealed that the academic writing genre roles were far better represented than the other two categories, which suggests that the presenters gave the greatest preference to projecting their scholarly selves in their presentations by staying close to the written academic genres while still giving a glimpse of their personal and social selves in relation to the topic content. The analysis further focused on the identity roles influenced by academic writing with an eye to the roles that dominated in students’ presentations, their function, and linguistic realizations.

► The genre identity roles typical of graduate student presentations consist of three main categories. ► They include social, academic writing, and speech event identity roles. ► The identity roles characteristic of writing dominate students’ presentations. ► Spoken mode of production influences primarily presenters’ linguistic choices.