A Study On Pragmatic Identity Constructions From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

For a long time,“identity” has been a hot topic in the fields of Sociology,Rhetoric,Psychology and Culture.In recent years,the study of “identity” has shown a pragmatic turn.On the one hand,scholars have introduced the perspective of identity into the study of traditional pragmatic topics.On the other hand,scholars have studied identity constructions from a pragmatic perspective.The construction of pragmatic identity has become a new hot research spot in the field of pragmatics(Ran Yongping,2011).Selfintroduction is an important part of a person’s self-discipline identity.In a specific context,a speaker would construct different pragmatic identities in his self-introduction to achieve his own communication purposes.However,few scholars have studied the construction of pragmatic identity in the self-introduction part of language users in a specific context.In addition,the research theory of pragmatic identity construction needs to be strengthened.Therefore,in view of the above situation and research needs,this thesis studies the construction of pragmatic identity of job seekers in their selfintroduction corpus from the perspective of Adaptation Theory.The objectives of this thesis are to explore the types,strategies,and adapting processes of job interviewees’ pragmatic identity construction in their self-introduction discourses,which aims to address the following three main questions:(1)From the perspective of Adaptation Theory,what typical types of pragmatic identity do the interviewees construct in the context of job interviews?(2)In the context of job interviews,to adapt the context,what strategies are used by the interviewees to construct pragmatic identities?(3)With the Adaptation Theory,how do the pragmatic identity constructions adapt to the context of job interviews?This thesis uses the Tianjin TV recruitment program “Only You” as the source of corpus.From July 2017 to July 2018,100 self-introductions of successful job interviewees are collected as research corpus,and the number of transferred letters is about 19,159 characters.On the basis of Chen Xinren’s(2018)and Yuan Zhoumin’s(2013)definitions,the definition of pragmatic identity is refined in this thesis;and inspired by Yuan Zhoumin’s(2013)and De Fina’s(2003)identity classification criteria,the judging standard of pragmatic identity type is designed by the author.According to these,the author also independently translated and annotated the collected corpus,and counted the types and frequencies of various pragmatic identities constructed by job interviewees.Then the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the strategies for constructing pragmatic identity are explored,and the adapting processes of pragmatic identity constructions to the context of job interviews are discussed.This thesis has drawn the following three main conclusions,corresponding to the above three research questions.(1)From the perspective of Adaptation Theory,the typical types of pragmatic identities constructed by job interviewees in the context of job interviews are examined.It finds that most job interviewees have constructed professional identity,manager identity,student identity,entrepreneur identity,and some other identities,such as teacher,actor,etc.(2)The pragmatic identity constructing strategies used by job interviewees in their self-introduction discourses mainly involve the means of hedges,intensifier,codeswitching and para-language.(3)Under the framework of Linguistic Adaptation Theory,the pragmatic identity construction process of job interviewees mainly adapts to the physical world,the mental world and the social world in the context of job interviews.In the process of adapting to the physical world,the adaptations of temporal and spatial factors are particularly obvious;in the process of adaptation to the psychological world,the adaptations to emotion and intention are relatively prominent;while in the process of adaptation to the social world adaptation,the adaptations to power relation and traditional virtues are the most vivid.Based on the Linguistic Adaptation Theory,this thesis attempts to explore the typical types of pragmatic identities constructed by job interviewees in the context of job interviews.The strategies and the adaptation of constructing pragmatic identity have reached corresponding conclusions,which have certain promotion significance for the study of pragmatic identity constructions,pragmatic research and personal pragmatic competence.Specifically,this research enriches the study of pragmatic identity constructions,provides new research objects and perspectives for pragmatic research,supplies an effective reference for language users to construct suitable pragmatic identity in specific contexts,and improve their pragmatic competence.