Understanding Chinese International Students’ Interculturality through Their Narrativised Sojourn Experiences in the UK

Abstract

The study reported in this thesis explored the narratives of Chinese international students regarding their intercultural experiences whilst studying at Master’s-level in a UK university. Unusually, the experiences of the particular students in my study were shaped, in part, by the COVID-19 pandemic as it entered its second year. By focusing on their narratives, I wanted to see how they made sense of their intercultural experiences, and, in doing so, how they positioned themselves and others. The range and nature of the positions explored was informed by a broadly non-essentialist way of understanding culture and a focus on interculturality. Methodologically, I employed narrative inquiry and conducted three rounds of primarily Mandarin-medium narrative sessions with five Chinese international students at the beginning, middle, and end of their sojourns in the academic year 2021/22. This scheduling enabled me to track any changes related to interculturality as embedded in their narratives over time. I analysed the interview data narratively from both holistic- and categorical-content perspectives. I adopted positioning theory as the analytical lens to unpack how my participants positioned themselves in both their narrativised intercultural encounters and in their narrations with me. With the two analytical foci, both their recurrent and moment-to-moment positions could be identified in holistic- and categorical-content analysis respectively, and thus shed light on their interculturality. Based on my interpretations of the five participants’ narratives, the main findings are as follows: 1). that some shared patterns were evident in my participants’ narrativised intercultural experiences, including their understandings of ‘intercultural’, their Chinese-dominant social circles, and their understanding of their ‘Chineseness’; 2). that the relationships between my participants’ identities and positions tended to be complex and dynamic; and 3). that some insights regarding my participants’ sense-making of their pandemic-related policies and practices and intercultural interactions, and their language attitudes were generated from their shared categories. The study provides contextual enrichment to existing studies on Chinese international students, as well as making theoretical and methodological contributions. My three rounds of narrative sessions took place when the then-ongoing world pandemic (i.e., a time of uncertainty) significantly shaped academic sojourners’ intercultural experiences as documented in this study. My theoretical contributions are the integration of positioning theory with holistic and categorical content analysis, and the introduction and application of three dimensions of positioning to explore the relationships between participants' identities and their positions. Methodologically, the analysis of positions evident in my participants’ narratives are approached on two levels: positioning-in-interaction and positioning-in-narration.

Date of Award	20 Mar 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Richard Fay (Main Supervisor), Zhuomin Huang (Co Supervisor) & Nahielly Palacios (Co Supervisor)