Investigating the Representation of Character Discourse in L2 Narratives Written by Iranian EFL Learners

The present study examined the discourse representation of characters’ voices in narratives written by Iranian L2 learners. The participants of this study were seven sophomore EFL majors (five women and two men) selected from among L2 learners through the convenience sampling method. The participants were assigned both a narrative topic about their story of learning EFL and Singleton’s (2001) picture narrative entitled “A Doctor’s Appointment.” Each of them wrote two narratives, first based on the topic and second on the assigned picture narrative from the first-person point of view. The content of the fourteen narratives was analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The statistical results indicated that the participants presented the characters’ utterances primarily via direct discourse (DD) that embodies the original speaker’s exact words and secondarily employed indirect discourse (ID) that represents an utterer’s report of the other speaker’s dialogues in her or his own words more willingly than free indirect discourse (FID) that signifies double-voiced utterances. Thus, the dialogical principle of characters’ discourse in L2 writings was more DD-focused and less ID-oriented with no FID instance. The qualitative analysis of the narratives showed that the participants’ writings demonstrated a heteroglossia of authorial clauses as well as direct and indirect quotations of characters’ speeches and thoughts.