Self-professional identity construction through other-identity deconstruction in Chinese televised debating discourse

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ScienceDirect Journal of Pragmatics 94 (2016) 47--63 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

Self-professional identity construction through other-identity deconstruction in Chinese televised debating discourse Cheng-Tuan Li a,*, Yong-Ping Ran b b

a School of English and Education, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou 510420, P.R. China Centre for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou 510420, P.R. China

Received 23 February 2015; received in revised form 16 November 2015; accepted 5 January 2016

Abstract This article is intended to capture self-professional identity construction via other-identity deconstruction in Chinese televised debating discourses. We argue that professional identity construction is the dynamic and interrelational act of enacting, presenting, negotiating, challenging or verifying one’s own and others’ attributes of professional role, competence and ethics in a specific sociocultural discourse context. In terms of professional knowledge, speakers in televised debates deconstruct their interlocutors’ professional identity as nonexpert to construct their own expert identity. In terms of professional role, speakers deconstruct their interlocutors’ identity as outsiders stereotyped with negative attributes to construct their own insider identity. In terms of professional ethics, speakers construct an authentic professional identity for themselves by deconstructing their interlocutors’ identity into artificial identities, namely crafted identity, problematic identity and fragmented identity. These kinds of ‘self-through-other’ identity constructions bring to light the interrelationality of self-identity construction and other-identity deconstruction. We have developed Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) principles of identity construction: (1) interactants’ multiple self-attributes are not preexisting but emergent in the ongoing debating interactions, and interactants make salient/latent self- and otherattributes to construct different identities at different points of the same interaction; (2) identity construction is not only a relational but also an interrelational phenomenon, and should be addressed by an interrelational approach that captures ways of constructing self-through-other identity and other-through-self identity. Our analyses have also developed Van Dijk’s (2000) principles of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation: Interactants highlight negative other-identity attributes not simply as a goal in and of itself, but as a self-throughother means of optimizing positive self-identity construction. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Self-through-other identity construction; Self-expert via other-nonexpert identity; Self-insider via other-outsider identity; Selfauthentic via other-artificial identity; Interrelationality

1. Introduction In daily communication, interlocutors not only convey information but also construct a self-identity or image (Goffman, 1967). We argue that speakers can construct and deconstruct, project and hide, and affirm and negate self- and otheridentity in interaction for a wide range of extralinguistic purposes. Our study attempts to categorize the types of selfprofessional identity construction through other-identity deconstruction in Chinese televised debating discourses. The pragmatic study of professional identity construction has been enlightened by studies taking a psychological approach (Schein, 1978; Tajfel, 1981; Tajfel and Turner, 1986; Boswood, 1999; Ibarra, 1999) and a discourse analysis

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 13560369182/2036317482. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (C.-T. Li), [email protected] (Y.-P. Ran). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2016.01.001 0378-2166/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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approach (Davies and Harré, 1990; Antaki and Widdicombe, 1998; van Dijk, 2000; Bamberg, 2004; Georgakopoulou, 2007). The many definitions of professional identity found in psychological studies can inform pragmatic studies. For instance, Ibarra (1999) defines professional identity as one’s professional self-concept based on attributes, beliefs, values, motives and experiences. Boswood (1999:115) argues that a professional communicates in accordance with ‘a standard of excellency that is exemplary within a field’. Such professional excellency involves three elements: (1) specific knowledge that is pertinent to a given profession, (2) the necessary skills and (3) the responsible use of such knowledge and skills (professional ethics). These conceptualizations help us draw out the main attributes of professional identity from a pragmatic perspective. Following Spencer-Oatey (2007), the term ‘identity’ in our study is defined as a person’s self-image, consisting of multiple self-attributes, including negatively, neutrally and positively evaluated characteristics. In this vein, professional identity is taken as one’s professional image, consisting of such attributes as professional role, professional competence and professional ethics. Our study will focus on how selfprofessional identity is dynamically constructed by deconstructing other-identity in televised debating discourse. To that end, we will address identity construction taking a socioconstructivist approach (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005; De Fina et al., 2006; Spencer-Oatey, 2007), which argues that identity is locally and culturally situated and interpreted (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005; De Fina et al., 2006), relationally produced and interactionally emergent (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005; Locher et al., 2015). Based on Simon’s (2004) definition of identity as one’s self-concept about multiple attributes or characteristics, Spencer-Oatey (2007) emphasizes that all self-aspects or attributes, no matter whether they are construed in terms of individual, relational or collective identities, are both cognitive and social in nature. On the one hand, people form cognitive representations of which they are that are relatively stable and enduring. On the other hand, they also construct and negotiate their identities through social interaction. They not only enact elements of their personal, relational and collective selves through the process of social interaction, but they also negotiate and construct them, with the result that identities develop and emerge through interaction. We take this view as it relates to professional identity, arguing that people not only display various aspects of their professional identity but also construct and negotiate them in different social interactions. Even within the same interaction, interactants present or enact at different points particular elements of their professional identities---organizational affiliation, professional status and authority, among others (see Holmes and Marra, 2005). In our study, we will focus on how self-professional identity is relationally and dynamically constructed via deconstructing other-identity in televised debates in terms of enacting and negotiating such aspects as professional role, competence and ethics. We argue that professional role refers to one’s social category or status in work settings and can be considered one dynamic aspect of professional identity. Professional identity can be constructed through role performance or enactment in a particular social interaction (see Sarangi, 2010; Halvorsen and Sarangi, 2015). For instance, a professor has a professional role as either a supervisor of students or an assessor of their dissertations, or a collaborative researcher, or a peer reviewer in different settings; professors can enact or perform different roles or role-sets, leading to different outcomes of their professional identity construction. In televised debating discourse, participants often enact, negotiate or verify the components or aspects of their professional identity and thus (de)construct their professional identity. In our study, to be more specific, constructing self-identity refers to building and enhancing one’s own identity while deconstructing other-identity refers to negating and demeaning other-identity via positioning the other as having an identity not consistent with the professional/expert identity the other has claimed in terms of professional role, competence and ethics. Discourse analysis studies have contributed to our understanding of professional identity construction in various discourses (Holmes, 2006; Iyer, 2009; Baxter and Wallace, 2009; Iyer, 2009; Sznycer, 2010), especially in TV debates and discussion programs. For instance, Kotthoff (1993) demonstrates the preference structures of disagreement and concession in disputes, providing us with insights into the way disputes and debates work interactionally. This leads us to consider how people negotiate their positions and identities in debates and how this changes the local context of the interaction. Regarding discourse analysis as it is applied to understanding professional identity construction, a dimension of central interest is the discursive representation of ‘us’ (in-groups) and ‘them’ (out-groups), which may be accomplished by using an underlying strategy of ‘positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation’ (van Dijk, 2000:44): -- Say positive things about Us -- Say negative things about Them This strategy not only represents a very general characteristic of group conflict and the ways we interact with opposed groups, but also characterizes the way we talk about ourselves and others (van Dijk, 2000:44). This strategy captures the general trend of constructing self-identity but does not further present the relationship between self-identity construction (by saying positive things about ‘Us’) and other-identity deconstruction (by saying negative things about ‘Them’) in interactions. In our study, we will focus on how speakers build up their own positive professional image via challenging the professional competence or diminishing the credibility of their opponents in the debating discourse.

