Who am I? A linguistic analysis of speech pathology students’ professional identity formation as reflected in their ePortfolios

Language is a key tool in both shaping and reflecting professional identity, but few studies examine the language of professional identity formation and how this changes across a program. Understanding language differences could inform scaffolding to support deeper reflection on foster professional identity. This study aimed to explore differences between professional identity language in Year 1 (Y1) and Year 4 (Y4) speech pathology students in their portfolios to develop a guide or ‘scaffold’ to support reflection on and ultimately foster professional identity. Written reflective texts were purposively sampled from ten Y1 and ten Y4 students of a four-year undergraduate speech pathology program in Western Australia, matched on demographic characteristics. A systemic functional linguistics framework was used to analyse the language, exploring transitivity (process types), modality and attitude and the overall genre structure of the reflections. Basic descriptive statistics were collated with rich qualitative description to showcase differences. Results showed differences in how Y1 and Y4 students presented themselves and made meaning of their journey to becoming a speech pathologist. Y1 tended to be more self-focused, using more affective words compared to more cognitive processes in Y4. The genre structures indicated the different focus of their reflections. These findings informed the development of a scaffold for professional identity reflections. Analysing the linguistic features of written self-reflections may well assist health professional students to recognise and foster professional identity formation throughout their program.