5.1.4 The identity of an amiable expert and lingui...
Another accomplishment in mitigating the expert identity is the construction of the identity of an amiable expert, which is achieved by making salient the friendly and amiable aspect of an expert. The use of tag questions is the main choices made to construct such an identity.
Question tags in discourse have been widely discussed in literature and they have been found to serve a variety of pragmatic functions. One of them is related to the interlocutors’ identities in verbal communication (Cheng &Warren, 2001; Holmes, 1990; Kimps, 2007; Lakoff, 1973; Mao, 2009; Moore &Podesva, 2009). For example, Moore and Podesva (2009) find that four different social groups in their study demonstrate great differences in their stylistic composition of tags, which finally represented their group identities.Tag questions can be used to establish common ground between interlocutors(Kimps, 2007) and to establish solidarity between interlocutors, thus making salient the amiable aspect of an expert. For example,(5-8) PhD DPPM-5:
1 T3：那我接着说。
‘Then I will continue.’
2 T5：插队了，我到你前面了。
‘I jumped in line and spoke before you.’
3 T3：哦哦，没有。
‘Oh, No.’
4 T3：因为讲到语料库，那你是这个专家呵。哎，确实这个刚才X老师((T5))、X老师((T4))都讲了，因为X老师((T2))现在做的国家项目，是吧？
‘Because as for the corpus, you are the expert. Actually Teacher X ((T5)) and Teacher X ((T4)) mentioned that just now.Teacher X ((T2)) is now working on a national project, right?’
5 S： 嗯嗯。
‘Mm Mm.’
→ 6 T3：做这个转述、新闻标题，所以这两个你肯定要做下去，对不对？比较要做下去，然后呢就是，你怎么样跟X老师((T2))有所：：突破，是吧？那语料库，所以这几个关键词实际上都已经是：：：哦确定的东西。
‘(The project is about) reporting and newspaper titles, so your study must be (carried out concerning these two topics). Right?Comparison also needs to be considered. Then what you need to do is to think about how you can make some development on the basis of Teacher X’s ((T2)) study, right? And then(introducing) corpus is such a development. So actually these key words have already been determined in your study.’
7 S： 嗯。
‘Mm.’
→ 8 T3：除非你不用语料库，我搞多模态还是搞什么哦其他东西。那你也有一种创新，是吧？但没有创新：：，因为你是要拿博士学位，是吧？所以还是要：：坚持，哎坚持。至于语料库，多大规模为最好，是吧？我觉得确实这个语料库你很难说。人家几百万字，上千万字都是有可能的，但是呢就是说，语料库的大小还要跟你的研究目的要，要挂钩，是吧？取决于你的，我为什么要搞语料库呢，对不对？一个重要的原因就是，我的分析不能是基于一些零散的材料。如果我通过构建了这个语料库的给定的规模，能够让你检索到足够多的一个分析的，比如说，转述动词，词汇啊，转述的这个来源啊。就是，你如果有足够的，(有200个) case，是吧？那你做统计你就没问题。就是说，做语料库说到底一个很重要的就是，你要为你的定量统计能能够开展服务的，是吧？
‘Unless you don’t use corpus, but use multimodal or other methods. Then it is also a kind of innovation, right? But if you have no innovation::, because you’re going to obtain the doctoral degree, right? So you should insist on using corpus.But as for the scale of the corpus, I think it’s hard to decide. It is possible that one corpus may have several millions or tens of millions of words, but the size of the corpus should be linked with your aims of the study. Right? The size of the corpus should be decided by the reason why you choose corpus as your method, right? One important reason is that my analysis can’t be based on the scattered materials. If I construct a certain size of corpus and if I can find enough cases to conduct my analysis, for example, reporting verbs, words and the resources of the reporting and so on, and say, if you have enough cases (have about 200), then your statistics won’t be a problem any more. That is to say, one of the most important reasons for using corpus is that your corpus serves to conduct your quantitative statistics, right?’
9 S： 嗯。
‘Mm.’
……
In this example, T3 first constructs himself an identity of an expert in line 1 by “那我接着说” (‘Then I will continue.’) and he gives his advice in lines 6 and 8 in detail. In the process of giving advice, T3 repeatedly uses two question tags, “是吧?” (‘right?’) and “对不对?” (‘right?’), which help to establish common ground between interlocutors, thus making salient the solidarity between them. In this way, T3 constructing himself an expert identity of being amiable, which in turn decreases the illocutionary force of advising.
Leech (2005, p. 20) points out, “giving advice means offering the benefit of your opinion to other, but it can also imply that you value your own opinion above that of other.” To decrease the imposition on advice-receivers and the asymmetry between two parties, advising is “commonly introduced with markers of unreality, conditionality, tentativeness” (ibid.). In terms of identity construction, constructing the identity of an amiable expert is a strategy of this kind.
As shown by the above examples, different aspects of an expert can be made salient in academic advising interaction. However, these different aspects are not always clear-cut, especially the demarcation between the identity of an authoritative expert and the identity of a knowledgeable expert,and the difference between the identity of an modest expert and the identity of an amiable expert.