Voicing Connection to English. Language Ownership, Legitimization, and Stancetaking

The present study exploresthe nature of the connections that advanced English language users enrolled in agraduateediting seminar had with English and how they articulated these connections.In particular, it aims tounveil the multifaceted nature of language ownership, the resources participants occasion to explicate their language ownership and, more generally, their relationships to English. It also seeksto unearth the resources they draw on to legitimate their connections to English and how they achieve this legitimation linguistically.Toexplore these dimensionsin a more elaboratedfashion, the study combinesboth quantitative analysis and qualitative approaches, for which an overarching poststructuralist lens to discourse analysis was employed, applied to different data sources.Findings disclosethe ways in which agency and adherencetonorms impact ownership, how users position themselves with respect to and in terms of their target language, and how they voice their connections (or lack thereof) to English.