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The aforementioned work within psychological studies and discourse analysis has foregrounded the major strategies for constructing self-professional identity, which inform research in pragmatics concerning professional identity attributes such as knowledge, role and ethics. However, these approaches, including pragmatic studies, have not thoroughly examined the interconnection between self-professional identity construction and other-identity deconstruction. For instance, in terms of professional knowledge, van de Mieroop (2007) discusses how speakers demonstrate expertise knowledge to construct a professional identity as experts during television debate, but she does not examine the process of self-professional identity construction via other-identity deconstruction in such debating discourse. Similarly, Patrona (2006) examines how experts in TV discussion programs systematically mitigate the acts of floor-bidding and floor maintenance and adapt them to the demands of the speech event and the goals of communication. In terms of professional role, she points out that different social and cultural roles (scientists, politicians, organizational spokespersons, artists, religious representatives, etc.) are acknowledged as experts, in the sense of being knowledgeable contributors to discussion, and are called to interact and negotiate meanings with the institutional manager of the encounter (the moderator or the host) and laypersons. Her major finding is that the purpose of experts’ mitigating the acts of claiming or sustaining the floor is to appeal to the larger viewer audience and achieve favorable public exposure more generally. It still holds true in Chinese televised debating discourse that the experts or invited guests with different social roles argue against each other not merely for the debate itself but also to enhance their professional image as experts in a certain field. But how experts or invited guests achieve positive self-presentation via negative otherpresentation needs further investigation. By the same token, van Rees (2007) points out that people argue heatedly in TV debates not only to increase the entertainment value of the show but also to detract from their opponents’ image and enhance their own image. But how people achieve this goal in televised debates remains unclear. With regard to professional ethics, only a handful of studies have investigated it in a way that reflects the authenticity and reliability of professional identity. For instance, Luginbühl (2007) examines verbal attacks in a confrontational political TV debate, including allegations of the opponent being insincere. It is clear that more research is needed on the role that professional ethics plays in deconstructing other-identity as unreliable or problematic in televised debating interactions. To sum up, although different approaches have examined how interactants enact and negotiate one or two aspects or elements of professional identity, there is not much literature on the construction of professional identity via the display or projection of three main elements (i.e. professional role, professional competence and professional ethics). There is much less literature on constructing self-professional identity by implicit negation or deconstruction of other-identity in televised debating interactions. In addition, though there is a Western-heavy body of work on identity (de)construction, nonWestern cultural contexts need more investigation. Through exploring self-professional identity construction via implicit negation or deconstruction of other-identity in Chinese televised debating discourse, our study seeks to present a significant addition. Implicit negation here refers to the pragmatic strategy by which speakers negate or deconstruct their interlocutor’s identity indirectly rather than directly. We attempt to probe into the interrelation between self-professional identity construction and other-identity deconstruction by addressing the following questions: (1) How do participants relationally construct their self-professional identity via implicitly deconstructing others’ professional role, competence and ethics in Chinese televised debates? (2) What types of self-professional identity are relationally constructed in enacting, negotiating, challenging or verifying the participants’ professional role, competence and ethics in Chinese televised debates? All in all, we will focus on what kinds of self-through-other identity constructions are performed when speakers implicitly deconstruct their interlocutors’ identity elements of professional competence, role and ethics to construct their own professional identity. 2. Methodology The data sets were collected from two Chinese televised debating programs: Tiger Talk and 22 Centigrade Survey. They were obtained from 120 debates downloaded from the Internet at http://video.baidu.com from the year 2008 to 2012. These programs were selected because they are representative of the Chinese ‘‘confrontainment’’ talk show genre. Topics of these programs are mostly about current affairs in Chinese society, including some heatedly discussed issues that are related to recent economic and political policies and to social events. Example issues covered include the contaminated medicine capsules, the government policy against skyrocketing house prices, and the like. Topics related to these issues are likely to generate differing or antagonistic opinions in the debate. The participants include the invited guests, the studio audience and the host. The guests in the debating program are experts in certain fields related to the topic. They are introduced by the host at the beginning of the program and expected by the audience members to provide some insights into the issue. They are divided into two groups, standing along two opposite sides of the platform. Although

