A Pragmatic Study Of Other-professional Identity Reconstruction In Public Places

As a pragmatic phenomenon interpersonal respect is widely observed,but no special research has been found.As respect is closely related to identity,it can offer some insights into research on interpersonal respect from the perspective of identity construction.In view of this,this study attempts to analyze other-professional identity reconstruction in public places in terms of interpersonal respect.With the 24 extracts collected from a television program “What would you do?”,the present study aims to examine how bystanders react to wrongdoers' disrespectful behaviors for reconstructing victims' professional identity(including professional role and professional competence).Drawn from interveners' metapragmatic comments concerning respect in the data,interpersonal respect in this study is defined as a moral order involving the valuing of others' professional identity.Two core values of norms of respect have been concluded,that is,equality and tolerance.In other words,the moral order of respect should be observed by acting according to the expectations of equality and tolerance.Equality refers to treating each other as equals regardless of his or her professional role.Tolerance means accepting others' present failed performance and expecting a change and development in their professional competence.Therefore,this article,within the theoretical framework of norms of respect and Identity Construction Model(Bucholtz and Hall 2005),devotes itself to answering the following three research questions:(1)How do wrongdoers disrespect victims' professional identity?(2)How do interveners react to those wrongdoing behaviors for reconstructing victims' professional identity?(3)Why do interveners react to those wrongdoing behaviors?After answering these three research questions,this study has drawn the following conclusions.Firstly,based on the relation of distinction and the relation of denaturalization(Bucholtz and Hall 2005),two types of disrespectful behaviors towards victims' professional identity in public places are found: deconstructingvictims' professional identity as outsiders with lower social status,and constructing victims' professional identity as incompetents.On the one hand,to construct victims as outsiders with lower social status,some wrongdoers often overtly mention inferior identity or project an unequal social hierarchy,creating a relation of distinction in social status between victims and themselves.On the other hand,as for the construction of victims as incompetents,some wrongdoers underestimate victims' professional knowledge or exaggerate victims' mistakes.So victims' “genuine”identity as novices or as mistake makers are deconstructed as incompetents based on wrongdoers' stereotypical perceptions of their professional identity.In these cases,wrongdoers fail to treat victims as equals in terms of their professional role and show no tolerance for victims' present failed professional performance.Since these wrongdoing behaviors happen in public places,they are accessed as disrespectful to victims' professional identity which can be evidenced from interveners' metapragmatic expressions involving respect.Secondly,this study summarizes two types of victims' professional identity reconstruction that interveners use to react to the disrespectful behaviors: reconstructing victims' professional identity as insiders with equal social status and as competents.As a response to wrongdoers' outsider identity construction,interveners attempt to use the tactic of adequation(Bucholtz and Hall 2005),positioning victims' professional identity as sufficiently equal to that of wrongdoers in social status and thus reconstructing victims as insiders with equal social status.Here,two identity reconstruction strategies are adopted: negating wrongdoers' assumed superior identity or aligning with victims.When seeing wrongdoers construct victims as incompetents,interveners tend to reconstruct victims as competents by stating the constraints on victims' professional performance or minimizing victims' mistakes.This reveals interveners' use of tactic of authentication(Bucholtz and Hall 2005),which provides evidence for victims' present qualified performance,authenticates their professional identity as novices or as mistake makers and then further reconstructs them as competents.Thirdly,based on the analytical framework of this study and interveners' responses,it is found that interveners' reaction to wrongdoing behaviors is highly motivated by what they regard as moral inpublic places,i.e.norms of respect(involving two core values of equality and tolerance).As wrongdoers' construction of victims as outsiders with lower social status infringes the expectations of equality in public places,interveners orient to equality and reconstruct victims as insiders with equal social status.Similarly,seeing the incompetent identity construction by wrongdoers transgress what is expected by tolerance in public places,interveners reconstruct victims as competents in terms of tolerance.That is to say,driven by equality-oriented and tolerance-oriented communicative needs,bystanders step in to reconstruct victims' professional identity,thus restoring the moral order of respect in public places.The current research has made some contributions.Firstly,it starts from the perspective of other-professional identity reconstruction,manifesting how identity is used as a resource in social interactions.It also reveals how Bucholtz and Hall's(2005)tactics of intersubjectivity are carried out in the context of respect,and the feasibility of the theory is affirmed.Secondly,through the analysis of interveners' metapragmatic expressions concerning respect,this study offers a conceptualization of respect in pragmatics.Other than the previous pragmatics research on respect by framing it as primarily an issue of(im)politeness,the notion of respect has been explored in the present study as a moral order in public places.It concerns less on issues of rank or hierarchy but consists of two core values,i.e.equality and tolerance in public places.Thirdly,since disrespect for service staff's professional identity is very common in daily life,this research on bystander intervention via other-professional identity reconstruction can provide some guidance for us to avoid disrespectful behaviors and consider intervention strategies in the context of disrespect.