Identity Construction In Belf Meetings-from The Perspective Of Conversation Analysis

Globalization today encourages people from different language and cultural backgrounds to interact with each other through the use of English.Undeniably,English has now become a major instrument of intercultural communication in a wide spectrum of international domains.With this background,research into Business English as Lingua Franca(hereinafter referred to as BELF)has been seen largely in recent years.Yet though BELF research varies,prior studies have not gone far enough to examine the identity construction in BELF interactions.In the hope of shedding light on this field of further study,this thesis investigates the identity construction in BELF meetings from the perspective of conversation analysis.Within the framework of Have’s(2007)approach to conversation analysis and Tracy & Robles’ s(2013)theory on identity construction,this study is conducted with a view to explore how speakers construct identities in BELF meetings and the possible influencing factors of the identities constructed.More specially,it tries to address the following three research questions:(1)What are the types of identity constructed by the BELF speakers during the BELF meetings?(2)How do BELF speakers construct their identity in BELF meetings?(3)What are the possible factors that influence the construction of identities in BELF meetings?This study adopts both the qualitative and quantitative method to analyze the data collected from four professional business meetings in VOICE corpus.The research findings are as the followings:(1)In BELF meetings,five types of identities are constructed by BELF speakers in total,namely,the national identity,the chair identity,partner identity,cheerleader identity,and expert-novice relational identity.Among them,the national identity is under the category of master identities,while the chair identity belongs to the interactional identities category and the partner identity,cheerleader identity and expert-novice identity belong to the personal identities category.(2)Each identity possesses different features and inclination concerning conversation structure.When speakers perform a national identity,they tend to take a dominant position in interaction by performing more prominently than their interactants in terms of turn number and turn length.When constructing a chair identity,BELF speakers prefer the use of insertion sequence to self-select themselves as the speaker of next turn,so as to have the meeting management in control.When BELF speakers construct the identity of partner,they show preference for initiating interruption and other-initiated other-repair to provide assistance for their co-workers.Meanwhile,those who perform the identity of partner as an effort to promote cooperation prefer the use of self-initiated self-repair.As for the cheerleader identity,their turn shapes are managed in a manner that is preferred by their recipients,which is based on the mutual understanding of current situation from both sides.The expert-novice identity is co-constructed by BELF speakers in seeking explanation for specific questions and self-referring to expertise.The speaker of novice identity tends to initiate self-initiate self-repair,while the speaker of expert identity prefers frequent interruption and a strict control in turns.(3)Identity construction in BELF meetings is mainly influenced by two kinds of factors,i.e.,the rhetorical factors and the cultural factors.Among all the five types of identities that have been studied in this thesis,the construction of chair identity,partner identity,cheerleader identity and expert-novice identity are mainly influenced by the needs of choice-making and agent-planning and speakers’ interest in building positive self-image as well as evidencing their desired identities which may be against their interlocutors’ wants.Meanwhile the construction of national identity is resulted from the needs of promoting intercultural relationship as well as the differences in national cultures.This study examines the applicability of conversation-analytic approach in exploring identity construction,which further extends the research fields and directions of this research topic.Hopefully,it may shed light on future studies of identity construction.