A Study Of Host’s Pragmatic Identity Construction And Adaptability In Service Program New Blind Date Assembly

The study of identity is a popular topic in the fields of sociology,psychology,anthropology and linguistics.The early studies on identity are mainly static,believing that identity is immutable and can’t be changed,which is a typical essentialist idea.With the deepening of research,this idea is questioned and identity is considered as a dynamic process that is constantly constructed with the change of communicative needs.With the pragmatic turn in identity research,researchers pay more attention to the process of constructing different pragmatic identities in the actual use of language in different contexts for achieving specific communicative purposes.With the advent of the new media era,various types of TV programs appear to meet people’s needs of the spiritual world.While the variety of programs is not only popular with the audience,the hosts of the programs also leave a deep impression on the viewers.In interacting with the guests in different scenes of the programs,the host needs to choose particular utterances to construct different identities in order to achieve the communicative purpose and promote the smooth running of the program,which makes the author consider the attempt to do a research on the service program host’s construction of pragmatic identity through his or her selection of language use in different scenes of the programs.Taking Chen Xinren’s pragmatic identity theory and Verschueren’s adaptation theory as theoretical basis,this study takes Jiangsu Satellite TV’s service program New Blind Date Assembly as the research subject,observing the host’s constructing pragmatic identities in the progress of the program and analyzing his or her selection of pragmatic strategies and motivation of identity construction,in order to answer the following three questions:(1)What pragmatic identities does the host construct in the service program?(2)What pragmatic strategies does the host use to construct the pragmatic identities in the service program?(3)What are the motivations for the host to construct the pragmatic identities in the service program?Through qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data,the study has found that in order to effectively host the service program,the host is always constructing different pragmatic identities to meet the needs of communication.These identities can be mainly classified as introducer,guide,adjustor,controller,evaluator,friend and matchmaker.Secondly,it has been found that both linguistic and paralinguistic strategies are employed in the realization of identity construction.Linguistic strategies often used by the host are the selection of markers,address forms,speech acts,speech content such as topic,and paralinguistic strategies are such as gestures,laughter,and hugs.The last finding of the study is that the host is changing his or her pragmatic identities in the progress of a service program for the purpose of adapting to the communicative contextual factors which are language users,the mental world,the social world,and the physical world.This thesis not only enriches the research on identity construction and its adaptability under the background of new media,but also provides some inspiration for relevant hosts to construct appropriate identities by choosing to use utterance in the process of hosting the program,which can promote the smooth progress of communication to achieve the purpose of communication and better serve the audience and society.