Writing, Power and Identity: An Ethnographic Inquiry into Higher Education

Abstract

Formal education is designed in accordance with the values and ideologies of those in authority, and study into formal education provides numerous chances for ethnographers to examine how learning takes place within institutions and how it is assessed. The study draws on ethnographic method in Academic Literacies Approach in its investigation of the academic writing practices in higher education. In this paper, we investigate the opinions of the students regarding their writing procedures and issues as well as their views on their writing assessment in order to know about the reader-writer power relationship and the influence of the institutional norms on writing practices. Since the research is ethnographic, it comprises a short sample and a thorough examination of the information gathered in various stages. Therefore our sample includes only two postgraduate students from a public sector university of Pakistan. The findings from the data are significant as they point to the influential factors that affect not only the students writing practices but also the portrayal of their identity in their academic writing. The reader-writer relationship and academic norms appear to be the significant factors which influence students’ linguistic choices and their self-representation in writing, in an institutional setting that involves power relations. The study sheds light on institutional policies, student-teacher interactions, and their effects on student writing. The study of writing and identity as well as the understanding of students' writing difficulties in the context of prevalent institutional processes are both advanced by the current research.