4.2.3 Classifying identities constructed in instit...
Identity classification is one of the major tasks for studies on identity and its construction. This section will introduce how identities are classified in the present study. Since the academic interaction in question is fundamentally institutional, the characteristics of institutional interaction have to be considered when making a classification of identity. Drew and Heritage (1992,pp. 3-4) point out that “interaction is institutional insofar as participants’institutional or professional identities are somehow made relevant to the work activities in which they are engaged.” It is obvious that the participants’pre-existing identities are one of the basic characteristics of an institutional interaction. The similar claim is also made by Drew and Sorjonen (1997, p. 94):the institutionality of talk is “constituted by participants through their orientation to relevant institutional roles and identities, and the particular responsibilities and duties associated with those roles.” Moreover, the participants’ discourse production and the ways in which they produce discourse are closely related to their institutional identities. As Drew and Sorjonen (1997, p. 94) point out “ their orientation to and engagement in their institutional roles and identities is manifest in the details of participants’language, and their use of language to pursue institutional goals.”
In addition, Thornborrow (2002, p. 4) works out four basic characteristics of institutional talk:
(1) Talk that has differentiated, pre-inscribed and conventional participant roles, or identities, whether it takes place in a school classroom, in a TV or radio studio or in a police interview room.
(2) Talk in which there is a structurally asymmetrical distribution of turn types between the participants such that speakers with different institutional identities typically occupy different discursive identities; that is, they get different types of turns in which they do different kinds of things (for example, interviewers conventionally ask questions, interviewee answer them; teachers nominate which pupil will talk next, pupils respond).
(3) Talk in which there is also an asymmetrical relationship between participants in terms of speaker rights and obligations.
(4) Talk in which the discursive resources and identities available to participants to accomplish specific actions are either weakened or strengthened in relation to their current institutional identities.
It is clear that in institutional interactions, interlocutors participate in activities with “pre-inscribed” institutional identities. Richards (2006) calls such identities “default identities” as mentioned at the very beginning of this book. According to Richards (2006, p. 60),
A default identity derives entirely from the context in which the talk is produced and applies where there is a generally recognized set of interactional expectations associated with that context, to the extent that there are recognized identities to which participants in talk would be expected to orient, other things being equal (so while the default identities in the classroom might be teacher and student,those in a common room would be colleague and colleague).
However, as observed, participants do not always communicate with each other through their default identities expected in institutional contexts.Rather, they may construct some identities deviating from the identities they are expected to construct. In addition, as discussed previously, an institutional interaction often forms a community of practice (Wenger, 1998), in which participants are expected to speak to each other with certain identities. Thus,identity can be classified into two general categories in terms of whether the identities constructed by participants are expected in certain communities of practice: default identities and deviational identities (or variational identities).
In the institutional interaction in question, the expert identity is the default identity of the committee members, who are convened for the dissertation proposal presentation meetings. This has been evidenced by the utterances of the chairperson to open one such meeting: “哦：：这个XXX呢，(..)她自己的这个选题的意义，包括她：：从这个方法啊，或者是从这个理论视角对她做的这个博士论文期间的这个研究呢，做了一个介绍。下面我们就，(1.0)各位专家呢，根据她这个介绍呢，(1.0)谈一谈，是吧？” (‘Ok. XXX has introduced her doctoral project by presenting the significance of the study, the research methodology adopted, the theoretical perspective taken in the study. Then let’s invite every expert to talk about her doctoral project according to her introduction. Ok?’ ).
This default identity of an expert is also accepted by the committee members in such meetings, as shown by the following example.(4-7) PhD DPPM-5:
1 T5：XXX ((S))
2 S： 嗯=
‘Mm’
→ 3 T5：=我我还是接着X老师((T6))的讲，X老师((T6))讲的这两个方法呢确实就是说非常非常典型的。你要并且把专家的，你要学会把专家的观点你把它揉在一起。刚才X老师((T2))给你也说了，这个X教授((T6))也讲了，(完了以后你可以)把他两个，一个就是刚才X老师((T6))讲的这个基于语料的这种方法，你可以用事件，就是按人工的，Leech 的方法去标注，还有一种是大量的，基于大量的语料库，用50到100万的你广泛的去搜集，不跟事件相关，那个你就分析词频，搭配，就是你感兴趣的一些转述的词，比如说“说”，
report=
‘I’ll continue by following what has been said by teacher X((T6)). The methods mentioned by Teacher X (T6) are very very typical. And you need to put the experts’ (…), you need to learn to put together the views of different experts. Just now Teacher X ((T2)) and Professor X ((T6)) also (gave you some suggestions). Then you can (combine their suggestions). One is the method mentioned by Teacher X ((T6)) just now. And(according to this method), you may do tagging manually based on the events and by adopting the method proposed by Leech. Another method is to use a corpus containing numerous words. You can collect (some materials) and build a corpus of about the amount of words from 50 to 100 million. You can only analyze word frequency, collocation and the words you are interested in instead of analyzing events, for example,“say”, “report”.’
