The Construction Of Pragmatic Identity In American And Chinese Commencement Addresses

Commencement marks the academic completion of the graduates.As an important part of the ceremony,commencement addresses delivered by university presidents are regarded as the “last class” for the college students,which are of extraordinary significance for them.During the graduating season in the past years,the presidents' commencement addresses have sometimes aroused heated discussion.Pragmatic identity refers to the practical application and embodiment of a specific social identity in communication.The speaker adjusts his/her pragmatic identity to achieve the communicative goals as pragmatic resources according to the communicative objects and situations.The thesis conducts a research methodology with quantitative and qualitative methods.In data collection,the thesis collects 50 pieces of American and Chinese commencement addresses respectively from 2012 to 2018 and establishes a corpus.With the help of AntConc3.5.8,the collocations and the keyword lists are generated.Under the analytical model of the“linguistic representations of pragmatic identity construction”,this study analyzes the personal pronouns,keywords,terms of addressing the graduates,neologisms and terms about contemporary issues to reveal the pragmatic identity construction in American and Chinese commencement addresses.The study shows that the communicative goals of commencement addresses are to convey hopes and wishes to the graduates and to encourage and educate the graduates.The presidents construct their pragmatic identities dynamically in their addresses to achieve such communicative goals.In American commencement addresses,the presidents construct their pragmatic identities as being formal,objective and problem-oriented with formal personal pronouns,addressing terms,objective views,and terms about contemporary issues confronting the U.S.and the world to stress the individual commitment to the world and the importance of higher-education.In Chinese commencement addresses,the presidents construct their pragmatic identities as being positive,patriotic,friendly and closed with the graduates.They use endearment addressing terms,neologisms and terms about contemporary issues on national policies and affairs to call upon the graduates to fight for the nation.