Discursive negotiation of face via email: Professional identity development in school counseling supervision

Cynthia Gordon, Melissa Luke

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

34 Scopus citations

Abstract

This article examines email exchanges between eight Master's-level school counseling student interns and their internship supervisor to investigate how politeness strategies contribute to professional identity development in supervisory discourse. Our analysis demonstrates how identity development occurs via collaborative facework accomplished through multiple strategies: reported speech or " constructed dialogue" (Tannen, 2007), first person plural pronouns, the discourse marker " that being said," and repetition. These strategies create supervisor-supervisee solidarity and build and display supervisee competence, while also creating a discursive web of relations among people that links supervisees into their professional " community of practice" (Lave & Wenger, 1991). This study thus provides a discursive, micro-level understanding of professional identity development and its theoretical underpinnings in the context of email supervision.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)112-122
Number of pages11
JournalLinguistics and Education
Volume23
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2012

Keywords

  • Community of practice
  • Computer-mediated communication
  • Discourse analysis
  • Face
  • Politeness theory
  • Professional identity

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Education
  • Linguistics and Language

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