Identity construction through narratives: a corpus-based discourse analysis of student teacher discourse

In this chapter, our aim is to examine the experiences recounted in the shared professional discourse of student teachers during their teacher education programme. This is done against the belief that ‘experience becomes linguistically and socio-culturally transformed through narrative genres and through the activity of recounting experiences for, to, and with particular interlocutors’ (Ochs, 2006, p. 64). The ultimate goal is to investigate the ways in which the interactions provide scope for the sharing of experience, and in turn, the co-construction and development of knowledge and identity. This is a unique chapter in this volume in that it draws on a corpus of teacher discourse, which is a new endeavor in LTE.