A Study On Pragmatic Identity Construction Of Entrepreneurs In Corporate Apology Statements Based On The Rapport-Management Theory

Pragmatic identity emphasizes the communicative and dynamic attributes of identity,and its research focus is mainly on how speakers dynamically construct pragmatic identity to convey specific communicative meanings to coordinate,maintain and consolidate interpersonal relations and achieve specific communicative effects.This paper mainly studies the types of pragmatic identities in corporate apology statements through the use of rapport management strategies and finally explore the influences of various pragmatic identities on communicative needs and effects.Since there are few researches on pragmatic identity construction in corporate apology statements,this study collects 20 corporate apology statements released for crisis management as the research corpus and adopts the qualitative and quantitative method to study what kinds of pragmatic identities are constructed with the help of rapport strategies we collected in the corpus.It is found that at least four pragmatic identities are constructed with ten apology strategies in four rapport management domains.They are victim identity,partner identity,entrepreneur identity,and expert identity.It is also found that the pragmatic identities constructed in corporate statements satisfy the communication needs by maintaining both parties' face,rights and communicative goals.So that the entrepreneur can avoid the direct conflicts with customers and build a positive image to regain a long-term cooperative relation with customers.This study confirms the feasibility of rapport management in pragmatic identity research,provides a new way for identity research in the field of interpersonal pragmatics,and expands the field of identity research by studying the pragmatic identity construction in corporate apology statements.