4 S： =嗯=
‘Mm.’
5 T5：=还有according to像这些，你把它挑出来，你做几个典型词=‘and ‘according to’, like these words. You can select them and analyze several typical ones.’
6 S： =嗯=
‘Mm.’
7 T5：=你的博士论文也就 (可以了)。我知道你现在担心的是=‘Then you can finish your doctoral dissertation. I know what your worry is now.’
8 T6：=作为关键词=
‘As key words’
9 T5：=作为关键词去搜索。你语料库自己去建，这个就语料库快得很，大概一个星期就建完了。你就是两条，一个=
‘use them as key words to search. You can build corpus by yourself. It’s very fast to build a corpus. Perhaps one week is enough to finish building the corpus. You just have two aims.One is’
10 S： =嗯。
‘Mm.’
11 T5：就是：这个语料库作为描述的，这个类型的=
‘that is, this corpus can be used to describe. As for the type’
12 S： =嗯。
‘Mm.’
13 T5：你做一个一百篇左右，一百篇，你把它标注一下，汉语英语一百篇。
‘You can tag around one hundred articles. It’s enough. One hundred Chinese and English articles each.’
14 S： 嗯。
‘Mm.’
15 T5：对吧？这些你基本上已经有了。完了以后，你稍微再做一个50万到100万的大型语料库，要不就叫小型的吧。你就分析词频。分析它的主题词、分析它的搭配。你说，如果你要做不了，你就挑几个，比如说according to=
‘Right? You have basically got (the corpus). When you have finished (collecting the articles), you can just build a corpus of 50 million to 100 million words. Or let’s call it a small corpus.You just analyze word frequency, key words, and collocations.If you can’t do all of these, you can just select several key words, for example, according to (…).’
16 S： =嗯=
‘Mm’
17 T5：=挑几个，跟汉语对应的，进行对比不就可以了吗？‘Select some and conduct a comparison with Chinese. That’s(enough).’
18 S： 嗯。
‘Mm.’
→ 19 T5：是吧？你不就把所有的专家的意见都揉进去了。X老师((T2))就是这个意见。我估计你最后还是得妥协，按X老师((T2))的方法做。‘Right? If you do it like this, you can integrate the suggestions offered by the different experts into your dissertation. This is also teacher X’s ((T2)) suggestion. I think you will finally compromise and do as teacher X ((T2)) has said.’
20 T1：呵呵呵呵呵呵呵呵
‘(laughs softly)’
In this excerpt, T3, who is one of the members of the committee,explicitly uses “专家” (‘expert’) to refer to the other members of the committee. For example, in line 3, T3 advises S to combine the suggestions offered by different experts through his utterance, “你要并且把专家的，你要学会把专家的观点你把它揉在一起。” (‘and you need to put the experts’ (…),you need to learn to put together the views of different experts.’). In line 19,T3 summarizes his own suggestions, where other members of the committee are expected as experts, “你不就把所有的专家的意见都揉进去了。” (‘If you do it like this, you can integrate the suggestions offered by the different experts into your dissertation.’).
For further classification of each category, this study mainly refers to the classification of the leader’s personal identities examined by Ho (2010a,2010b), the categories of identity proposed by Tracy (2002) and the related contents in each category of identity, especially interactional identities,personal identities and relational identities, and the relevant contents in the Self-aspect Model of Identity proposed by Simon (2004).
Who we must be / can be / might be in a social and communicative network is always made salient through the making of optimal linguistic choices. Various choices made at the linguistic level (i.e., linguistic forms,discourse content and discourse styles) in the current context are, therefore,the indicators of constructing identities. These indicators, in turn, can be used to identify who one must be / can be / might be in academic advising interaction.