This article investigates the discourses of professional identities and linguistic capital formation communicated by international scholars in the STEM disciplines in the US university context. In so doing, the study examines interviews of 17 such individuals and identifies two key discursive processes: the formation of a marketable self and the enactment of the legitimacy of World Englishes. The first discursive process is used by the professionals to position themselves as novice scholars needing to build necessary linguistic capital for employment and communication in the instructional setting. The second version of their discursive positioning, which was formed later in their career, demonstrates a competent self that legitimizes their existing linguistic capital and the ownership of non-Inner Circle Englishes for academic communication. As the participants position their identities vis-à-vis their profession, they claim transformation of the self in defining their linguistic capital and competence across time and space. The findings overall show that the (re-)formation and conversion of international STEM scholars’ linguistic capital are variously shaped by relations of power influenced by the linguistic market and their respective disciplinary communities.

本文研究了在美国大学背景下，国际学者在STEM学科中由国际学者交流的关于专业身份和语言资本形成的论述。通过这样做，该研究检查了对17个人的采访，并确定了两个关键的话语过程：可交易的自我的形成和世界英语合法性的制定。专业人士使用第一个话语过程将自己定位为新手学者，他们需要为教学环境中的就业和沟通建立必要的语言资本。他们的话语定位的第二个版本是在他们职业生涯的后期形成的，展示了一个能干的自我，使自己现有的语言资本和非内在圈子英语的所有权合法化，从而可以进行学术交流。当参与者将自己的身份相对于其职业定位时，他们宣称自我的转变是在定义他们的语言资本和跨时空能力方面的。总体而言，研究结果表明，国际STEM学者的语言资本的（重新）形成和转换受语言市场及其各自学科社区影响的权力关系的不同影响。