Multi-voicedness

In the following example, I aim to illustrate how one individual moves rapidly between voices, exhibiting traces of the “heteroglossia” that Holland et al. have argued is common. Ibrahim tells his story of his post-graduation life and career to date vividly. He graduated with a first in English literature, and lived at home with family during university and continues to do so. His career aspiration is to be a film director and he has already written and put on a play that with hindsight he reflects upon as semi- autobiographical. The dynamic process of self-authoring is something that would appear to come naturally to him.

His initial voice in the interview is that of the purist/responsible agent. He is highly committed to being a creative, almost as if that is what he was born to do. He is emphatic about what he wants to do and refers to “hiding in education” when discussing the PhD programme he is also enrolled for. He is proud of what he has achieved against the odds and talks about the play that he wrote, directed, produced and toured while studying which received a “five star review” in a local online magazine:

And in university I started a publishing and production company, and I wrote a play and I was sick of thinking, oh do I get it put on so I just did it myself. What I did was, which is really bad, I took out an overdraft and I just made this play and hired actors who I was on the same programme with…just sourced everyone I needed from my programme to make this tour, put all the money into it which I’m still paying off right now… It paid off creatively, financially I’m still paying it off…I’m very good at sort of utilising what I’ve got.

He also describes how his commitment to film helped secure a place on a practice-based PhD programme (albeit self-funded), which meant unusually bypassing a Masters. In contradiction of this heroic depiction of himself, his self-confidence appears diminished by his admission of the vulnerability he felt in the first few months after graduating which is more in tune with the purist/victim voice. There are indications that Ibrahim is perhaps not as confident as he may at first appear, although even when he is describing self-doubt, he does so in a dramatic way, revealing confidence that his story is an interesting one to tell.

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I had these expectations of what things were going to be like and it was just a case of like, you’re on your own and you don’t know what you’re doing and it’s very confusing and you think, oh what am I doing? In a way I think I’ve suppressed that and it’s still there lingering in my mind but, I don’t know…It was the worst period of my life… oh right I’m an adult now and it was just, it was not a good time.

However, his purist/victim voice moves quickly to player/victim. Notably, he uses the phrase “mis-sold adulthood” when reflecting on “the worst six months of my entire life” with an implication that somehow he has been deceived by forces outside of himself about what post-graduation life might be. He alludes to popular ideas which argue that his generation are facing greater challenges transitioning into adulthood than previous generations. His reflections on the use of social media also illustrate a potential player/victim voice as he acknowledges the online environment for promoting creative content such as his films but expresses discomfort with what he describes as the “falsity” of the internet; he has de-activated his Facebook account and reflects with envy on the world an older generation that did not have to worry about the internet.

Ibrahim also makes comments that indicate his knowledge of what is required to be a player/responsible agent too. Despite his verbal dismissal of his PhD as a Plan B, he even uses the trope “imposter syndrome” to describe his PhD student status, he is ploughing on with it and even doing some teaching of undergraduates; he has managed to hold down an administrative job at the university although he is also disparaging of this, and working with the “over 40s”. He has also secured a small university travel grant to go to the United States in order to develop his film-making.

Ibrahim covers much ground during his interview, and movement between different voices betray a contradictory self-assurance and vulnerability which arguably illustrates some of the cognitive struggle that Holland et al. refer to in their depiction of self- authoring. There have been “ruptures” in the taken-for-granted for him, evoked in the shock he felt in the first six months after he graduated, which do appear to have triggered for him a desire to find his own voice, one that he has orchestrated and Holland et al. depict as an “internally persuasive discourse” which will be expanded upon in the following section.

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