Identity Construction In "I"-Utterances During The 2012 U.S. Presidential Debates

Due to the discursive turn/postmodern turn,the theoretical and empirical studies on identity have undergone a transition from essentialism to constructivism.The focus on identity has shifted from a static,pre-discursively determined view to an interactionally constructed,context-dependent view,leading to the emergence of identity in use or pragmatic identity(Chen 2013)that stresses the contextualized,communicative property of identity.Research on identity construction has witnessed a rapid growth in various fields of discourse.Political discourse has attracted my special attention because of its conflictive and even aggressive nature.Identity is seen as a powerful means of achieving the communicative goal of persuasion in political debates.Traditionally,research in political debates has focused on group identity,represented by collective-we,revealing inclusion and exclusion of group membership.However,as politics becomes more and more concerned with the individual politicians rather than their ideological differences,individual identities merit more attention as a new means of persuasion.Therefore,the present research tries to focus on "I"-utterances(including first person singular pronouns I,my and me)in political discourse,specifically political debates,based on Tracy's(2002)identity categorization and Benoit's(1999)Functional Theory in political campaign discourse,studying the distribution features,discursive practices and motivations behind identity construction to reveal the possible identities constructed by the politicians and their functions in achieving their communicative goals.Major findings are as follows:1)Candidates Obama and Romney display both similarities and differences between their identity construction in "I"-utterances.In terms of similarities,both candidates construct a variety of identities,among which the master identity,personal identity and interactional identity complement each other;both candidates rely on narratives to construct themselves as empathetic politicians with coherent logic to justify their stances to issues of the day;both candidates' identity construction is found to adapt to contextual constraints involving social world and mental world.Power and knowledge enable them to construct themselves as rational politicians with different professional backgrounds,while face wants intend them to construct empathetic personal identities to win the hearts and minds of voters.2)In terms of differences,past deeds prasier and future plan architect rank the first and the second respectively in incumbent Obama's master identity construction,while future plan architect and past deeds attacker rank the first and the second in challenger Romney's case;in constructing interactional identity,Obama emphasizes his professional role of commander-in-chief while Romney brings out his professional role of a businessman;among the discursive practices,Obama uses Operatives to highlight his practical deeds to construct himself as a practical politician.Romney uses Epistemics to emphasize his knowledge of doing business,thus constructing himself as a knowledgeable businessman.The findings enrich Tracy's(2002)identity categorization framework,suggesting how identity is discursively constructed in ongoing interaction,and how identity construction contributes to achieving the communicative goals of persuasion.Thus,this study has both theoretical and practical implications.