Student voice and agency in master's thesis writing in a second language context: Beyond the use of pronouns

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis investigates the multimodal construction of voice and agency in master's theses within the South African context. I argue that voice is not only realized through linguistic features but also other multimodal meaning-making resources. The majority of postgraduate theses produced in South Africa are in English, despite the fact that English is only the fourth most widely spoken first language in the country. This thesis investigates how student voice and agency are discursively constructed in selected master's theses in this second language writing context. More specifically, I investigate how semiotic resources are used across modalities to construct voice and agency in completed master's theses and how students themselves reflect on the thesis writing process in semi-structured interviews. Using insights from genre analysis (Bhatia, 2002; Paltridge, 2002), sociocultural theory (Van Lier, 2008) and postmodern sociolinguistics (Pennycook, 2006) the thesis focuses on ways in which students intentionally violate norms of thesis writing to construct themselves as autonomous. The findings suggest that construction of voice and agency relies not only on the use of language but also on the manipulation of other multimodal meaning-making resources such as the use of visuals, layout, font, other languages and chapter order. Finally, I identify six elements, prominent in the data, that are important in assisting students to construct voice and agency in their thesis writing. This thesis ultimately provides theoretical insight into the multimodal construction of agency and voice, a topic which to this point have received very little attention in scholarly research on second language academic writing.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University