Unpacking the positioning of being “disengaged” and “disrespectful” in class through nexus analysis: an international student’s navigation of institutional and interactional university norms

2.1 Language socialization

We adopt the lens of language socialization to examine learning and interactions within a social context (Friedman 2021). Researching L2 learners’ socialization affords us the opportunity to reexamine teachers’ pedagogical strategies, interactions, classroom organization, and lesson structures (Watson-Gegeo 2004). Interactions with more experienced learners and teachers often facilitate international students’ acquisition of membership and language socialization in L2 communities (e.g., De Costa et al. 2022; Duff and Talmy 2011; Zappa-Hollman 2007). Many L2 socialization studies (e.g., Morita 2004, 2009; Zappa-Hollman 2007), therefore, view the interactions between and among teachers and students as the primary object of investigation for understanding international students’ L2 socialization. As astutely noted by Scollon and Scollon (2004), what students say and how they talk are vitally important parts of socialization.

Relatedly, Fujieda’s (2019) examination of a Japanese undergraduate EFL (English as a Foreign Language) student’s academic discourse socialization found that their focal participant was socialized into her course and discourse community by (1) engaging in discussions with her teacher and classmates, and (2) constructing a social network outside the classroom. In other cases, however, opportunities to interact with experienced peers and instructors may not necessarily help international students become legitimate members of the academic community. For example, Kota, the focal participant in Morita’s (2009) study, felt marginalized and alienated despite efforts to socialize with peers and engage in class activities. Morita reported the struggles Kota experienced when interacting with academic discourse communities in a Canadian university, including a lack of perceived English abilities, diverse cultures of which he had to make sense (i.e., “the culture of Canadian graduate school, local disciplinary and institutional culture, and classroom culture of various courses”) (p. 456). This demonstrates that his academic socialization was impeded by structural forces, such as a lack of support and understanding from the institution, despite his strong research motivation and desire to pursue a degree.

In their investigation of the silence experience (in English-speaking country classrooms) of international Chinese students born in the 1980s, Phan and Li (2014) describe similar experiences of navigating different cultures at various levels. The authors contend that the in-class silence of Chinese international students should be understood as going beyond “language barrier issues and cross-cultural factors” (p. 244), and thus bears a sociopolitical dimension. Students may purposefully elect to remain reticent in class, to express either their attitude towards the teaching style and class atmosphere or resistance to having their opinions not taken seriously. Thus, their silence arose from the institution’s different and unfamiliar structural forces. The study also highlighted the importance of legitimizing silence as a way of learning and thinking in contrast to the pedagogy that links talking to thinking and learning in many Western classrooms (see also Bao 2014). In addressing the issue of having to navigate different values, discourses, and practices in a new environment, Morita (2009) underscored the importance of involving all parties, including experienced peers and instructors as well as international students, in order to communicate participants’ needs and expectations, create more opportunities for the experienced members to learn about the challenges international students face, and build a better supporting network for them.

2.2 Positioning theory

As noted by Kayı-Aydar (2019), positioning theory revolves around the rights, duties, and obligations of interlocutors through conversations. The primary focus of positioning theory is to reveal the practices that limit individuals from certain actions or performing specific acts. Unlike the notion of “position,” which encompasses a complex cluster of general personal attributes, “positioning” refers to a discursive process in which people engage during conversations. Positioning thus serves as the fundamental mechanism through which self and identities are constructed in social interaction. By employing positioning moves, people can claim, deny, and allocate rights, and understand themselves as part of a team, group, or community. They intentionally utilize positioning to exercise agency and achieve their specific goals. In this study, the concept of positioning is used to interpret and illustrate our participants’ actions.

Previous studies that have highlighted the significance of social contexts have adopted positioning theory to help us better understand how additional languages are acquired. For example, Nguyen and Yang (2015), who focused on the classroom engagement of a queer Korean ESL learner, reported that the level of engagement, disengagement, or resistance displayed in classroom discourse closely correlated with the alignment between students’ desired self-identities and language classroom practices. Specifically, in cases where a student’s queer identity was not supported by the prevailing practices within the language class, student disengagement occurred. In a related study by Kayi-Aydar (2014) who investigated the positioning of two ESL students in an oral skills class, it was found that students’ positioning significantly influenced their interactions, shaping both what they chose to say and withhold. Thus, positioning theory offers a valuable framework for comprehending the intricate interplay of social and cultural factors in language learning and socialization.

