A Study Of The Discursive Construction Of Postpartum Depressed Women’s Pragmatic Identity

Postpartum depression is a mental illness that severely influences women’s physical and mental health,but for a long time,people lack proper knowledge about it.As women with postpartum depression experience the disease,it is important to study patient discourse to help the public understand and confront postpartum depression.The study of identity construction has been one of the hot topics of interest for many scholars,especially in the fields of psychology,philosophy and sociology.With the development of linguistics,some scholars have believed that identity studies should be combined with some specific linguistic contexts.Pragmatic identity,therefore,has become a new research hotspot,one of which is the language’s adaptability to the context embodied in identity construction.This study,based on the theoretical framework established by integrating Pragmatic Identity Theory and Linguistic Adaptation Theory,taking the self-expression texts on online platforms of postpartum depressed women as a source of corpus,explores the discursive construction of postpartum depressed women’s pragmatic identity with qualitative and quantitative analysis methods.It mainly focuses on the types of pragmatic identity constructed and the discursive strategies employed by postpartum depressed women,and the contextual adaptability in the process of pragmatic identity construction.To achieve the above research objectives,this study sets up the following three research questions:(1)What types of pragmatic identities do postpartum depressed women construct in patient discourse? What is the frequency of each identity type?(2)What discursive strategies do postpartum depressed women adopt to construct these pragmatic identities in patient discourse? What is the frequency of each strategy?(3)How do the different identity types constructed by the postpartum depressed women adapt contextual factors?The conclusions are drawn out that: firstly,postpartum depressed women construct three discursive identities,namely the personal identity,relational identity and collective identity.Among them,the relational identity had the highest frequency,followed by the personal identity,and the collective identity appeared with the lowest frequency.It shows that personal identity is the basis of constructing discourse framework,relational identity is the subject identity constructed by postpartum depressed women,and collective identity is the dynamic complement to relational identity.Secondly,these types of identities can be constructed through certain discursive practices including grammatical choice,speech acts and address,which indicates that the process of constructing the pragmatic identity is accompanied by the use of language.Grammatical choice was used most frequently,mainly in the areas of personal pronoun,question and exclamation.The use frequency of speech acts is the second,usually as expressive speech acts and representative speech acts.Address was used with the lowest frequency.Thirdly,the postpartum depressed women’s identity construction shows dynamic adaptability in the disease discourse.Postpartum depressed women adapt to the contextual factors,including temporal and spatial factors in the physical world,social setting and culture,intimate or estranged relationship and power relation in the social world,and emotion and personality in the mental world.This study uses the disease discourse of postpartum depressed women as data to explore the discursive construction process of postpartum depressed women’s pragmatic identity.In general,this thesis for one thing verifies the applicability of adaptation theory and pragmatic identity construction in disease discourse,which broadens the use of pragmatic identity theory and enriches identity research.For another thing,it provides a new research path for disease discourse research.It helps the public to establish a correct perception of postpartum depression as a disease,thus reducing the prejudice and misunderstanding of postpartum depression.