Agency as Discursive Practice: From “nobody” to “somebody” as an international student in Australia1

1. My title was modelled after the theme and title of Bronwyn Davies's Agency as a form of discursive practice: A classroom scene observed (1990). A version of this paper appeared in Kettle (2004a).

Abstract

As more and more students pursue an international education, there is a need to investigate how these students deal with the demands of their study programs in the new academic context. This paper introduces one such student, a Thai English teacher named Woody,² and looks at the ways that he engaged with a Master of Education program in Australia. I analyse the transcripts of two interviews that I conducted with Woody in his first semester using Fairclough's model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The analysis is interested in the social and institutional demands that Woody identified as impacting on the course, and the strategic action that he took in response to them. I argue that by undertaking this action, Woody was “working” as an agent of his own change. The analysis highlights a proactive and strategic engagement on Woody's part, a point that has been missed in much of the literature on the international student experience in Australia.

Notes

1. My title was modelled after the theme and title of Bronwyn Davies's Agency as a form of discursive practice: A classroom scene observed (1990). A version of this paper appeared in Kettle (2004a).

3. It is important to acknowledge the contested nature of homogenising terms such as “Asian”. Ang (2000) maintains that the predominant definition of Asianness in Australia still involves lumping all of Asia together as a homogeneous monolithic entity. I use the term “Asian” in quotation marks to indicate that it remains a contested term.

4. For more on the politics of English and English language terminology, see Jenkins (2003) and Kachru (1992).

5. Davies draws on Butler in later work on agency (Honan et al., 2000).

6. Subjectivity here refers to the subject's idea of who they are, “their particular way of making sense of themselves and of the social world” (Davies, 1990, p. 345) with emphasis on the interiority of the self (McKay & Wong, 1996).

7. I acknowledge that linguistic features are just one form of semiotic practice. However, this discussion is mainly concerned with linguistic features and so for the sake of brevity, I use the term “linguistic”.

8. The university that Woody enrolled at was one of Australia's large, established universities. A group of eight of these universities have formed a strategic alliance called The Group of 8 (Go8). The universities in this group are: The University of New South Wales, The University of Sydney, Monash University, The University of Melbourne, The University of Queensland, The University of Western Australia, Adelaide University and The Australian National University.

9. For more on the negotiation of the interview in terms of meaning and language, see Kettle (2004b).

2. This is Woody's real name. He wanted this name and not a pseudonym to be used in my research reports.