Born to Write: Discovery and Construction of Self in the Identity Stories of Poets and Writers

The explorative study hereby presented is based on in-depth interviews with 16 renowned Israeli writers of prose and poetry. The aim of the study is to examine the identity-stories of these masters of the written word. By the term "identity-story", we relate to the self-reflective or "arspoetic" sides of the life stories our interviewees presented, the hows, whens and whys which had brought them to realize their identities as their cultures' authorized authors or poets. Thematic analysis of these stories, conducted in the spirit of the Schutzian Phenomenological-Interpretive approach, reveals an interesting interplay of two seemingly contradictory core meta-themes - identity-creation and identity-discovery. The present paper is focused on the identity-discovery meta-theme. Unlike the identitycreation meta-theme, which illustrates active, deliberate and conscious processes of identity construction within the social world, the identitydiscovery meta-theme is based on narratives that detect the belief in the feasibility of a transcendental revelation of a given identity, whose roots lies beyond the ties of time and place.

The Representation of America and China in Trump's Press Conferences Concerning COVID-19: A Critical Discourse Analysis

This study explores the construction of “Self” and the “Other” in President Donald Trump’s political discourse concerning COVID-19. The study is based on two Critical Discourse Analysis approaches which are van Dijk’s ideological square and Fairclough’s three-dimensional approach. Van Dijk’s ideological square is utilized to investigate the representation of the “self” and the “other” throughout Trump’s conferences. Fairclough’s three-dimensional model is utilized to reveal the lexical items that are used in Trump’s political discourse to construct the “self” and the “other”. Fourteen press conferences of Trump are used for the analysis. The data is selected between periods from February 2020, until September 2020. This period represents the period of appearance and the spreading of COVID-19. The results of the study revealed that before the spreading of COVID-19, China was represented in a positive portrayal, while after the spreading of COVID-19; China was represented in a negative portrayal. On the other hand, America was represented in a positive and noble portrayal after and before the outbreak of COVID-19. Furthermore, lexical items, such as “China virus, Wuhan virus, Wuhan labs, Kung flu, got out of control, etc.” are associated with China, to hold it responsible for creating and spreading COVID-19.

Research on the Cultivation of College Students’ Innovation Ability and the Development of Self-Survival Innovation Team from the Perspective of Green Ecology

Self-survival innovation teams composed of college students are considered incubators for future entrepreneurs. Stability is the prerequisite for team survival, while sustainable development is the necessary condition for their continuous progress. The development of members and the team are interrelated. In the continuous development of the team, the members, who contribute to the development of the team, change iteratively, while the team provides opportunities and platforms for the development of the members. However, at present, there are few researches on the sustainable development of the team and the data analysis on the correlation between the member development and the team construction. Therefore, in order to make a systematic analysis on the sustainable development ability of the team, this paper adopts questionnaires to obtain relevant information about college students and their innovation team. SPSS software (25.0) is used to make statistical analysis on the current development of college students’ individual ability and innovation team. Based on this, the paper puts forward analysis strategies for the personal development of college students and the construction of self-survival innovation team.

Idiolect and Identity: Fourth Grade Students’ Translanguaging, Comprehension, and Self-Identity

The practice of translanguaging offers emergent bilinguals the opportunity to access their full linguistic repertoire. This qualitative study uses the lenses of dynamic bilingualism and idiolect, or one’s own unique language patterns, to explore emergent bilinguals’ translanguaging and reading comprehension strategies during a reading think-aloud, as well as the ways that language factors into the construction of self-identity. Data collected from a think-aloud show that the five fourth-grade students used language flexibly when reading and comprehending the texts that were presented in both Spanish and English. The participants, in follow-up interviews, also explained ways that they use translanguaging strategies when communicating with different audiences and how their identity as bilinguals positions them as mediators of their own language use. These findings support the conclusion that when students’ idiolects are supported and encouraged, they are able to develop positive self-identities.

Thai and Serbian Student L2 Motivational Selves: A Contrastive Study

Applying L2 Motivational Self-System, the aim of this paper is to investigate how Thai and Serbian students construct their L2 motivational self-systems. A total of 543 students from Thailand and Serbia completed an 18-item questionnaire aimed at sampling relevant motivational factors. Although the students from both universities reported medium levels of motivated behaviour and a strong influence of their L2 learning experience, the most influential factors in the construction of self-systems were fundamentally different. While Serbian students construct their motivational self-systems on the basis of their ideal L2 selves, Thai students shape their motivational self-systems on the basis of ought-to L2 self. This difference points to the overall teaching approaches adopted in the investigated settings, where in Serbia learning experience is guided by the communicative approach to language teaching, while the Thai learning experience rests on a teacher-centred approach shaped by the collectivist cultural orientation.

Storying selves and others at work

This paper engages with the relationship between story ownership – so who owns a story, tellership – so who has the right to tell it, and functions of workplace narratives as well as the broader social practices at work. Drawing upon discourse and narrative analyses, the paper investigates specifically how the negotiation of meaning visible in the often incomplete and fragmented but naturally-occurring narratives points to the discursive struggle over the construction of self within the specific parameters of the notion of professionalism. The paper identifies the facets of story ownership and discusses how each one can be affected by such regulatory forces of the social practices of work.