How stable is the Construction of an Author’s Professional Identity? Variations in Five Editions of P.A. Samuelson’s Economics

The focus of this study is the textbook author’s construction of identity as it unfolds in five different versions of a highly successful textbook in the field of economics. Successive editions of P.A. Samuelson’s Economics will be studied with a view to investigating how the features of the writer’s construction of his professional identity have evolved and changed, during the time-span (1948-2001) which separates the first and the seventeenth edition. A qualitative analysis will be carried out, focusing not only on the use of pronouns – which have often been investigated in studies on identity – but on other features, too, which can be considered as relevant markers of identity, in the attempt to get an in-depth insight into the strategies employed by textbook authors for the construction of their professional identities. Revisions of the textbook will be shown to pay increasing attention to the readers’ expectations and needs, as well as to the updating of transactional content. The analysis will therefore highlight that the construction of the author’s professional identity is a multi-faceted phenomenon, which reveals adaptive attitudes and diachronic variations and seems to be deeply influenced by such concerns as changes in readership and the tension between local and global practices.