2.3.3 Identity construction and advising
Identity is a very important variable in advice-giving in institutional interactions (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, 1990, 1993, 1996; Heritage & Sefi,1992; Leppänen, 1998; Locher & Hoffmann, 2006; Tracy, 2002; Waring, 2005)and the interlocutors’ identities have a great influence on the linguistic choices they make when giving advice. Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford (1996, p.180) finds that only the advisors use certain patterns to make suggestions,such as “I suggest,” “My suggestion would be,” “I am going to have you take”and “Probably we’ll ask you to take” in academic advising sessions[2].
One of the most important ways that the participants’ identities shape their talk is by showing their knowledge and expertise in their own fields.Heritage and Sefi (1992) find that in interaction between the health visitors and the first-time mothers, the health visitors manage the advice-giving procedures in various ways, positioning themselves as “a knowledgeable and authoritative ‘expert’ vis-à-vis an advice recipient who is relatively ignorant and non-competent” (Heritage & Sefi, 1992, p. 389). They also find that the health visitors tend to deliver their advice explicitly and authoritatively so as to “project their relative expertise on health and baby-management issues as beyond doubt” (ibid., p. 369).
Another important issue in relation to identity construction and advising concerns the strategies for constructing identities in advice-giving in institutional interactions. For example, Harrison and Barlow (2009), after investigating politeness strategies in relation to advice-giving in an online self-management programme for people with arthritis, find that one of the most salient positive politeness strategies used by participants in their advice-giving is the use of short personal narratives which demonstrate shared problems, concerns, and experiences. This technique is successful in enabling advice-givers to avoid being prescriptive while at the same time demonstrating empathy and shared concerns with the recipient, thus leaving the recipient responsible for their own decision about whether to follow the advice. Meanwhile, the advice narratives can also contribute to the identity construction of all the participants, enabling them to reflect on their experiences, formulating these and integrating them into the context of the workshop, thus framing the narrator as an expert patient — an outcome in keeping with the aims of the workshop.
The short personal narratives used to construct narrator’s identity identified in Harrison and Barlow’s (2009) study are mainly pragmatic strategies. With a different focus, He and Keating’s (1991) study of an academic counseling encounter between expert and novice shows how various linguistic devices and discourse strategies, such as polarity, modality,superlatives and reported speech, are used to mark their stances.
Locher and Hoffmann (2006) examine both linguistic devices and pragmatic strategies used for constructing the identity of the fictional expert advice-giver. Based on a data set of 280 question-answer records from an internet advice column, they find that various recurring strategies are used in this special interaction to construct the identity of the fictional expert advice-giver, namely the advisor’s name, self-reference and use of address terms; expert information-giving; giving options and making readers think; the choice of vocabulary; offering opinions; the use of empathy; the display of humour. These strategies display various aspects of the fictional advice-giver’s identity, and together contribute to the construction of an expert advice-giver’s identity. In addition, Eisenchlas (2012) finds that strategies used to offer advice on-line are to some extent related to the advice-givers’ gender identity.
The interlocutors’ identities are closely related to speech acts. This is also evidenced by the design of some researches in interlanguage and cross-cultural pragmatics. For example, Martínez-Flor and Fukuya (2005) put twelve head acts of advising into two categories in terms of the interlocutors’relative status. The linguistic structures used for advising between interlocutors of equal status include: “Why don’t you…?;” “Have you tried…?;”“You can just…;” “You might want to…;” “Perhaps you should…;” and “I think you need…” The linguistic structures used for advice-giving by an interlocutor with higher academic status are: “I would probably suggest that…;”“Personally, I would recommend that…;” “Maybe you could…;” “It would be helpful if you…;” “I think it might be better to…;” and “I’m not sure, but I think a good idea would be…” (Martínez-Flor & Fukuya, 2005, p. 466). In Matsumura’s (2001) study, various social statuses (i.e., higher status, status equal and lower status) are explicitly involved in different items of the questionnaire.
It is clear that the interlocutors’ identities are often treated as a pre-existing variable to interpret their advice-giving. However, the fact that interlocutors construct identities in their advice-giving has, as yet, received little attention.