Writer And Reader Identities In Column Discourse Of Chinese And American English Newspapers

In recent years, the notions of writer identity and reader identity in writing have come to attract significant attention. Most research in this field mainly focuses on either writer identity or reader identity in academic writing and L2 students'writing (Tang & John, 1999; Ivanic & Camps, 2001; Hyland, 2002 2005;Ouyang & Tang,2006). Taking writing as interaction, the study explores both writer identity and reader identity, which may demonstrate more clearly the negotiation of writer identity and reader identity in writing. However, different from the previous research, newspaper columns are chosen as the genre for this study. The newspaper columns generally serve as bridges for communication between the columnist and the reader. In contrast with academic writing and L2 writing, writer and reader identities may be expressed explicitly and may have unique characteristics in newspaper columns. On the basis of reference retrieval, it is found that writer identity and reader identity in newspaper columns have not been explored. Therefore, through the quantitative and qualitative analyses of the first and second person pronouns of I, we and you, this comparative study aims to explore how Chinese and American columnists express respectively their own identities and reader identities in English newspaper columns and tries to find out the similarities and differences, through which to discover the different interactive relationships between the writers and the readers and the possible cultural influences on writer and reader identities in the columns written by Chinese and American columnists.In this study, writer identity refers to the images that writers represent themselves and find themselves represented by their rhetorical choices. Reader identity refers to the images of readers projected in the texts by writers'rhetorical choices. This study is based on an analysis of 30 columns in China Daily and 30 columns in Chicago Tribune. All the selected columns are selected from China Daily website and Chicago Tribune website. Frequency analysis is conducted to provide quantitative data for the interpretation of the occurrences of the personal pronouns I, we and you in the columns. The first step is to examine the overall frequencies of I, we and you in the sample L1 and L2 columns, including I, me, my, we, us, our, you and your. The next step is to examine further the frequencies of the personal pronouns according to their discourse functions and semantic references and to find out their similarities and differences between Chinese and American columns, as well as the different interactive relationships between the writers and the readers according to the examination of the second personal pronouns. The results of personal pronouns are analyzed qualitatively on the basis of the theories of"self in cultures"and"face"to explore the cultural elements which may influence the results.As to writer identity, the results show that Chinese columnists, as the professional English writers, are similar to American columnists in terms of the presence of writer identity in the columns. They both use a lot of I to suggest that they are view holders and keep their authorities and use a lot of we to seek the agreement of the readers and keep the solidarity with the readers. It may suggest that the cultural differences are not salient in the presence of writer identity of Chinese and American columnists who are both willing to make a solid personal commitment to the most authoritatively powerful aspects of their columns. However, despite the overall similarities, there are still some differences in details. First, Chinese and American columnists use the different ways to propose or prove their views by means of personal experiences. Chinese columnists tend to state their personal experiences at the beginning of the columns and then propose the topics, while American columnists tend to propose the topics directly at the beginning of the columns and use their personal experiences to prove their views in the course of discussion. Secondly, Chinese columnists seem to pay more attention to presenting their national identity to seek for the agreement of the readers. The expression of"we Chinese"is used in L2 columns when the writers compare the differences of China and other countries. However, the similar expression of"we American"seldom occurs in L1 columns.As to reader identity, American columns seem to pay more attention to use the second- person pronoun you to present reader identity and construct more obvious reader identity in the columns. Furthermore, Chinese and American columnists seem to use different strategies to communicate with readers through the columns. These different ways of expression show the different interactive relationships between the writers and the readers. In American columns, the writers as the opinion holders, seem to have higher power than the readers, while in Chinese columns the writers seem to put themselves on the equal status with the readers to expect them to accept their opinions. These differences can be explained further by means of Scollon & Scollon's face theory. American columnists tend to use exclusive you to suggest that they prefer performing the strategies of independence face. American columns seem to be the face- to- face dialogues between the writers and the readers. The columnists may pay much attention to their own views, but hurt the readers'face. Chinese columnists tend to use inclusive you to suggest that they prefer performing the strategies of involvement face. They tend to shorten the distance between the writers and the readers to achieve the agreement of the readers. Thus, they may pay more attention to the readers and save the readers'face. In addition, the different strategies of American and Chinese columnists may be influenced by the different cultures. The strategy of independence face performed by American columnists may show their tendency of individualism, while the strategy of involvement face performed by Chinese columnists may show their tendency of collectivism.This research enlarges the scope of the studies of identity in writings. Its findings can help foreign language students realize the construction of writer- reader relationships in newspaper columns and understand the different writing strategies that columnists in different cultures use to interact with their readers. Further studies in this field are needed to explore writer and reader identities based on the more detailed categories of discourse functions of the personal pronouns in a more substantial database.