A Pragmatic Approach To Ethnic Identity Construction

The aim of this research is to approach ethnic identification from a pragmatic perspective, and the use of language in Kaifeng Jewish people's legends will become the object of this research. The choice of a pragmatic approach to Kaifeng Jews' ethnic identification is based on the following theoretical and practical considerations. First of all, Kaifeng Jews' ethnic identification devices are more common and play a more effective role in the dialogues present in their legends. Secondly, it is important to know how Kaifeng Jewish people can keep their ethnicity for more than a thousand years in China. Thirdly, we believe that the use of language is an effective and unique way to ethnic identification.To achieve the goal of finding a pragmatic approach to ethnic identification and make the study more convincing we try to use the conceptual framework as follows: First, Every legend is taken as a Kaifeng Jews form of life. Second, all the dialogues will be classified according to speech act theory. And third, Theories of Convention T and the enlarged formulae of a metalaguage offer us a basic structure of the conclusion of this research.In order to make the present study more practical in Kaifeng Jews' research, an overall collection of their legends must be taken. Firstly, we have found all the legends available. Secondly, selecting the legends with dialogues which can help to achieve our aim is an indispensable step. Finally, classify these utterances and finding a pragmatic approach to Kaifeng Jews' identification. In conclusion, the author holds that Kaifeng Jewish people are Jews if and only if their families take these Kaifeng Jews' legends as their ethnic history and transmit these legends to their offspring in any method. This paper is a pragmatic approach to ethnic identification, we hope it can be a base for the further research and can help to achieve a desired purpose.