7.1.1 Communicative needs in academic advising int...
Verbal communication is driven by the goal of satisfying communicative needs (Chen, 2004b; He et al., 2007; Verschueren, 1999). Identity construction as a kind of language use is also driven by satisfying communicative needs, as discussed in Section 3.2. The aim of satisfying communicative needs in academic advising interaction motivates advice-givers to construct various identities through making linguistic choices and to make identity modification and identity shift in the current communicative context.
Chen (2004b) points out that communicative needs can be analyzed in terms of the distinction between essential needs and contextual needs, which coexist in every act of communication. In verbal communication, at least two kinds of essential needs for life and survival need to be satisfied: one is the essential need of gain and the other is the essential need of face. However,both of these are hidden in the background and the essential needs “depend for their satisfaction on that of the contextual needs” (Chen, 2004b, p. 37).The contextual needs lead to the occurrence of specific communication and they can be divided into three categories: informational, interpersonal and behavioral. Informational needs occur when an interlocutor wants to gain or share some knowledge of something; interpersonal needs arise when interlocutors desire to modify or strengthen affective mutuality; and behavioral needs arise when “an interlocutor intends to perform something(like refusing and disagreeing) or have something performed (like requesting and advising)” (ibid., 38). Chen (ibid., 39) further argues that “all communicative acts are explicitly or implicitly employed to approach the satisfaction of the contextual needs for the sake of the essential needs of gain or face or both.”
It seems that the three categories of contextual needs are at the same level in Chen’s (2004b) study on interactional overinformativeness. However,as far as academic advising interaction is concerned, behavioral need is related to the performance of advising acts, in which participants can ask for information or share information, while interpersonal needs are related to some factors which can build rapport and thus promote the performance of advising acts. Therefore, interpersonal and behavioral needs may not be at the same level in the academic advising interaction in question.
Based on Chen’s (2004b) discussion on communicative needs, this study attempts to divide communicative needs into two categories: the primary communicative need and the secondary communicative need(s); and both are contextual. Generally, the primary communicative need is the final one and the secondary communicative need(s) is/are the temporary one(s) in a verbal interaction. The secondary communicative need(s) can help to promote the satisfaction of the primary communicative need and in some occasions, the primary communicative need and the secondary communicative need are the same one.
Yuan (2011a) also discusses communicative needs in his study on consultants’ identity construction in medical phone-in programme interaction.He claims that the final communicative need is satisfied by the sequential satisfaction of temporary communicative needs in a verbal interaction[1].However, the present study argues that different temporary communicative needs are not necessarily sequential and they can also be parallel in achieving the final one.
In academic advising interaction in question, advice-givers are expected to offer some suggestions to PhD students. Once advice-givers make some suggestions, they will hope that their suggestions can benefit PhD students’further work on the doctoral projects and they will also hope that their suggestions can finally be accepted by PhD students. Vehviläinen (2001, p. 373)points out that advice “is given with the expectation that the recipient will treat it as relevant, helpful, or newsworthy and accept it.” To achieve this goal, advice-givers may strategically perform their advising acts and their identity construction is one of the strategies. However, in the process of performing advising acts, some other factors have to be taken into consideration, for example, to save the advice-receiver’s negative face because advising is a face threatening act. In this respect, identity construction in advising interaction is closely related to the communication of interpersonal meaning in discourse (Li, 2005).
Thus, in academic advising interaction, two types of communicative needs need to be satisfied: one is the primary communicative need of (or the communicative goal of) effectively performing advising acts and the other is the secondary communicative need, which is mainly interpersonal and relates to building rapport. The interpersonal need (or the secondary communicative need) in advising is closely related to its face threatening nature, so face want is actually the secondary communicative need, which can be further divided into advice-giver’s positive face want and advice-receiver’s positive and negative face wants. To meet these types of face wants is to satisfy interpersonal needs in academic advising interaction.
To effectively perform advising acts, there are generally two ways: one is to reinforce the illocutionary force of advising, which directly relates to the primary communicative need; the other is to mitigate of the imposition of advising, which straightforwardly relates to the secondary communicative need or interpersonal need. To satisfy interpersonal needs may, to some extent, weaken the illocutionary force of an advising act, but this may finally enhance the performance of the advising act, because satisfying interpersonal needs may decrease the imposition of advising. In other words, to satisfy interpersonal needs can finally help to satisfy the communicative goal of effectively performing advising acts. Figure 7.1 presents the communicative needs in academic advising interaction.
Figure 7.1 Communicative needs in academic advising interaction
The communicative needs to be satisfied in academic advising interaction have been worked out here. The next section will present how various identities are constructed to satisfy these communicative needs.