Chinese University Faculty Supervisors’ Academic Identity Construction in Online Profiles

The study examines how Chinese university faculty supervisors construct their academic identities in online profiles hosted on graduate school webpages. Identity and language are mutually shaping in both everyday talk and academic writing, and supervisor profiles publicly present biographical information beyond article bios, making them key sites for self-representation. Prior research has explored digital identity construction in blogs and academic homepages, but there is limited work on supervisor profiles, especially in the Chinese context and across status, gender, and disciplines. Drawing on theories of identity as a performed and negotiated construct (e.g., Goffman; Butler), the study situates profiles as discursive performances of an ideal self tailored to disciplinary and institutional expectations. The research addresses gaps regarding how status (seniority), gender, and disciplinary cultures influence self-representation in Chinese higher education, where audit cultures and prestige initiatives (e.g., Double First-Class) shape academic practices. The study is guided by two questions: (1) What moves are employed with reference to status, gender, and discipline in supervisor profiles on Chinese graduate school websites? (2) What processes are employed with reference to status, gender, and discipline in these profiles?

Faculty supervisor profiles function as a community discourse and a representational genre that asserts identity claims to audiences including prospective students and colleagues. Such profiles publicize academic achievements (education, positions, publications, projects) to facilitate connection within scholarly communities and align with institutional expectations of moral dedication and professional discretion. Academic identity is mediated by community membership and interactions between disciplines and institutions (Henkel). From a constructionist perspective, identity is fluid and negotiated through discourse, and the linguistic resources selected index the identities recognized by disciplinary peers. Profiles fashion the self through relatively formulaic means reflecting disciplinary realities (Hyland and Tse). Within Chinese higher education, disciplinary hierarchies (e.g., lower R&D investment in humanities and social sciences) and gender inequalities may shape identity work. Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday) provides a framework for analyzing process types (relational, material, mental, etc.) as realizations of ideational meanings and ways of construing experience, thereby revealing how academics position themselves. Prior work indicates that status, gender, and discipline mediate self-representation, but focused evidence from Chinese supervisors’ profiles remains limited.

Design: Qualitative analysis combining move analysis and transitivity (process type) analysis. Sampling frame: 147 Double First-Class (DFC) universities in mainland China. Using convenience and purposive sampling, profiles were collected to ensure manageable size and geographical spread. Data: 150 faculty supervisor profiles from postgraduate school websites across 20 universities, evenly split by discipline: Telecommunications (n=50; 7 universities), Arts (n=50; 7 universities), Linguistics (n=50; 6 universities). Within each discipline: 25 male and 25 female profiles; balanced by status—Professor/Ph.D. supervisors (PPSs) and Associate Professors/Master supervisors (APMs). Move analysis: Moves adapted from Hyland and Tse (2012): employment; education; research interests; publications; community service; achievements (prizes/awards/honors); personal data. Moves were coded to capture what aspects of identity authors select. Process type analysis: Based on Halliday’s SFL transitivity system. Primary focus on relational (intensive, circumstantial, possessive), material, and mental processes (behavioral and existential were rare). Process types model how experience is verbalized and identity foregrounded. Coding procedure: Three authors manually tagged moves and process types independently; discrepancies were resolved through discussion to agreement. Metrics: Frequencies and distributions of moves and process types reported per 1000 Chinese characters/words and compared across status, gender, and discipline (summarized in Tables 2–7).

