The High School student’s journey: A chronotopic study of Self-construction in intercultural counseling communication

The aim of this paper is to examine the construction of self and other in counseling conversations between students with an ethnic minority background and counselors in 3 high schools in Copenhagen, Denmark. The analysis is based on Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin’s literary theory of Chronotope. I see the concept as useful in connection with students' self-constructions (autobiographies). The analysis shows how time and space plays into the counseling conversations, and how other contexts and dialogues play a stronger role in the students design of themselves; that is, how a fusion of spatial and temporal conditions comprise a basis for a unified whole – the student - and her or his travel through high school. The Journey describes what I call a chronotopic identity that students appropriate on their journey through high school – a chronotope of crisis and break – a chronotope of threshold, which is marked by a higher degree of intensity in emotions and values. The conclusion is that counselor’s require not only cultural sensitivity, more importantly, they need language based sensitivity.