2.3 Nexus analysis

To help us better understand L2 socialization, Duff (2019) posited that a commitment to community members’ own (emic) perspectives of their learning can yield valuable insights on their L2 learning processes. Given its ethnographic roots, nexus analysis (Scollon and Scollon 2004; see also Scollon and Scollon 2007) constitutes an approach that enables us to situate a learning phenomenon within a broader sociocultural context by considering both linguistic and non-linguistic factors that might impact learning outcomes.

To investigate language socialization processes encountered by international students and the attendant social actions in which they are engaged, it is useful to examine single moments of social action across various scales (Hult 2015; Scollon and Scollon 2004).^[1] Social action is understood as an action taken by a person with reference to a social network, as well as an action conducted through material and symbolic mediational means (Scollon and Scollon 2004).^[2] And because all human actions are social in nature, actions examined through nexus analysis can also help explain how histories, identities, and interactions contribute to learning a new language and culture. Importantly, Scollon and Scollon (2004) viewed social action as a nexus of aggregated discourse in place, interaction order, and historical body (see Figure 1).

Figure 1:

The framework of nexus analysis (Scollon and Scollon 2004, p. 20).

Discourses in place refer to circulating values in social actions. This construct illustrates how people take different kinds of actions and what constitutes mediational constraints or affordances (e.g., language) are. Interaction order is a set of social norms for how individuals interact with each other. According to Hult (2017), interaction order deals with the shared norms of practice and expectations towards others based on their social positions which enable certain actions and curtail others. Historical body, which entails the embodied life experiences of individuals in social actions, demonstrates one’s goals, purposes, and experience. To understand one’s social actions, it is thus necessary to delve into how these three elements (discourses in place, interaction order, historical body) are intertwined with social actions. As seen in Figure 1, these three elements intersect at the practice level through social action.

2.4 Nexus analysis in language studies

Nexus analysis is not new to language studies, however. As an analytic method, it has been used to conduct research in classroom settings (e.g., Dressler 2018; Levine 2013), study abroad contexts (e.g., Dressler et al. 2021; Levine 2015), English as a lingua franca communication (Soukup and Kordon 2012), transcultural language contexts (Hult 2012), and in language education policy (Hult 2017). For example, Hult (2012) examined the Swedish national syllabi for languages and the social contexts of an English language teacher training program by using nexus analysis. He found that the globalization of English was localized in Swedish educational policy and practices, and that tensions among pre-service English teachers occurred in the process of the transculturation of English in Sweden. As a discourse-analytical tool, nexus analysis thus enables researchers to unpack major tensions in a language classroom.

Given that nexus analysis is a tool to analyze discourses, it can be used to analyze interactions or narratives in the language classroom setting. In other words, and in conjunction with positioning theory described earlier, nexus analysis can be used as heuristic to guide our understanding of classroom discourse (e.g., Dressler 2018; Gynne et al. 2016; Levine 2013, 2015). For example, Gynne et al. (2016) adopted nexus analysis to investigate how linguistic-cultural values were constructed in everyday educational practices in a bilingual school. Specifically, they found that teacher-dominated discourse could affect and was affected by the students’ historical bodies (i.e., their embodied life experiences) during student-teacher interactions. Thus, among other things, nexus analysis allows us to examine values embedded in everyday classroom interaction as well as in wider school and society. And when applied to L2 classrooms, nexus analysis enables us to better understand the dynamics surrounding L2 socialization, which as noted earlier, is characterized by complex value and identity work.

4.1 Data collection

Our focal participant was Kristina, who at the time of our study was newly arrived from China. Being a member of the Chinese international student community, she belonged to the largest segment of international student population on campus. The other three participants were two Korean international students (Jin and Won) and the course instructor (Cathy).^[3] In 2017, only three students registered for this program before they started their academic program (an undergraduate program for Kristina and graduate programs for Jin and Won) at GLU.^[4] The three participants’ English proficiency measured by TOEFL was similar (80 on average, an intermediate level). Kristina was an 18-year-old female Chinese student who came to the U.S. right after graduating high school. Jin and Won (Korean males), were admitted as graduate students into a master’s program. Cathy, the course instructor, had over 20 years of teaching experience in English as a Second Language and had taught the ALP course several times before (Table 2).

