Second Language Creative Writers

Identities and Writing Processes

Yan (Niles) Zhao

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781783093021
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Psycholinguistique

This monograph investigates 15 L2 creative writers' social constructive power in identity constructions. Through interviews and think-aloud story writing sessions, the central study considers how L2 writer voices are mediated by the writers' autobiographical identities, namely, their sense of selves formulated by their previous language learning and literacy experiences. The inquiry takes the epistemological stance that L2 creative writing is simultaneously a cognitive construct and a social phenomenon and that these two are mutually inclusive. The study contributes to L2 creative writing research and L2 learner identity research and will be of benefit to researchers, language teachers and writing instructors who wish to understand creative writing processes in order to help develop their students' positive self-esteem, confidence, motivation and engagement with the L2.

1 Introduction

Many canonical writers such as Conrad, Beckett and Rushdie have constructed creative identities and discovered stylistic liberation through writing outside their mother tongue (Pousada, 1994). Conrad rejected his first language (L1) as a medium of artistic expression in favour of English during the heyday of the British Empire (Sherry, 1972). Among a number of contemporary Chinese writers, Ha Jin made the same decision post-Tiananmen Square (Moore, 2002). Such choices raise a variety of socio-political and socio-stylistic issues concerning the relationships between language, creativity, power, repression and identity.

At less rarefied levels, second language creative writing offers a potentially fruitful area of research in the fields of identity studies, second language acquisition (SLA) and pedagogy. The increasing number of non-native English speaking writers who choose to practice or even publish forms of creative writing in English constitute a salient and legitimate social group which is ripe for investigation. Second language (L2) creative writers who ‘invest’ (Norton, 1995, 2000) in creative writing in English for particular purposes (e.g. linguistic, literary, professional or self-empowerment) are making their voices heard in widespread social settings, such as language classrooms, creative writing courses and interest groups, publishing and, notably, in virtual contemporary media such as social networks. Recently, along with the development of digital technology, we have witnessed the emergence and advancement of creative ‘new literacies’ (such as multimodal or multimedia story writing, e.g. Skinner & Hagood, 2008) and out-of-school literary practices (e.g. Yi, 2007, 2010).

Creative writing has long been an element in L2 pedagogy. Bate (2008) records that one of the activities in a standard Latin textbook used during Shakespeare’s time (Erasmus’s De conscribendis epistolis) invited learners to write imaginatively in the roles of characters from classical literature in particular situations. The rubric, quoted by Baldwin (1944: 240), goes:

Write a letter as if you were Antenor persuading Priam that he should return the stolen Helen to her Menelaus because it would be a very foolish ruler who caused many brave men to enter battle on account of the most shameful love of such an effeminate youth as Paris.

Perhaps with tongue in cheek, Bate (2008) exclaims: ‘Write that Master William and you’re on the road to inventing dramatic character, to composing “Troilus and Cressida”’ (93). At less exalted levels, current ESL/EFL creative writing activities are not radically different. They focus on the opportunities offered for writing improvement, language play and an escape from the pseudo-narratives of the textbook. While fully agreeing that L2 creative writing allows learners to engage with what McRae (1994) has termed imaginative ‘representational’ expression (i.e. multifaceted, involving both cognitive and emotional faculties) in addition to the more instrumental ‘referential’ functions (i.e. communicative, informational) of typical ELT classroom activities, I would like to go further. I shall suggest that L2 creative writers can undertake creative writing not only for the purposes of language or literacy acquisition, but also simultaneously for the achievements of certain self-identification and hence self-esteem, which in turn feeds into positive motivation for language learning.

This book is centrally concerned with the relationship between L2 creative writers’ socioculturally sedimented perceptions of their previous life histories and their present, emergent psychological activities while writing in the target language. The discussion inevitably involves consideration of the nature of creative writing, why writers are drawn to express themselves imaginatively, where their ‘inspiration’ comes from and the processes involved in transmuting ideas into creative expression. Whilst acknowledging that the ultimate wellsprings of creativity might not be available for analysis, this book rejects the typically romantic notion that L2 creative writers and L2 creative writing practices are primarily controlled by inspiration and emotion. Through interviews and think-aloud story writing sessions, the central inquiry investigates how writer voices reflected in the L2 creative writers’ instantaneous movements of thoughts while creating short stories are mediated by the writers’ autobiographical identities (Clark & Ivanič, 1997), namely, their sense of selves formulated in their previous language learning and literacy experiences. In what immediately follows, I shall review the current research on L2 creative writing.

Research on L2 Creative Writing

L2 creative writers have attracted attention among a variety of academic fields, including sociolinguistic identity studies, SLA discussions and, recently, literature on academic discourses.

