Through collaborative dialogic interaction, writing conferences can be used to develop students’ identity as writer who has agency and epistemic authority over their work. However, the construction of writer identity is a complex discursive process which involves the display of uncertainty about and resistance toward feedback as well as the negotiation of knowledge and ownership of content (Jones & Beck, 2020). This process becomes more complex for students of less-commonly-taught languages because the instructional emphasis lies in writing to learn (Reichelt et al., 2012).  

This study addresses this issue in the context of Japanese-as-a-foreign-language writing by analyzing participants’ use of Japanese speech styles and code shifts to English. The analysis of four online one-on-one conferences between a Japanese teacher and two advanced JFL university students, respectively, a) explores the identities constructed by the participants through dialogic writing instruction and b) examines how the construction of these identities contributes to the accomplishment of interaction as “a writing conference.”

The qualitative discourse analysis illustrates that the participants’ identities emerge as language authority and learner when they ask/answer display questions in the desu/masu form, whereas their identities emerge as reader and writer when they ask/answer referential questions using the plain form or English. These activities contribute to the accomplishment of the writing conference discourse by highlighting their agency and shifting epistemic stances. In particular, the teacher’s shifts to the plain form signal the opportunity for the students to take on an authorial voice, whereas the students’ shifts to English signal their attempts to claim it. However, the data also include instances of such attempts being unrecognized and the students remaining in the position of language learner. This study argues for the need to raise teachers’ awareness of the importance of balancing the need for L2 use with the empowerment achieved through L1 use.