Main Article Content

Abstract

Drawing on the notion of the contact zone (Pratt, 1991), this qualitative case study investigates the construction of self in the academic writing of three Indonesian novice writers. Its aims are twofold: (a) to explore how students constructed self in academic writing, including the way they negotiated tensions between their expectations and their teachers, as well as the challenges posed to their writing self in the presence of the dominant discourse, and (b) to identify possible rhetorical postures of their texts. Data were obtained via writing conferences, field notes, and participant observations and analyzed using thematic coding.  Results show that the self was constructed by (a) venerating established authorities, (b) depersonalizing knowledge, (c) personalizing knowledge, and (d) through discursivity and linearity. As for the rhetorical postures, different constructions of self in writing yield different rhetorical postures, which can be classified as either discordant or coherent potential. This study concludes that the self as the aspect of identity is invariably unstable, ambivalent, and even conflictual, as it always undergoes changes over time motivated by the dynamics of social contexts of writing. So construed, writing can no longer be treated as a value-free and autonomous activity devoid of one’s values, preferential biases, beliefs, and allegiances to realities.

Keywords

Contact zone Self Rhetorical postures Discordant Coherent potential

Article Details

Author Biography

Setiono Sugiharto, Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia

Setiono Sugiharto is a Professor of English at Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia. His works have appeared in Applied Linguistics, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Journal of Philosophy of Education, International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, Journal of Multilcultural Discourses, TESOL Journal, The Journal of ASIA TEFL, The Routledge Handbook of Educational Linguistics, and Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies. His research focuses on language, politics and ideology, and the sociolinguistics of globalization
How to Cite
Sugiharto, S. (2024). Straddling the Personal and the Academic: How Self in Academic Writing is Constructed in Contact Zone. JOALL (Journal of Applied Linguistics and Literature), 9(2), 478–504. https://doi.org/10.33369/joall.v9i2.35964

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