In the field of identity studies, Omoniyi (2010) has studied postcolonial writers’ ‘code choices’ (including his own) and their relation to writers’ negotiations of cultural and linguistic identities. Similarly, through looking at the interactions between writer identity and certain aspects of the creative literacy products (discoursal, semantic, syntactic or thematic), poststructuralist L2 scholars such as Pavlenko (2006) have examined the discursive construction of emotions among bilingual writers and questioned whether the L1 always remains ‘the voice of the heart’ (also see Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000; Pavlenko, 2004; Ros i Solé, 2004). Adopting a sociocultural perspective, the principal focus of such writer identity studies examines how creative writing practices serve as an empowering tool through which L2 speakers may actively construct and perform their social or ethnic identities, negotiate authorial stance, improve cultural understandings and develop their social participation and presence (e.g. Vasudevan et al., 2010; Skinner & Hagood, 2008; Burkhalter & Pisciotta, 1999; Yi, 2007, 2010; Maguire & Graves, 2001). In addition, given creative writing’s capacity to capture affective dimensions and draw on the L2 learners’ sociocultural heritage and personal knowledge, poetry and autobiographical writing have been utilised to gain an insight into L2 individuals’ personal and emotional responses to dramatic incidents or to their lived experiences (e.g. Hanauer, 2010; Chamcharatsri, 2009). In the above studies, ‘writers’ voices’ are principally traced through examining the L2 writers’ creative literacy products. In addition, although such L2 creative writing studies scrutinise the mediational values of creative writing for identity construction, they are influenced by a sociohistorical perspective. They show a strong predilection for studying conspicuous bilingual/multilingual writer groups, such as postcolonial writers (e.g. Omoniyi, 2010) or immigrants living in an English-speaking context (e.g. Maguire & Graves, 2001; Skinner & Hagood, 2008; Yi, 2007, 2010; Vasudevan et al., 2010).

Secondly, led by the work of Alan Maley, ESL/EFL pedagogy has shown a growing interest in the use of creative writing activities (e.g. see Teaching English – British Council & BBC, 2013). Such activities, it is argued, encourage learners to engage playfully with the target language and develop a writerly identity in the new code (e.g. Maley & Duff, 1994, 2005; Duff & Maley, 2007; Maley & Moulding, 1985; Maley, 2009; for computer-based EFL creative writing projects also see Ensslin, 2006; Tsou et al., 2006). Similarly, Cook (2000) has vigorously pointed out the value of language play and the authenticity of creative fictional discourse in language learning (also see Elgar, 2002; and Belz, 2002). Indeed, EFL/ESL teachers themselves have sought to enhance their creative practice through poetry and short story writing workshops (Maley & Mukundan, 2011a, 2011b; Mukundan, 2006; Tin, 2004, 2007). The initiatives suggested in current L2 creative writing literature reflect a distinct pedagogical interest and, understandably, tend only to scratch the surface of some significant writer identity issues. Most noticeably, although it is recognised that creative writing is executed through an intricate orchestration of choices and actions, its well-springs are most often located in rhapsodies of capricious creation processes, especially when compared with the ratiocination of argumentative or persuasive writing composition (see Duff & Maley, 2007; Maley & Duff, 2005; Maley, 2012; Tin, 2012). This assumption will be interrogated in what follows in this book.

Finally, it is worth noting here that some L2 writing research has included persuasive rationales for the connection of creative writing to the development of writing for academic purposes. For example, Tickoo (2001) has demonstrated that the ‘attention-getting power’ of his ESL students’ expository writing could be noticeably reinforced by equipping them with the ‘narrative art’ of developing the crisis of a story. Similarly, at the University of Warwick, Professor David Morley, director of the Warwick Writing Programme, has suggested that ‘all writing is creative writing’ and introduced ‘creative writing across the curriculum’ (Morley, 2007: 244). The initiative is ‘predicated on the need to help new scientists and businesspeople write more clearly and engagingly’ (Morley, 2007: 243). It takes the form of interdisciplinary creative writing projects in which creative writing tutors and students work with students from a variety of non-English departments, including medicine, business, biology, computing, engineering and physics.

The projects have been well received across the disciplines and have even successfully convinced some tutors to incorporate creative writing elements into their assessed coursework (Nesi & Gardner, 2005; Morley, 2007, 2012). For example, in one Sociology module the tutor provided the students with the option of producing ‘a piece of crime fiction’ to illustrate particular sociological theories (Nesi & Gardner, 2005: 110). Likewise, in a current law module, students are asked to construct a fictional court scene not only to demonstrate their interpretation and practical use of certain law models, but also to encourage their empathetic understanding of the complex social and emotional points of view involved (Morley, 2007: 244). Finally, some science students have been invited to engage in ‘creative nonfiction’ (Morley, 2007: 242–243; 2012) or ‘empathy writing’ (Nesi & Gardner, 2005: 110). The rationale is that if students have thoroughly grasped and engaged with their subject, they should be able to explain even rather abstruse science theories to the general public, such as ‘school children, friends, museums, or newspapers’ (Nesi & Gardner, 2005: 110), with interesting and lucid storytelling.

