An Exploration of Voice in the Writing of Arab Learners of English as a Second Language

Abstract

Developing a writer’s voicea challenging task for second-language writers who are new not only to the culture but also to the values associated with the target language. This study aims at exploring the writer’s voice of Arabic-speaking learners who study English as a Second Language. The study mainly discusses the following question: Do L2 learners who learn to write in both first and second language have an individual, collective, or depersonalized voice? Investigating the impact of culture and society on language and identity will facilitate the discovery of voice in second language writing. Methodologically, the study employs a qualitative research design in which data are collected via a discourse analysis of written texts. The analysis of the data adopted the holistic and dynamic perspective (Zhang & Zhan, 2020) by examining the various factors affecting Arabic-speaking learners of ESL including cultural factors, linguistic resources, and educational/academic pedagogy. Moreover, the study followed the analysis of the writer’s voice proposed by Lehman (2018) and used further Lehman and Anderson’s study of voice in academic writing (Lehman & Anderson, 2021). Lehman proposed three main topics to classify the writer’s voice: (a) individual, (b) collective, and (c) depersonalized. The findings of this research showed that approximately 55.96% of the voice of Arab learners of ESL fell in the individual category, 29.97% fell in the collective category, and 14.07% fell in the depersonalized category.