An Investigation Into Speakers’ Use Of Self-mentions And The Construction Of Identities

Writer identity construction in academic written discourses has always been a hot issue in applied linguistics.However,compared with academic written discourses,identity research in academic spoken discourses received relatively less attention.As an important academic interactional resource,identity construction is an effective strategy employed by speakers to achieve communication with the audiences.In recent years,a relatively new academic spoken genre called Three Minute Thesis(3MT)has gradually caught the eyes of researchers in applied linguistics,and studies on 3MTs are taking on a growing trend at present.Since 3MTs embrace the characteristics of competitiveness and persuasiveness,the construction of identities in 3MTs is conducive to engage the audiences and thus win their support.And previous studies have proved that self-mention is the most prominent signal of writers’ and speakers’ presence(Hyland,2002;Kuo,1999;Tang & John,1999).Therefore,by combining qualitative and quantitative research methods,this paper aims to explore how speakers construct their identities in 3MT presentations.Based on academic writer identity typology(Tang &John,1999),social identity roles(Zareva,2013)and knowledge contribution identities(Nausa,2020),this study analyzed 62(24 from soft disciplines and 38 from hard disciplines)3MT presentations delivered by the finalists at the University of Queensland from 2008 when the first competition was held to 2020 when the current study began to collect research data.Specifically,this study addresses the following three research questions: 1)What speaker identity roles do 3MT presenters construct by using self-mentions in their presentations? 2)What speaker identity roles are respectively typical of hard-science presenters’ and soft-science presenters’ 3MTs? 3)What are the disciplinary differences of the construction of speaker identity roles in3 MTs between the two disciplines?The key research findings of this study are summarized as follows.1.In 3MTs,the speakers constructed five kinds of speaker identity roles,encompassing “narrator”,“guide”,“recounter of research process”,“opinion-holder”,and “contributor”,all of which formed a continuum from the least powerful speaker presence(narrator)to the most powerful speaker presence(contributor)according to the identity intensity of each role.As for the frequency of self-mentions used to construct identity roles,generally speaking,first person singular pronouns were used far more frequently than plural pronouns.And there was not a one-on-one relationship between first person pronouns and speaker identity roles.For instance,the speakers could construct more than one role in one sentence,and more than one first person pronouns could also be used to build one speaker identity role.The degree of the relativity to the research itself decides the degree of identity intensity of speaker roles.In addition,the degree of the certainty of the factual information also decides the degree of identity intensity.Specifically,“narrator” always occurs at the very beginning of the speech,as an effective strategy to attract the audience’s attention.“Guide” refers to the speaker who gives directions and leads the audience to focus on a specific place or topic.“Recounter of research process” is a describer of the steps in experiments,like data collection,data analysis,research design,research methods,etc.“Opinion-holder” will express his or her supportive or negative attitudes towards the existing opinions,and some notional verbs denoting opinions will also co-occur with this role,like propose,think,convince,ensure,know,argue,approve,etc.And “contributor” is the speaker who states his or her own original contribution to the academic community or even to the whole human society,which is the most powerful speaker identity role.In terms of the frequency of each identity roles,in specific,“recounter of research process” accounted for the highest frequency,with 304 occurrences in total.“Contributor” came to the second,with its frequency as high as 108 times.“Narrator” also appeared fairly frequently.However,“opinion-holder” and “guide” appeared less frequently,with only48 times and 9 times separately.2.When constructing speaker identity roles,the speaker was influenced by double regulations from both the disciplinary community that the speaker belongs to and the non-disciplinary communities that the heterogeneous audience belongs to in 3MTs,which all resulted in the uniqueness of speaker identity construction in 3MTs.Specifically,speakers from soft disciplines tended to construct an argumentative identity role,which was associated with the disciplinary feature of soft disciplines.Besides,“recounter of research process” accounted for a relatively high frequency in this discipline which was consistent with the scientific nature of 3MTs.While in hard disciplines,speakers also constructed relatively more “narrator” and “opinion-holder”,which seemed to be contradictory with the traditional view that knowledge was absolutely objective.The reason why there existed such a difference is that in 3MTs,the experiment procedures and methods are always difficult and even obscure to understand for those audiences who are irrespective of the discipline;therefore,speakers from hard disciplines often constructed more “narrator” and “opinion-holder” to attract the audience’s attention and ease their cognitive burden.3.In terms of the disciplinary differences on speaker identity construction,this study probed into the differences from two perspectives: the outer differences and the inner differences.From the outer aspect,there existed striking differences between hard and soft speakers on the construction of “recounter of research process” and“contributor”(Ps < 0.01).Additionally,gender differences had less effect on the construction of speaker identity roles between soft and hard speakers than disciplinary differences did.However,when Chinese speakers built their identities,they were deeply influenced by the scientific nature of 3MTs,instead of their cultural background or disciplinary differences.For example,Chinese speakers from both hard and soft disciplines built identity roles with relatively high intensity,which was inconsistent with Chinese collectivist culture.From the inner aspect,first of all,the identity construction practices were almost identical within soft sciences,but there remain some differences between the sub-disciplines within hard disciplines.Secondly,female speakers often constructed more diversified roles,which might because of the result of the rise of feminism.However,compared with English native speakers,Chinese speakers still constructed less identity roles,and the general intensity of these roles was weaker.Proposing a speaker identity roles framework in 3MTs,this study has enriched the existing identity research,and provided some suggestions for the identity research in academic spoken discourses.Meanwhile,this study may shed some light on the academic English teaching practices,especially the doctoral academic English teaching at home.