Discursive construction of affective experiences and identity : Chinese international students’ talk about difficulties in South Korean universities

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study focuses on Chinese international students studying in South Korea and examines how they describe the multiple difficulties they experience in Korea in their everyday interactions, as well as how emotional experiences are co-constructed and expressed during these accounts. Drawing on insights from affective practice (Wetherell, 2012; 2015), this study understands emotion as a form of practice that is organized and managed by participants in interactional processes. The analysis is based on naturally occurring audio-recorded conversations and combines conversation analysis (CA) and membership categorization analysis (MCA) (Sacks, 1974) to examine the interactional organization of students’ accounts of academic and social difficulties.
The findings show that the expression of emotion is sequentially organized. Emotions such as anxiety, frustration, and loneliness are not treated as pre-given internal states; rather, they are displayed across turns through storytelling, reported speech, and stance markers such as wo juede (“I think”). These discursive resources contribute to the organization of moral or affective stance and the mitigation of evaluations. In addition, under specific interactional context, participants invoke identity categories such as “foreigner” and “language learner/non-native speaker” through interactional practices including self- or other- categorization, rhetorical questions, and the use of personal pronouns. Through these practices, participants relate their personal experiences to broader linguistic and cultural circumstances, thereby accounting for their experiences of difficulty. This study demonstrates how emotion expression and identity categorization are interactionally organized, offering a micro-level interactional perspective on international students’ emotional experiences in cross-cultural contexts.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study focuses on Chinese international students studying in South Korea and examines how they describe the multiple difficulties they experience in Korea in their everyday interactions, as well as how emotional experiences are co-constructed and expressed during these accounts. Drawing on insights from affective practice (Wetherell, 2012; 2015), this study understands emotion as a form of practice that is organized and managed by participants in interactional processes. The analysis is based on naturally occurring audio-recorded conversations and combines conversation analysis (CA) and membership categorization analysis (MCA) (Sacks, 1974) to examine the interactional organization of students’ accounts of academic and social difficulties.
The findings show that the expression of emotion is sequentially organized. Emotions such as anxiety, frustration, and loneliness are not treated as pre-given internal states; rather, they are displayed across turns through storytelling, reported speech, and stance markers such as wo juede (“I think”). These discursive resources contribute to the organization of moral or affective stance and the mitigation of evaluations. In addition, under specific interactional context, participants invoke identity categories such as “foreigner” and “language learner/non-native speaker” through interactional practices including self- or other- categorization, rhetorical questions, and the use of personal pronouns. Through these practices, participants relate their personal experiences to broader linguistic and cultural circumstances, thereby accounting for their experiences of difficulty. This study demonstrates how emotion expression and identity categorization are interactionally organized, offering a micro-level interactional perspective on international students’ emotional experiences in cross-cultural contexts.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION 1
• Chapter 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 4
• 2.1 Difficulties faced by Chinese international students in South Korea 4
• 2.2 Affective Practices in Discourse Analysis 9
• Chapter 3. METHODOLOGY 13
• 3.1 Participants and Data collection 13
• 3.2 Data transcription 16
• 3.3 Analytic approach 17
• Chapter 4. FINDINGS 20
• 4.1 Discursive Constructions of Affective Experiences 21
• 4.1.1 Reported Speech as a Resource for Constructing and Communicating Emotions 22
• 4.1.2 Conveying Academic Anxiety through Storytelling as an Interactional Resource 34
• 4.1.3 "Wo juede" as a Marker of Affective Stance 48
• 4.2 Discursive Construction of Identity Categories 54
• 4.2.1 Invoking the 'Foreigner' Category: Identity Construction of Chinese Students in Cross-Cultural Interactions 54
• 4.2.2 Language Learner and Non-Native Speaker Identities in Academic Contexts 64
• Chapter 5. CONCLUSION 74
• 5.1 Discussion 74
• 5.2 Contribution 77
• 5.3 Limitations and recommendations for further research 78
• References 80
• Appendix 93