To triangulate the data and to enhance the trustworthiness of our findings (De Costa et al. 2019), we used multiple data sources including four interviews with the students, one interview with the instructor, observation field notes, PowerPoint slides for this course, the course syllabus, and the instructor’s course evaluation results. The data were part of a large project that was carried out over 1.5 years (June 2017 through December 2018). Authors 2 and 3, the field researchers in this project, went to the ALP class twice during the three-week course duration and wrote the field notes. They also met each participant individually in a conference room and conducted semi-structured interviews. In addition, Authors 2 and 3 interviewed Cathy in English. Author 2 interviewed Kristina in Chinese (their common L1) and Author 3 interviewed Jin and Won in Korean (their common L1) in order to elicit rich data from the participants.

4.2 Data analysis

By examining our multiple sources of data, we sought to identify the most salient phenomena that would help us better understand what the participants did in and outside the school activities that would have facilitated their L2 academic socialization process. Guided by the parameters underpinning nexus analysis (Scollon and Scollon 2004), we coded our data sources to:

1. uncover the practices and resources through which our participants constructed the social order of their conduct in social interaction;

2. identify discourse/s in practice with respect to our participants’ values and identities; and

3. explicate the notion of the historical body in terms of our participants’ different embodied life experiences.

We inductively examined and analyzed the interview data (our primary data source) by coding, categorizing, and recoding the emergent themes (Lankshear and Knobel 2004). In the initial coding process, all three authors analyzed the data together to familiarize themselves with the data. Authors 2 and 3 also met regularly to examine the data, code the data, and check the coded data together to reach a consensus.

For data triangulation, Cathy’s syllabus, PowerPoint slides, and her course evaluation results were also coded by utilizing thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006). Specifically, these data sources were coded according to our:

1. participants’ previous learning and work experience;

2. participants’ participation experience in the ALP class;

3. participants’ expectations towards the ALP class and the instructor of the ALP class; and

4. participants’ understanding of their learning experience at the GLU.

The above themes were further organized and analyzed in relation to how our participants interacted with each other to contribute to the positioning of Kristina as a “disengaged and disrespectful” student in the class. In the findings section, we focus on Kristina’s experience and identify three main themes:

1. Kristina being the disengaged and disrespectful student in class;

2. Kristina navigating the new participation expectations and negotiating the “disengaged” student identity positioning; and

3. Cathy’s belief in the need for having the ‘right’ attitude.

5.1 Being the disengaged and disrespectful student in class

In our interview with Cathy, we asked her to use some adjectives to describe her three students in the ALP class. She described the two Korean students as “so engaged, inquisitive, thoughtful, purposeful, team players and demanding,” whereas for Kristina, she noted “so impatient, disengaged, disrespectful to peers, not to me, but disrespectful to peers.” In addition, similar descriptions about Kristina were seen in Won’s interview:

Excerpt 1

I noticed the tension between Cathy and Kristina. I think Cathy felt that she was not respected by Kristina. Kristina never prepared for class. She did not participate in class. Kristina said that she took this course because she thought it’s a TOEFL preparation course … But too bad that she did not learn anything from this class. The content could help her later.

Of particular interest is the shared recognition of Cathy as being a responsible and caring instructor among the three students. In the interview, both Jin and Won spoke highly of Cathy, underscoring her passion for teaching and her care for students. Likewise, Kristina, described in the interview “Cathy cared for us deeply. She tried to attend to and engage each of us in class.” To some extent, such a positive evaluation of Cathy led us to question Kristina’s image as being a ‘challenging’ student with deviant attitudes and behaviors.

In addition, as Lee and Bucholtz (2015) reminded us, positionality is often contextual, relative, co-constructed and negotiated within interactions (p. 323). In her high school English classroom, Kristina assumed the role of a quiet student with an average academic performance who was “absent-minded and disengaged in class from time to time” (interview data) and did not seem to draw much attention from her instructors. As she stated in Excerpt 2, she appeared to adopt a rather passive approach to learning by embracing a “getting by” stance and “being selective in paying attention” in her high school English class. Nevertheless, similar practices that seemed to be tolerable in the past were now deemed “disrespectful” in the ALP class, as she interpreted it in Excerpt 2.

