The Adaphbility Of Linguistic Choices In The Construction Of The Interviewer’s Identity

Identity is a distinctive feature constructed by people in the process of communication, and plays an important role in our daily life. In recent years identity and identity construction have aroused great curiosity of scholars and have become one of the most significant research subjects in many fields, such as philosophy, sociology, literature and linguistics and so on. With the deep exploration of identity, more and more researchers have noticed the close relationship between identity and language. At present, linguistic discussions on identity are mainly from the following aspects: sociolinguistics, system-functional grammar, social psychology and discourse analysis. When analyzing the relationship between identity and language, most scholars at home focus on the static feature, but ignore its dynamic and flexible aspect in the process of communication.Based on the present research background on identity, this paper takes the perspective of pragmatics, chooses Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory as the theoretical framework and selects the TV interview program Yang Lan One on One as specific data. It dynamically analyzes the relationship between identity construction and the Adaptation Theory as well as linguistic choice-making. The paper deals with different identities of interviewer Yang Lan and their corresponding pragmatic functions according to different interviewees and communication contexts. Meanwhile, the writer analyzes how interviewer Yang Lan makes adaptable linguistic choices to construct proper identity from the angles of structural objects of adaptability and contextual correlates of adaptability. The study points out that the Adaptation Theory and identity construction are closely connected. Either TV interviewers or any communicators can construct suitable and ideal identity through making their linguistic choices adapt to several factors such as the utterance style, the physical world, the mental world and the social world etc.The present thesis shows relevant implication in studying TV interviewers’ identity construction through making appropriate and adaptive linguistic choices. The most important point is that it can guide utterers and interpreters to construct identities within the frame of the Adaptation Theory. To sum up, this paper has its significance on identity study, both theoretically and practically. As for its theoretical aspect, the study emphasizes the dynamic aspect of identity, and provides a pragmatic perspective for the future research in this field. Furthermore it applies the Adaptation Theory to other subjects and combines linguistics with sociology. In the practical aspect, the thesis is helpful for interviewers and communicators to be well aware of the flexibility of identity, and thus making adaptive linguistic choices to construct the expected identity and achieve harmonious communication.