Constructing Academic and Personal Experiences Through Language

This study explored the construction of academic identity among PhD students through a transitivity analysis of spontaneous spoken narratives posted on YouTube. Language is a fundamental and dynamic resource through which individuals express their experiences, articulate their emotions, and, crucially, construct their evolving identities. While prior research has largely focused on exploring the experiences of students in academic writing, this study addressed the underexplored domain of spoken self-representations. Employing a qualitative approach grounded in Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics, particularly the transitivity system, the study analyzed a corpus of 10,258 words drawn from four PhD student narratives. Manual clause segmentation and process-type annotation were employed to ensure analytical precision. The study contributes to a more thorough understanding of how academic identity is dynamically performed, challenged, and reshaped through everyday language use. The findings revealed that Material processes dominate the narratives, highlighting students’ emphasis on action, achievement, and academic engagement. Relational and Mental processes also featured prominently, reflecting self-definition, internal reflection, and emotional negotiation. Verbal, Existential, and Behavioral processes, though less frequent, contribute to expressions of resilience and evolving agency. The study highlights the dynamic interplay between action, emotion, and reflection in academic identity development, advocating for greater recognition of spoken narratives as a critical source of data for understanding the doctoral experience.