Transitivity And Attitude In Identity Construction

Identity research is an important issue in the fields of communication,sociology,socio-psychology,culturology,etc.In recent years,there has been a pragmatic turn of identity studies involved in conversation analysis,discourse analysis and others.From the perspective of language in use,namely pragmatics,identity study examines how identities are dynamically and alternatively constructed in a given context to convey speakers' particular meanings and implement certain performative objectives,thus getting specific communicative effects.Academy Awards acceptance speech is a special type of public speech for the particular occasion of the awards ceremony.In expressing gratitude and delight,the winner as a speaker in the short speaking time dynamically constructs diverse identities through language choices,to achieve certain communicative intentions.This study describes how speakers at the Academy Awards ceremonies construct desirable and multiple identities through their acceptance speeches.In this paper,Halliday's transitivity system and Martin's attitude system were used as the theoretical basis.Based on a corpus of 10 acceptance speeches in the recent six Academy Awards,from 2011 to 2016,the overall distributions of six process types and three attitude resources were calculated with the help of UAM Corpus Tool 3,thereby analyzing types of pragmatic identity,strategies of identity construction and pragmatic motivations of identity construction revealed in acceptance speeches.The acceptance speeches were analyzed at both clause and discourse levels to reveal the linguistic resources that the speakers employed for constructing desirable pragmatic identities and ultimately achieving pragmatic purposes.At the clause level,the ways and types of identity construction in acceptance speeches were revealed by drawing upon pragma-linguistic resources and choices.First,the lexico-grammar and the relationship between the speaker and other participants in clauses were analyzed by drawing upon transitivity system;and second,in the process of constructing identities,the speakers' emotions,positions and viewpoints were analyzed by referring to attitude resources from the appraisal system.At the discourse level,pragmatic identity was regarded as a kind of pragamtic strategy in acceptance speeches to achieve and disclose pragmatic purposes.Through both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the selected data,the major findings of this study were as follows.The pragmatic identities constructed included those of three types:(1)personal identity with self-attributes(like humorous,humble style);(2)relational identity involving foregrounding identity(namely winner,honoree or acknowledging identity),work identity(like peer-rival,partner,co-star/acting partner,coworker or staff),family identity(like marital partner,husband,wife,son/daughter)and friend identity;(3)collective identity involving national identity(like Chinese,Japanese)and professional identity(like filmmaker,actor identity,director,cast and crew).In this paper,in the specific context of Academy Awards acceptance speeches,the speakers alternatively construct desirable identities to convey their utterance meanings.In addition to performing the goal of expressing thanks,identity construction as a kind of pragmatic strategy serves to show their professional ability and spirit,artistic value,moral sentiment and personality trait,aiming to obtain the public's favor and recognition,maintain positive interpersonal relations and win a certain occupational status in the film industry.According to the results of this study,pragmatic identities were necessary in getting the speakers to realize certain communicative intentions via acceptance speeches.It is argued in the paper that identity is a critical aspect of acceptance speeches which should be given special attention in identity studies.