Linguistics and Education 37 (2017) 1–10 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Linguistics and Education jo ur nal ho me page: www.elsevier.com/locate/linged The doctoral gaze: Foreign PhD students’ internal and external academic discourse socialization Tim Anderson Department of Curriculum & Instruction, University of Victoria, MacLaurin Building, Room A541, 3800 Finnerty Road (Ring Road), Victoria, BC, Canada, V8P 5C2 a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 29 April 2016 Received in revised form 16 November 2016 Accepted 12 December 2016 Available online 5 January 2017 Keywords: Language socialization Academic discourse Case study Higher education a b s t r a c t This article examines the internal and external academic discourse socialization of seven Chinese PhD students at a large Canadian university. Through the use of interviews, participant-generated written narratives, and discussion of written feedback, this longitudinal multiple case study uncovered multiple and complex factors facilitating students’ socialization into local practices, discourses, and communities during their doctoral study. This article highlights the disciplinary role of internal and external socializa- tion in mediating behaviours, affective stances, and (in)action, a process referred to as the doctoral gaze, conceptually drawn from Foucault’s (1995) notion of panopticism. Students’ self- and other-mediated and directed forms of socialization comprised a recursive process where they learned to do being PhD students through the use of internal and external sources and resources. Their relative abilities to become active agents in the process, and effectively self- and other-socialize into practices, behaviours, and positionalities conducive to success, were key aspects in the broader socialization process. Crown Copyright © 2016 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction A growing body of research continues to investigate the role of language socialization (LS) in postsecondary English-as-a-second- or additional-language (AL hereafter) students’ opportunities, abilities, and desires to integrate into their preferred academic dis- courses and communities (e.g., Bronson, 2004; Kobayashi, 2003; Morita, 2000; Séror, 2008; Vickers, 2007; Zappa-Hollman, 2007; Zappa-Hollman & Duff, 2015). In this article, I focus on the inter- nal and external sources of this academic discourse socialization involving seven Chinese foreign 1 PhD students at a Canadian uni- versity. Through the use of interviews and participant-generated narratives and an examination of feedback students had received on their writing, this longitudinal multiple-case study uncovered numerous factors facilitating students’ success (or lack thereof) adapting to local practices and discourses during their doctoral study. In addition to the more-frequently discussed external sources of socialization that affect students, I also examine the E-mail address: timanderson@uvic.ca 1 The term “foreign students” is used in this paper to refer to the postsecondary students in this study who were not Canadian citizens (including both international students and permanent residents); “International students” more specifically refers to the students who were in Canada on student visas. The use and differentiation of these terms follow OECD’s (2014) operationalizations. lesser-researched notion of internal or self-socialization (Duff & Doherty, 2015; Lee & Bucholtz, 2015) in the broader additional language socialization process, informed by Foucault’s (1995) panopticism and the disciplinary control that being surveilled has on individuals’ self-regulation of their own thoughts and behaviours. In so doing, I highlight the complementary theoretical role of panopticism in additional language socialization research in the context of these seven students’ stories. Although recent work has discussed the role of self-socialization in the lives of additional language students from both conceptual (Duff & Doherty, 2015; Lee & Bucholtz, 2015) and empirical (Newman & Newman, 2009) per- spectives, none thus far has studied the impact of both internal and external socialization on the academic lives of foreign graduate stu- dents and their abilities, desires, and opportunities to navigate their sought after discourses and communities. This article addresses this under-researched and yet critically important area amidst the ongoing internationalization of higher education both in Canada and globally and the prominent role of Chinese students in driving such growth (Anderson, 2015). 2. Language socialization and community Language socialization is a theoretical and methodological framework that provides insights into the various, contested, and shifting processes involving less and more established members of http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2016.12.001 0898-5898/Crown Copyright © 2016 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.