Social Identity And Self-concept Construal

This thesis is based on the fundamentals of Social Identity Theory, uses Britain’s current prime minister and also the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party—David Cameron’s contentious language in the Britain televised presidential debate in2010as its linguistic material and tries to study the individual’self-concept construal in the process of intercultural communication through Social Identity Theory field of vision. Social Identity Theory is used for analyzing an individual’s construal and realization of self-concept by his or her language. Then it makes a tentative study on the self-concept construal by social categorization, social comparison and positive distinctiveness from the Social Identity Theory and intercultural communication perspective. Self-concept and social identity can be achieved by people in the process of communication even in a debate context which is filled with competition and cooperation. So, the construal of self-concept can be realized.Self-concept is a concept that refers to an individual’s perception of "self" in relation to the characteristics. It synthesizes the inner sense and external evaluation. The study of self-concept not only gives the answer of the question "who I am?", but also provides the individual a deep understanding of himself or herself. Brewer held that the self-concept consists of three fundamental self-representations:the individual self, the relational self and the collective self. The individual can construct his or her self-concept in a conversational interaction process. The social psychologists Tajfel and Turner also put forward and distinguished the individual’s identity and social identity and regarded the social identity as a part the individual’s self-concept. In real-life communication, the Social Identity Theory provides the theory basis for the research of self-concept construal. Moreover, self-concept construal lies inside the area of Identity and Social Identity Theory. The process of constructing self-concept is exactly the process of seeking the self-identity. Because the individual’s self-concept is multiple, the individual’s identity should also be multiple. Tajfel et al considered that an individual’s self-esteem could be realized by social categorization, social comparison and positive distinctiveness. In the meantime, the positive self-concept could be protected and maintained, and the in-group bias could be promoted.According to the author’s study, the self-concept construal can’t be achieved without social identity. The sociologists laid stress on the realization of self-concept by the interaction of language and society. And it is widely considered by the scholars of communication that self-concept is social construal, mutual, negotiable and relational. Self-concept is also a process of interaction, integration and intercourse. In this process, we construct the sense of belonging and reach common ground. Therefore, in the course of intercultural communication, people will construct different selves on the basis of the cultural background, level of expertise, age and language of both sides. People will adapt themselves to these selves in a relatively stable stage and identify with the characteristics of the inner group. It is in the procedure of communication that self-concept takes shape. Therefore, the construal of self-concept includes both individual self and social self. During intercultural communication, every person has multiple selves. And the variety of his social self and individual self depend on how many groups and persons he communicates. The main aspects in language are to use positive identification language and negative identification language to conduct social categorization, social comparison and positive distinctiveness.There are various reasons why the author chooses David Cameron’s debate language in the first televised presidential debate in the English history—the Britain televised presidential debate in2010as corpus. The first one is that this debate was full of competition and cooperation among the three main parties in Britain. And the second reason is that this debate was involved with200live audiences who were selected by the institute of public opinion survey according to gender, age, race, social class and voting inclination, and the other9.4million off-board audiences. The competition and cooperation in the debate could represent and highlight the conflict, contradiction and cooperation in the intercultural communication.The study of the construal of self concept in the field of intercultural communication not only makes further explanation for various pragmatic phenomena and supplies a theoretical foundation for the discourse interpretation, but also contributes to using appropriate language to realize self-improvement and the reduction of the uncertainty during communication according to different context. It also helps avoid prejudice and stereotype and promotes intercultural communication going with a swing.