The above review shows that the motivational and mediational values of creative writing for language learning, for identity construction, for emotion-expressing and for academic literacy have been empirically investigated, and that L2 writers’ creative literacy products and their sociocultural presence have been examined. Such work has focused on the creative product of the writers; what this discussion hopes to add to the debate is a consideration of the processes involved in L2 creative writing. The essence of creativity may be essentially enigmatic, but its processes are open to investigation. Therefore, this inquiry adopts the position that L2 writers’ implementation of specific forms, language or content represents identifiable choices. It is argued that L2 creative writing research might delve beneath the linguistic or writing innovations manifested in the texts of the language learners and look into the L2 writers’ self-representational actions, especially as revealed in the movements of the writers’ emerging thoughts in the writing process. This insight could benefit language teachers and writing instructors in understanding how learners distinctively readjust their self-identity through performing creative writing activities – e.g. integrating new perceptions of the self as an imaginative writer or as a perceptive or empowered commentator – which, in specific ways, develop individual thinking, authorial stance and artistic engagement with the language. This is a process of identity formation which enhances self-esteem, a positive characteristic of the motivated language learner, as shown by Rubio (2007).

To sum up, research on L2 creative writing practices has not sufficiently investigated the following three issues: (a) the nature of L2 creative writers’ cognitive writing processes and accordingly the performance of identities as reflected in the writers’ mental activities; (b) how L2 creative writing practices intersect with the L2 individuals’ identity negotiations and how such literacy practices mediate the writers’ social relationships with the world; and ultimately (c) how a more in-depth understanding of the above dialectic (in point b) could inform L2 and writing teachers’ execution of creative writing activities.

Focusing on the notion of identities, the central enquiry in this book: (1) elicits 15 L2 creative writers’ own perceptions of their life histories through the form of interviews and (2) investigates the writers’ emerging writing processes under particular short-story writing tasks through think-aloud protocols. The 15 L2 writer participants are all advanced adult English L2 speakers who were undertaking either undergraduate or postgraduate studies at a UK university (except for one). In the next section, the distinctive perspectives of this L2 creative writing inquiry are further clarified.

New Perspectives on Tracing L2 Creative Writer Identity

It is widely believed that creative expression, identity and language are intrinsically bound together. The key question to be asked here is the one posed by Pavlenko (2005): is the first language always the language of the heart? Driven by this question, the inquiry seeks to understand L2 creative writers’ own needs and self-perceptions from the perspectives of their (1) reflective ‘autobiographical identities’ and their (2) performative ‘writers’ voices’.

I am in fundamental agreement with the position that the manner in which L2 writers idiosyncratically engage in a present creative writing activity is importantly mediated by the writers’ own understanding of their particular life histories – in other words, their autobiographical identities (also referred to as self-identities in this book). However, it can be argued that this mediation has not been adequately investigated in the current ESL/EFL literature. When reading through the L2 pedagogical discussions on various creative writing activities (reviewed earlier), I cannot help asking to what extent the teacher–researchers’ perceptions match the L2 creative writers’ actual instantiations of personal knowledge and language use in the process of creative writing. That is, based on the tangible evidence of the L2 writers’ cognitive actions, do L2 creative writing tasks indeed motivate the writers to make meaningful self-declarations and demonstrate inventiveness in the aspects of language, discourse or ideas? If the answer is ‘yes’, how do different types of creative writing tasks or stimuli facilitate the liberating possibilities attributed to this genre in characteristic ways? In what immediately follows, I will introduce the first innovative angle of this inquiry, namely an emphasis on the significance of L2 writers’ own interpretations of their socioculturally shaped motives behind why and how they engage in specific types of creative literacy activities.

L2 creative writers’ sociocultural life histories

As previously indicated, current discussions of L2 creative writing activities tend to be projected from researchers’ analyses of particular features of student texts and their interpretations of the student writers’ retrospective comments (e.g. Creme & Hunt, 2002; Severino et al., 2010; Jacobs, 2008; Maley, 2009; Chamcharatsri, 2009; Hanauer, 2010). In such discussions, the L2 students were often portrayed as relatively new to L2 creative writing practices, willingly following the activity procedures set up by the teacher. Consequently, it is frequently claimed that creative writing activities provide an instrument which enables the L2 learners to experience a sense of empowerment in their L2 linguistic and literary identity. However, I would argue that L2 creative literary activities, especially the various forms of story-telling, are not uncommon among L2 learners outside the classroom. As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, L2 creative writers are making their voices heard in various social settings outside educational contexts, such as creative writing interest groups, and, increasingly, in the virtual worlds of social networks (one example is ‘Fandom’ which has contributed to the growth of various online fanfiction communities) and blogs. In other words, our student writers in the classroom might already po...