Still reading. This month it’s Schmit, John S (2022)The sociolinguistics of written identity, Constructing a self. Cham, Switzerland: PalgraveMacmillan. Schmit is a writing and linguistics professor. His book examines how students develop written identities in academic settings and the complex relationship between language, power, and social class in educational settings. I found it interesting- well, I always like to read what writing teachers do – and it’d be a helpful book to get your university library to order.

Here’s a taste of what the book says and does.

Schmit examines “voice” as both individual expression and social accomplishment. While teachers often encourage students to “find their voice,” Schmit shows that voice is largely determined by social institutions and community membership. Academic voice represents a form of symbolic power that grants access to educational and professional opportunities, but acquiring it can distance students from their cultural roots.

Schmit argues that traditional writing instruction often requires students to abandon their usual voices in favour of Standard English, which he calls “the language of the bosses”( after Sledd)(p.2). Schmit says that having to choose to write only in standard English creates problems for students from non-standard-speaking communities who must decide whether to fit into academic discourse or maintain connections to their home communities. The book challenges deficit perspectives that view nonstandard language as inadequate.

Schmit traces how written identity emerges through register – the functional variations in language based on the particularities of context, audience, and purpose. Choosing a register allows writers to signal social relationships and establish credibility. This is what academic writers typically have to do, consider who they are writing for, why and in what context.

But Schmit also talks about codes. Codes represent systematic language choices that reflect community membership. Schmit argues for recognising the sophistication of different (e.g. community and vernacular) language codes while acknowledging that students need access to powerful discourses for social mobility. He addresses controversies around code-switching versus code-meshing. Code-switching maintains hierarchies between standard and vernacular forms. Code-meshing, which Schmit advocates, blends varieties which honour students’ home languages and vernaculars rather than demanding conformity. He suggests you can bring formal standard English together with home, community and vernacular languages when writing for academic purposes.

Schmit also offers some practical exercises that allow academic writers to explore their writer-researcher identity through different roles: storyteller, profile writer, explorer, and researcher. These genres let students practice academic discourse while maintaining their “authentic voice”.

I’ve summarised  two of these roles, the explorer and the profile writer. There’s more about these in the book, but this will give you a taste of Schmit’s approach.

The Explorer

Adopting the role of explorer in your writing represents a return to the essay’s original purpose which is not to demonstrate mastery of existing knowledge, but to think through complex problems and discover new insights through the act of writing itself. Schmit positions the explorer as someone who uses writing to “clarify ideas and answers that need to be consciously framed” (p. 128). This differs fundamentally from an assessment essay which summarises existing scholarship. As an explorer, you engage “essaying, attempting to work through questions whose answers cannot be predetermined” (p 132).

The exploratory stance requires deliberate uncertainty. Rather than beginning with thesis statements that announce conclusions, you start with genuine questions that emerge from your lived experience as a scholar. Starting uncertainly allows you to surface your tacit knowledge – what you “don’t know that you know” about your field. The “explorer’s voice”, Schmit says, emerges through personal inquiry rather than systematic literature review. It creates a space for original thinking that connects abstract concepts to concrete experience.

Exercise 1: Mapping Your Implicit Knowledge

Begin with a question that genuinely puzzles you about your field – not one you can answer through more research, but one that requires you to examine your own assumptions and experiences.

Following Schmit’s framework (p. 133), address these questions in writing:

• What am I confident that I know about this topic?
• What am I sure that I don’t know but will need to know?
• What is it that I don’t know that I know about this topic? What implicit knowledge do I have?
• Are there things about this topic that I don’t know I don’t know?

Write continuously for 30 minutes without stopping to edit or organise. Let your thinking unfold on the page, following associations and contradictions as they emerge.

Exercise 2: A Philosophical Turn

Select a practical problem you encounter regularly in your scholarly work – perhaps a methodological dilemma, an ethical concern, or a tension between theory and practice. Explore this problem by examining multiple perspectives without rushing toward resolution. Consider how your background, training, and cultural position shape your understanding of the issue.

Write a 1000-word exploratory essay that maintains uncertainty while deepening understanding. Focus on the quality of your inquiry rather than the definitiveness of your conclusions. As Schmit notes about successful exploratory writing, your identity as an explorer should emerge through “the strength of your synthesis” and your “ability to navigate the complex pieces” of your investigation (p. 134).

The goal is not to solve the problem but to discover what the problem reveals about larger questions in your field and about your own development as a scholar.

The Profile Writer

The profile writer role allows you to develop written identity through direct engagement with your subject matter. Unlike the detached academic observer, the profile writer positions themselves as both participant and guide, creating what Schmit calls a “participant narrator” who brings credibility through lived experience (p. 130).

The profile writer’s identity emerges through their relationship to the subject being profiled. Effective profile writers establish themselves as credible interpreters who can translate complex phenomena for their audience. They become “guide and translator” (p. 131), using their involvement with the subject to create coherence and provide what the genre requires: a “dominant impression” that organizes the reader’s experience (p. 132).

The profile writer allows you to explore your field through embodied engagement . You must demonstrate intimate knowledge while maintaining enough distance to explain the subject to outsiders. This balance between insider knowledge and interpretive clarity mirrors your researcher position – deeply immersed in specialised knowledge yet responsible for making that knowledge accessible to broader audiences. Your written identity as profile writer depends not on objective distance but on your capacity to combine personal involvement with analytical insight.

Exercise 1: Preparatory work.

Before writing your profile, work through Schmit’s framework for establishing your profile writer identity by addressing these question sets (p. 131):

Your Involvement with the Subject:

• Your interest in this topic
• Your experience with it
• Your perspective on it

The Subject Itself:

• Its history or background
• Its typical setting(s)
• Descriptive details
• Misconceptions that need to be corrected
• The people who are involved in it

Write responses to each area, focusing particularly on explaining your unique perspective and experience. This preparatory work establishes the foundation for your credibility as profile writer and helps you identify what distinctive insights you bring to the subject.

Exercise 2: Constructing the Participant-Observer 

Now write a 750-word opening section of a profile that establishes both your presence as narrator and your subject’s significance.

Begin by placing yourself within a specific scene related to your subject – a conference, laboratory, field site, archive, or other location where your topic comes alive. Use concrete details to establish the setting while revealing your own relationship to what you’re observing. As you write, pay attention to how you position yourself relative to your subject. Are you learning something new, returning to familiar territory, or discovering unexpected dimensions of something you thought you understood? Let your perspective emerge through the specific ways you notice, interpret, and translate what you encounter. Your written identity will emerge through your particular way of seeing and interpreting, not through claims about your expertise or credentials.