Representations of students’ identity: Perspectives from two linguistic and cultural communities

Abstract

Our research interest stems from the difficulties that students participating in exchange programmes can experience when they study abroad. We believe that this issue can be explored from a linguistic and discursive study of the representations of the student’s identity in terms of actions, qualities and his/her relationship with the environment. The purpose of our study is to analyze and compare the representations of the word student in two different linguistic and cultural communities who are studying to become foreign-language teachers, 25 of whom are Colombian and 25 are French. Our study shows that both French and Colombian participants propose two antithetical representations for the term student. The first one is a passive subject who is obliged to learn by academic institutions. The second one associates the student to the idea of an actor-citizen willing to put his/her knowledge and competences to the service of his/her community. These conclusions lead us to reflect about the role of academic exchanges. We believe that they could be a scenario to develop citizenship and intercultural competences thanks to the students’ interpretation of the new local realities.