Excerpt 2

Teachers in China are less strict and more flexible. As long as you don’t cross the line, it’s pretty easy to get by. And we had 30 students in the classroom [in China], so the teacher will not check on you all the time. You can be selective in paying attention. But here, if you don’t pay attention in her class, you might strike her as not respecting her. I have never had foreign teachers before, so I have never had this experience.

Duff (2008), when examining language socialization at work, highlighted that the newcomers to a new workplace might face challenges in being socialized into the new discourse community, especially when their prior socialization experiences significantly differed from the practices of the new discourse community. Similarly, we argue that Kristina had been socialized into a student role of being reticent and invisible in class. In addition, she had grown accustom to a distanced student-teacher relationship in her high school. This previous socialization experience, thus, made her navigation of the current teacher-student relationship and class participation norms more difficult. As Excerpt 3 shows,

Excerpt 3

At first, I was quite active in class. It’s my first time coming to the US and taking a course like this. Cathy was also quite attentive to me, always listening carefully to me in class. I felt what I said in class was logical and decent. Then I got lazy and started to come to class late and participate less in class. Then she felt that my ideas were confusing and lacked logic. But the two Koreans [Jin and Won] also made mistakes here and there. Cathy didn’t have any problem with them.

Excerpt 3 illustrates that Kristina’s initial disengagement in the ALP class might not necessarily indicate a disrespectful and deviant attitude towards her instructor, Cathy, and her peers. Instead, these behaviors could be understood as a continuation of her previous learning habits and patterns. However, such a change of behavior resulted in the rise of tension between Cathy and her, prompting Kristina to feel disciplined by Cathy, as Cathy re-evaluated her verbal participation as “confusing and not logical”.

Thus far, we have delineated Kristina’s disengaged behaviors in class and the arising tensions between Kristina and Cathy through the different participants’ accounts. Next, we analyze the factors contributing to Kristina’s continuous disengagement in class, despite Cathy’s efforts to engage her in the classroom. This analysis highlights the challenges Kristina encountered when navigating the new discourse norms within the ALP class. Crucially, these challenges might have gone unnoticed in day-to-day class interactions, especially when they were probably perceived as affordances for Jin and Won.

5.2 Factors impacting the socialization into the new discourse norms

5.3 Not having the right attitude

The interaction of these different factors contributed to Kristina, Jin, and Won’s divergent participation practices in class. Nevertheless, these factors did not surface conspicuously in class interactions. Thus, it was almost impossible for Cathy to comprehend those complexities in the moment-to-moment interactions with her three students, especially after trying every strategy and method she knew to reach out to Kristina.

Excerpt 9

I tried to be very understanding. I tried not to call the person on the spot. I included a brand-new curriculum for the student [Kristina]. To my surprise, she was not engaged. I tried to talk one-on-one with the student [Kristina] …. I really went out of my way myself and used as many methods and techniques and approaches as I could. I think sometimes people don’t want to be reached.

In the interview with Cathy (Excerpt 9), we detected myriad reactions when discussing Kristina’s case. In the beginning, Cathy felt rather puzzled about Kristina’s disengagement in class, as she tried different strategies to engage her. For example, as mentioned earlier, the effort of designing skill-focused lessons for Kristina was not well received or recognized. This instance, along with other acts of disengagement, ultimately led Cathy to position Kristina as someone who did not “want to be reached out.” Cathy’s remark aligns with a key point highlighted in Anderson (2017), which suggests that academic discourse socialization is largely about self-socialization, depending on “internal socialization” processes (Duff and Doherty 2015). In other words, learners often only draw on resources they perceive as relevant and meaningful to support their socialization, despite the presence of many external resources and guidance in the environment (Pu and Xu 2022).

The positioning of Kristina, which was discursively constructed, became solidified when Cathy compared Kristina to her former students. In the following excerpt, Cathy was responding to an interview question on the extent to which their English proficiency influenced their learning experience.

Excerpt 10

I think it has so much to do with attitude, and my illustration is, I had two Korean men [last year] that were here for a master’s degree. Zero learners, [they] couldn’t function …. I compare that to Kristina, [who] had way more proficiency than these two Korean men, but took nothing away from ALP. You need a size of a class that allows you to create camaraderie. But it’s about attitude more than it is proficiency.

