A Study On The Use Of Interactional Metadiscourse And Pragmatic Identity Construction In TED Speeches From The Perspective Of Adaption Theory

In recent years,the study on identity construction has attracted the attention of many scholars.Although there have been many researches on identity construction,there are rare studies on the use of interactional metadiscourse and pragmatic identity construction before.Interactional metadiscourse,which is an important part of metadiscourse,is an important language resource for expressing the speaker’s standpoint and communicating with the audience,which plays an important role in constructing the speaker’s pragmatic identity.TED refers to technology,entertainment and design(hereinafter referred to as TED).In TED talks,speakers are often some experts in certain fields.As a way to achieve the interaction between the speaker and the audience,the research on TED speeches has certain theoretical and practical significance.In addition,there are few studies on identity construction in speech discourse from the perspective of adaptation theory.Therefore,this thesis takes Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory as theoretical foundation and combines Hyland’s interactional metadiscourse model,taking 20 most popular TED speeches as the research materials.With quantitative and qualitative analysis methods,this thesis aims to find out what kind of interactional metadiscourses the speaker chooses in his or her speech and how to use interactional metadiscourses to construct different pragmatic identities in TED speeches.With different pragmatic identities,speakers can realize their communicative goals.This research mainly answers three questions:(1)In TED speech,what kind of interactional metadiscourse do speakers use ?(2)In TED speech,what pragmatic identities do speakers construct with different interactional metadiscourses ?(3)In TED speech,based on the adaptation theory,how do the pragmatic identities constructed by speakers adapt to the physical world,social world and mental world?The results of the study are as follows: first,in TED speeches,all five interactional metadiscourses have been used,but their frequency distributions are different.Among them,engagement markers are used most frequently,self-mentions are the second,boosters are the third,followed by hedges,and attitude markers are the least frequently used.Second,the speaker constructs different pragmatic identities through different interactional metadiscourses to achieve their communicative goals.In TED speeches,the speakers constructed authoritative expert,amiable expert and reliable expert.These different types of identity constructions are variable.Firstly,authoritative expert identity is constructed through boosters and engagement markers;amiable expert identity is constructed through engagement markers,hedges and attitude markers;reliable expert identity is constructed by self-mentions and hedges.In addition,in order to achieve successful communication,speakers need to adapt to various contextual factors in current communication,including time,space and participant factors in the physical world,power relations and social distance in the social world,emotional and face factors in the mental world,etc.The pragmatic identity constructed in TED speech is the result of communication that adapts to various contextual factors.Moreover,the construction of the same identity can be the result of adapting to multiple contextual factors.In a TED speech,the speaker constructs a pragmatic identity through the appropriate use of interactional metadiscourse,which can maintain the relationship between the speaker and the audience,and achieve communicative purpose.This article combines interactional metadiscourse to provide a new perspective for the study of pragmatic identity construction.It can provide people with enlightenment on how to successfully achieve the communicative purpose of constructing an appropriate pragmatic identity through interactional metadiscourse.