ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author discusses how reflexivity and the extent in which it is included in the reporting of ethnographic data is an embodied performance around texts and carries important markers of the researcher’s identity. In reporting language ethnographies, the degree to which one brings reflexivity can be constrained by existing social practices in academic writing as well as the social position researchers bring to the writing context. Revisiting two language ethnographies and reflecting on the author positionality pushed forward her thinking about reflexivity in important ways. The author focuses on fields such as educational ethnography, English for specific purposes, writing studies and multilingualism to make sense of the critical moments, complex histories, fears, needs and trajectories of second language users as well as the institutional constraints and affordances with which they encounter. Rather than being pre-given through formal education, the use of academic language is an embodied and transmodal performance.
