Title: “Constructing institutional identities: How veterans talk about the transition from military to college.”
Problem/Hypothesis: The study investigates how veterans, in describing their experiences transitioning from the military to college, use language to construct their intersecting identities and depict aspects of their acculturation into college life. Current research on veteran populations tells us little about veteran identities and how individual veterans verbalize their experiences. To investigate this, I apply a discourse analytic approach, specifically interactional sociolinguistics (Gumperz, 2015; Schiffrin, 1996; Tannen, 2008). In this approach, I draw on theories such as positioning theory to elucidate identity construction in talk and intertextuality to connect the local discourses (i.e. interactional interview data) with broader institutional discourses.
Methods:
The study consists of analysis of interview data, or “semi-structured conversations,” with seven veteran transfer students which includes four men and three women from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. With IRB approval, I recruited each participant from the campus veteran resource center at the focus institution. A core mission of the veteran resource center is helping veterans navigate campus resources. The veteran resource center does not maintain student records. Further, to not violate FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), I only contacted incoming transfer students who self-identified as veterans to the veteran resource center. Recruitment occurred at the beginning of August 2020. To do so, I emailed 10 incoming transfer students. Of the 10 students, seven responded and agreed to participate in the study.
The timeline for interviews began mid-August 2020 and will end mid-December 2020, the duration of the participants’ first semester (virtually) on campus. All IRB guidelines regarding data collection during the pandemic are being observed. In total, I will conduct three interviews with all seven participants for a total of 21 interviews. Copland and Creese (2015) point out that interviews provide an emic, or insider, perspective from the participant’s point of view. But more importantly for my study, the interviews allow the participants to demonstrate diverse text types (e.g. narratives, chronicles, explanations, questions) where discourse strategies can emerge to construct identities as they discuss their experiences. I completed the first round of interviews the week prior to the start of the semester to see how each participant talks about the university, their pathway to the university and how they talk about their expectations of being a student. The second round of interviews occurred in mid-October to see how each participant talks about their progress and if the way they talk about their experiences reflects their evolving identities. The last round of interviews will occur after final exams and will capture how the participants reflect on their first semester and their expectations for future semesters. Discussions in the last interview will also include their articulations of challenges faced, advantages realized, relationships made, and expectations (un)met during their first semester.
By conducting three interviews over the course of the semester, I provide each participant the opportunity to narrate their experiences as students on campus as they experience them as veterans. Looking across the participants’ interviews as they navigate the semester will also allow me to explore the veteran “habitus” (Bourdieu, 1991), which Disler (2008) describes as “intertextually created social norms, strictures, and mannerisms” (p. 8), from their earlier military training. To do this, I will transcribe the interviews and perform discourse analysis, focusing on particular text types (e.g., how participants tell narratives or provide accounts) and the role of specific linguistic features (e.g., military terminology, “constructed dialogue” [Tannen, 2007], repetition). This study provides a rare examination of student-veterans’ discourse while expanding the current body of research in linguistics and discourse analysis on identity construction by showing how identity is discursively constructed and negotiated over time during an extended period of change.
Review of related literature:
The contributions of my study are two-fold. First, I seek to understand how institutionally linked identities can emerge through unfolding discourses over a period of time. Specifically, I examine how veterans talk about their experience as they acculturate to college life during their first semester. Second, my study will expand linguistic analyses to the veteran community, an under-researched population in linguistics.
My analysis of interviews with seven U.S. veterans who arrived at a private four-year non-profit college on the east coast as transfer students draws on and extends existing research in interactional sociolinguistics. In particular, it contributes to the work of Disler (2008), whose discourse analytic study showed that veterans and military members are linked via the shared experience of various military trainings, during which they acquire military norms and ideologies that can emerge in conversation. To further illuminate this link, I draw on Kristeva’s (1986) notion of “intertextuality” which she introduced in her discussion of Bakhtin’s (1986) theorizing and which has been widely explored in linguistics (e.g. Tannen, 2007). Intertextuality describes how discourses are reverberations of past discourses and contribute to future discourses. In other words, it is a means of exploring connections between discourses – in the sense of language used and ideologies constructed – of the military, veterans, and educational institutions. To examine identities as an emerging social process, I turn to Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) sociocultural linguistic framework which sits at the intersection of language, culture, and society. Numerous scholars have used this framework to explore identity construction and meaning making in discourse. For example, Andrus’ (2019) study of police officer and victim/survivor narratives found that police officers emerge with an “effective police officer” identity in relation to a victim/survivor who demonstrates cooperative behaviors in what Bamberg (1997) calls the “storyworld.”
Further, as my data consists of interviews or “semi-structured conversations,” I draw on Davies and Harré’s (1990) theoretical framework of positioning theory to elucidate identity construction in conversation and narratives through the alignments speakers take and how they locate themselves in relation to other storyworld characters, the interaction, and the environment around them. Positioning theory is particularly useful in the context of military-related discourse. Laskey and Stirling (2020) applied positioning theory in a study of the discourse of two Australian combat veterans. While both veterans experienced trauma that manifested as self-blame, one was later diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Laskey and Stirling’s findings revealed that the veteran with PTSD discursively reproduced the same self-blame in a past storyworld (i.e. the time of his trauma) as in a current storyworld. Conversely, the other veteran’s talk demonstrated that he no longer attributed the past self-blame in a current storyworld, which the authors argue suggests recovery and healing.
This study expands the application of linguistic frameworks into the context of military discourse, an under-researched area of focus in linguistics. It specifically examines how individuals depict in discourse how they adapt, change, or acquire identities as they move from the military to an educational institution.
References
Andrus, J. (2019). Identity, self and other: The emergence of police and victim/survivor identities in domestic violence narratives. Discourse Studies, 21(6), 636–659.
Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays, 1st edition (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Eds.; V. McGee, Trans.). University of Texas Press.
Bamberg, M. (1997). Positioning between structure and performance. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7(1–4), 335–342.
Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power (J. B. Thompson, Ed.; G. Raymond, Trans.; Reprint). Polity Press.
Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2005). Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies, 7(4–5), 585–614.
Copland, F., & Creese, A. (2015). Linguistic ethnography: Collecting, analysing and presenting data. SAGE.
Davies, B., & Harré, R. (1990). Positioning: The discursive production of selves. Journal of the Theory of Social Behavior, 20(1), 43–64.
Disler, E. (2008). Language and gender in the military: Honorifics, narrative, and ideology in Air Force talk. Cambria Press.
Gumperz, J. J. (2015). Interactional sociolinguistics: A personal perspective. In D. Tannen, H. E. Hamilton, & D. Schiffrin (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (2nd ed., pp. 309–323). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Laskey, B., & Stirling, L. (2020). Positioning selves in narrative accounts of military trauma. Applied Linguistics, 41(3), 389–407.
Schiffrin, D. (1996). Interactional sociolinguistics. In S. Lee McKay & N. H. Hornberger (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language teaching (pp. 307–328). Cambridge University Press.
Tannen, D. (2007). Talking voices: Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Tannen, D. (2008). “We’ve never been close, we’re very different”: Three narrative types in sister discourse. Narrative Inquiry, 18(2), 206–229.
