“It Can't be Translated Into a Conventional English Phrase” : Crafting Academic Identities Through Translingual Writing

Abstract

This qualitative multiple case study explores multilingual postgraduate students’ academic identities through writing at an EMI university in Hong Kong, with a focus on how they gain legitimacy in knowledge‑making with their multilingual repertoires. Grounded in a poststructuralist understanding of identities as fluid and negotiated, the study takes writing as a key site where such identities are continually shaped. Adopting a translingual view, it investigates writing as an emergent meaning‑making process and as the synergy of meaning‐making resources across languages, spaces, and roles. The study gathered data from interview narratives and written artefacts produced by two focal participants, which document their translingual writing practices and the emergence of more legitimate identities in their disciplinary communities. The findings reveal that multilinguals craft fluid identities by drawing on linguistic items, culturally embedded concepts, and locally situated values to revoice legitimate meaning‐making practice. The reconfigured identities afforded them greater legitimacy in disciplinary knowledge‑making and participation. Central to this legitimacy was the balancing and integration of multilingual resources, as writers shifted between local and international discourses to transform perceived linguistic and cultural deficits into epistemic assets in their writing.