While Cathy attributed Kristina’s disengagement to her “wrong” attitude, this wrong attitude should not simply be interpreted as a personal trait or self-made decision. Rather, Kristina’s disengagement in class needs to be seen as a form of social action in a nexus, shaped by a clash of discourses in place, the interaction order of a small class in a U.S. university that was populated by different historical bodies (see Figure 2).

Figure 2:

A nexus analysis of participant (dis)engagement in the ALP class.

6.1 Constructing and negotiating the ALP class interaction order

In the dynamics of class interactions, social actors generally project different expectations towards each other and come to position each other differently based on whether their actions align with or depart from the expectations of their social positions (Diao 2016; Kinginger 2017). Thus, to some extent, the rules or class policies dictate the participation expectations in the ALP class. Excerpt 11 lists specific course requirements.

Excerpt 11

To successfully complete the course, you must do the following:

1. Attend all classes. There are no excused absences.

2. Participate in all guest presentations.

3. Participate in all group work.

4. Participate and engage in classroom work.

5. Do the homework assigned.

6. Finish the end of session assignment. It must be done on time and thoroughly/thoughtfully.

(ALP course syllabus; emphasis added)

The mandatory language, such as the repeated use of words including “must” “all” and the use of imperative sentences, discursively constructed an authority role of the instructor (Cathy) and her expectations towards students in the ALP class. Furthermore, as Gynne et al. (2016) pointed out, the instructor “orchestrates the interactional space, controlling the order and the topics of interaction” (p. 335). Similarly, Cathy’s authority role was reinforced through the classroom management and organization of class activities and discussions. As an intensive academic preparation course, ALP students stayed together with Cathy for several hours a day for three intensive weeks, which put great pressure on Cathy to engage students as much as possible and strike a balance between lecturing and facilitating student-centered class dynamics. Coupled with the unique small class size, Cathy implemented a turn-taking rule for most of the class activities to optimize interaction between herself and her three students.

Unfortunately, such an interaction order, (i.e., students were expected to participate actively through taking turns), was denied any time or space for trial and error. While Heng (2018) demonstrated that many international students are able to adapt to the new participation expectations if given adequate time, Kristina did not have the luxury to navigate the new norms and rules at her own pace; nor did she have access to resources and support she perceived relevant to socialize her to the new participation expectations (Nguyen and Yang 2015; Pu and Xu 2022). As a result, Kristina’s disengagement actions were then perceived as being saliently deviant from the class norms (and thus in violation of the expected interaction order), which in turn cemented the “disengaged and disrespectful student” positioning of her.

6.2 Bringing historical bodies into the ALP class

The discursive identity positions that emerged in and through an established interaction order were not simply claimed by participants or imposed on them. Rather, it is the participants’ historical bodies that provided both affordances and constraints that either enabled or disabled them from claiming or accepting certain identity positions in class interactions (Hult 2012). In other words, their prior academic and professional socialization experiences, namely, Cathy’s years of experience as a U.S. university ESL instructor, Kristina’s educational experiences in China, and Jin and Won’s professional experiences in multinational corporations, contributed to the development of “specific habitual expectations in participating in the classroom activities” (Gynne et al. 2016: 336). Given their different historical bodies, the student participants developed different dispositions towards social and academic practices in the new environment, which was (mis)aligned with the interaction order in the ALP class, which in turn subjected them to various degrees of learning and participation in the new order. For example, compared to Kristina, Jin, and Won’s “success story” in ALP class was mediated by their previous work experience, from which they developed effective learning strategies, a grateful attitude towards learning opportunities, as well as abilities to make use of resources to achieve their goals. Such qualities helped them to quickly identify and adhere to Cathy’s rules and expectations, and make the most out of the classroom materiality (e.g., the small class size) to achieve their goals.

6.3 (Two) discourses in place

It was at the intersection of our participants’ historical bodies, the prevailing ALP classroom interaction order, and the wider cultural context and discourses that circulate in ALP classrooms that mediated social action occurred (review Figure 2). Addressing discourses in place, Hult (2017) reminds us that we need to pay attention to values embedded in these discourses and examine how the values are performed and reproduced in and through interactions. In our study, we focused on two discourses present in the ALP class.