Understanding personal agency through metaphor or Why academic writing is (not) like a roller coaster ride

Building on and methodologically extending Conceptual Metaphor Theory, the article examines how personal agency as a discursively produced socio-psychological phenomenon can be studied in elicited metaphors through a discourse-analytical approach. More concretely, the study illustrates how early career researchers experience and express their agency in research writing through personal metaphors of academic writing such as RIDING A ROLLER COASTER or BAKING A WEDDING CAKE. A two-step discursive analysis adapts Hopper & Thompson’s multidimensional approach to linguistic transitivity to study agency in language. The analytical approach involves both an in-depth parametrized analysis of all metaphors in the sample and a qualitative cross-analysis of the data. Results show that the participants’ metaphors reflect both nuanced personal experiences and cultural expectations of academic writing, the writer, and the text. This emphasizes that research writing is not only a highly subjective practice but also one that is socially and culturally influenced. The article argues that research on agency thus needs elaborate methodological tools to trace discursive and socio-psychological trajectories of complex socio-cognitive practices like academic writing. This not only has implications for the nexus of research writing, identity, and academic enculturation but also for other fields focusing on agency in language.