“It’s a bit cowardly my kind of writing”: citation forms and identity negotiations of doctoral students in Education

ABSTRACT This paper presents four case studies guided by the research questions: how do doctoral students distribute their citation forms in the same literary practice, how do these distributions change across different versions of the text produced during a year and a half of doctoral training, and what reasons do they attribute to these choices and preferences of use? To answer them, we analyzed the style and integration of citations in three versions per writer, and contrasted with semi-structured interviews. This combined methodological approach contributes to the growing tradition of postgraduate writing studies interested in the relationships between the writer’s discursive choices and the construction of his or her academic identity.