A Pragmatic Account on the Construction of Coaches' Identities in “The Voice of China”

This paper describes the personal identities the coaches construct strategically as well as their social pragmatic motivations within the framework of identity construction theory and the seff-aspect model of identity.The data is collected from the coaches' interaction with the artists in The Voice of China.It is found that on the stage of this program, the identities the coaches construct, by means of different speech acts and pragmatic strategies, include a professional coach, an amiable coach, a modest coach and a humorous coach.The construction of identities is pragmatic resources available for the coaches to meet their communicative needs.It is argued in the paper that the identities of professional and humorous coaches protect the coaches' own faces while the identities of amiable and modest coaches save the artists' faces.In conclusion, the four types of personal identities build up the coaches' desirable self-images and contribute to the transmit of positive energy.