IDENTITY IN ITS RELATION TO INTENTION: IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION OF VIETNAMESE STUDENTS AT A VIETNAMESE UNIVERSITY THROUGH MIXING OF ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

Submission note: A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the School of Education, College of Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce, La Trobe University, Bundoora.

Giddens’s structuration theory and his argument about identity have been widely explored in many fields. However, there are no studies which draw a connection between them and how this relates to the construction process of identity. The present thesis proposes that such a connection results in a view of identity that sees identity in its relation to intention. This thesis presents a theoretical argument that such a view of identity can provide a useful explanation for how identities are constructed. It also offers a methodology and empirical support for this view of identity. This primarily qualitative study explores the identities constructed by Vietnamese students through their mixing of English and Vietnamese. It employs two data collection methods, namely diaries and follow-up interviews. The diaries are used to identify the participants’ intentions and their associated acts of mixing English with Vietnamese and to discover contextual factors possibly influencing the construction of these intentions. The interviews are used to clarify the intentions reported in the diaries to determine the degree with which these intentions are related to identity and to explore the construction processes which are involved. The findings provide an understanding of how these Vietnamese students construct both shared and individual identities in the dialectic relationship between social influences and themselves and show how an individual connects his/her acts into a united and meaningful whole, shedding light on Giddens’s idea about the continuity of identity. The present thesis ends with some suggestions for those who are concerned about the phenomenon of mixing English with Vietnamese among Vietnamese young people.