| At a time when English is more and more regarded as a lingua franca,cultural identity is now recognized as an indispensable part in language learning.In this study,I intended to examine how Chinese English-major students construct their cultural identity as well as how identity may impact on their request strategies from an ELF perspective.I adopted the Identity and Investment Model(Darvin & Norton,2015)as the theoretical framework.The three research questions guided the present study:(1)How do Chinese postgraduate students of English language and literature identify themselves regarding cultural identity?(2)How do they perform requests in English?(3)How do their identity and investment impact on the use of request strategies? To address these questions,I used questionnaires,Oral Discourse Completion Task(ODCT)and semi-structured interviews.I recruited 157 graduate students of English and literature in a university in Shanghai as participants on a voluntary basis,4 of whom were chosen to complete the oral DCT and semi-structured interview.The study revealed that participants’ scores regarding Chinese cultural identity were higher than those of English cultural identity.They displayed divergent patterns of the use of request strategies,which might be attributed to their different identities and investments.Overall,they tended to use more indirect request strategies.Participants who had different scores of Chinese cultural identity and English cultural identity showed different tendency of using request strategies in different scenarios.Their cultural identities are shaped differently according to time and space.Learning English in China as a major has facilitated both their Chinese cultural identity and English identity.This paper also confirms a dynamic con-construction of language investment,cultural identity and pragmatic development.This study hopes to shed light on the pragmatics teaching and raise teachers’ awareness of students’ multiple identities. |
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