Candidacy paper

Perhaps the least understood step of the Ph.D. process is the candidacy paper. It differs from department to department. In my program,  now called Graduate Programs in Education (formerly the Graduate Division of Educational Research), the candidacy paper is written on one of three questions designed by one’s committee. Typically the paper is 25 pages (may not exceed 40) and delves into a topic of general knowledge of one’s field, knowledge of a specific area or methodology. The question I chose was on methodology. My candidacy paper describes how linguistic landscape and nexus analyses use an ecological approach to educational linguistics to inform us about bilingualism and bilingual identity. This paper gave me the opportunity to delve deeper into the ecology of languages metaphor, visiting its proponents and its critics. I came across interesting articles on linguistic landscape analyses of various cities in the world and how some researchers applied this methodology as a pedagogical tool. I read from Scollon and Scollon’s (2004) seminal book on nexus analysis and discovered a number of researchers who use this method for examining social practice. This paper will become a cornerstone to my literature review for the dissertation. Now submitted, I await my oral examination on the paper.