Status and moves: PPSs used more moves than APMs across most items (exception: community services). Totals per 1000 characters (approx.): Telecommunications—PPS 56.4 vs APM 33.8; Arts—PPS 63.0 vs APM 28.8; Linguistics—PPS 45.8 vs APM 41.7. Senior scholars emphasized employment, research, and achievements (about three-fifths combined), while juniors focused on employment, research, publications, and also education. Gender and moves: Men wrote longer profiles and used more words per move than women. Totals per 1000 words: Telecommunications—Female 32.8 vs Male 57.5; Arts—Female 31.7 vs Male 60.2; Linguistics—Female 35.2 vs Male 56.6. Both genders prioritized employment, education, and research, but women more often highlighted teaching courses and used vaguer quantifiers for publications, whereas men listed specific achievements, publications, and community service roles. Discipline and moves: Overall move totals were similar across disciplines but distributed differently: Telecommunications 87.2, Arts 94.9, Linguistics 94.3 (per 1000 words). Arts emphasized education, achievements, and community services; Telecommunications and Linguistics emphasized research and publications. Status and processes: Relational and material processes predominated. PPSs tended to use more relational and fewer material processes than APMs. Examples (per 1000 words): Telecommunications—PPS Relational 40.6, Material 59.4; APM Relational 30.1, Material 69.9. Linguistics—PPS Relational 52.8, Material 47.2; APM Relational 53.9, Material 43.8. Arts—PPS Relational 57.3, Material 42.7; APM Relational 53.8, Material 43.2; mental processes were rare (notably 1.7 in APM Arts). Gender and processes: Men used more words than women for both relational and material processes, and a higher proportion of relational forms. Totals per 1000 words: Telecommunications—Male Relational 56.3, Material 72.1 vs Female Relational 43.7, Material 29.1; Arts—Male Relational 61.6, Material 71.5 vs Female Relational 36.4, Material 28.5; Linguistics—Male Relational 68.8, Material 65.8 vs Female Relational 34.2, Material 31.2. Discipline and processes: Telecommunications scholars used the most material processes; Arts scholars emphasized relational processes; Linguistics balanced both. Indicative percentages: Relational—Telecommunications 22.9, Arts 43.1, Linguistics 34.0; Material—Telecommunications 38.3, Arts 29.2, Linguistics 32.5. Illustrative patterns: Senior profiles favored identifying relational clauses (“He/She is + title/role”) signaling established identity; junior profiles foregrounded material actions (“enter, involve, publish”), often with broader/vaguer quantification. Arts profiles listed institutional titles and artworks as achievements; Telecommunications/Linguistics highlighted research directions and publications in leading venues.

Findings show that identity construction in Chinese faculty supervisor profiles is systematically shaped by status, gender, and disciplinary cultures. Status advantage: Senior faculty (PPSs) have richer academic capital, enabling fuller repertoires of moves and greater use of identifying relational processes to foreground who they are, aligning with the shift from doing to being as careers advance. Junior academics, constrained by fewer high-level achievements, rely more on material processes and complementary moves (teaching, community service) to construct credibility. Gendered identity work: Men tend to write longer, more assertive profiles, employing more relational and material processes and enumerating specific achievements, leadership roles, and publications. Many women foreground teaching and use more indirect or general descriptors of achievements, reflecting broader structural and cultural pressures (e.g., caregiving expectations, underrepresentation at higher ranks) that influence how academic identity is presented and perceived by prospective students. Disciplinary culture: Telecommunications and Linguistics value research outputs and publications as core markers of identity; thus profiles foreground research directions, projects, and publication lists, often via material processes. Arts profiles emphasize titles/positions in artistic communities, education, and artworks as primary achievements, using relational processes to align the author with prestigious institutions and roles and including more personal profile elements. These choices align authors with disciplinary norms and signal community values. Overall, the profiles function as performative, formulaic self-presentations that index institutional and disciplinary expectations in contemporary Chinese higher education’s audit culture, shaping how potential graduate students evaluate supervisors.

This study shows that Chinese faculty supervisors strategically construct academic identities in online profiles through patterned selections of rhetorical moves and linguistic processes that vary by status, gender, and discipline. Senior supervisors present fuller identities with wider move repertoires and greater reliance on identifying relational clauses; men tend to produce longer, more assertive accounts than women; Telecommunications and Linguistics prioritize research and publications, whereas Arts foregrounds education, achievements, community service, and artworks. These patterns mirror status advantages, gendered dynamics, and disciplinary cultures within China’s higher education system. Future research should expand the corpus across more institutions and disciplines, include cross-national comparisons, and conduct multimodal analyses to capture visual and design resources in identity work.

The corpus is limited to 150 profiles from 20 Double First-Class universities and only three disciplines (Telecommunications, Arts, Linguistics), reflecting access and scope constraints. Results may not generalize to all Chinese universities or other disciplines. The qualitative coding, while triangulated among authors, relies on manual interpretation. The study analyzes textual profiles only and does not include multimodal elements or audience reception.