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their relationship is initially adversarial, they are allowed to change their prior stances and physical locations in the debating process. The task of the guests is to carry out the debate by arguing against each other and providing some insights into the issue under discussion. In other words, the genre requires them to educate the public with both entertainment and confrontainment. All audience members are free to support either group. With relatively equal rights to speak, they are encouraged to express their own stance on the topic. The tenet of the program is ‘telling it like it is’. In addition, the rights and obligations of the participants in these television debates are subconsciously regulated; the invited guests especially are obligated to demonstrate their expertise in a certain field related to the topic. The audience members expect to obtain related specialized knowledge by watching this kind of program, and, in turn, the invited guests can become increasingly popular and famous if they meet this expectation. Therefore, the interplay of conflicting opinions and various expectations in the debating process prompts the participants to indirectly negate their interlocutors’ stance and identity for the purpose of constructing their own professional identity. The conversations were closely examined for instances of self-professional identity construction via other-identity deconstruction. The isolated cases and relevant parts of the debating conversation in which these instances occurred were transcribed according to Du Bois et al.’s (1993) transcription conventions (see Table A1 in Appendix 1). With this system, it is easy to represent interactants’ accents and lengthening, laughter and tempo, which are important signals or markers of implicit deconstruction of other-identity and its effects on self-professional identity construction. In sum, 150 episodes were chosen for further analysis. In the data analysis, we will present each excerpt in the following format: First, the situational context is provided, including the topic and the participants’ institutional and professional roles; second, the excerpt is provided both in Chinese and in an English translation, with implicit negation or deconstruction of other-identity being underlined; third, the source of the excerpt is provided. To capture the dynamic process of constructing a self-professional identity via implicit deconstruction of other-identity in televised debates, our study follows the principles of Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) Model of Identity Construction, as these principles are considered as the best current guideline for the study of identity construction (Locher, 2008). The relationality principle, which is at the heart of their model, is formulated as follows: Identities are intersubjectively constructed through several often-overlapping complementary relations: similarity/difference, genuineness/artifice and authority/delegitimacy. On the basis of this principle and close scrutiny of the data in our study, self-professional identity constructed via implicitly deconstructing other-identity in televised debates can be categorized into three dyads: (1) expert vs. nonexpert identity, (2) insider vs. outsider identity, and (3) authentic vs. artificial identity. Specifically, we propose that interactants in televised debates often project, present, negotiate and verify their own and others’ professional identity elements (such as professional role, competence and ethics) and hence construct several pairs or dyads of professional identity in these ways: When they project professional expertise or competence, they construct self-expert identity via other-nonexpert identity; when they highlight professional role, they build up self-insider identity via other-outsider identity; and when they focus on professional ethics, they construct self-authentic identity via other-artificial identity. In addition, we give a statistical account of these ‘self-through-other’ identity constructions, with self-expert via othernonexpert representing 53.3% (78/150) of instances, self-insider via other-outsider 25.3% (38/150) and self-authentic via other-artificial identity 21.4% (34/150). These statistics can help us understand the frequency and typicality of three dyads of self-professional identity construction and other-identity deconstruction in Chinese televised debating discourse. In the next section, we will illustrate the three dyads of self-professional identity construction via implicit other-identity deconstruction, i.e. self-through-other identity constructions, with detailed analysis of the authentic data in televised debating discourse.

3. Expert vs. nonexpert identity construction In televised debating programs, speakers often manipulate various linguistic strategies to construct an expert identity for themselves and a nonexpert identity for their opponents. We will make use of the indexicality principle proposed by Bucholtz and Hall to analyze this dyad of identity construction in televised debates. Bucholtz and Hall (2005) set forth the indexicality principle: Identity relations emerge in interaction through several related indexical processes, including (a) overt mention of identity categories and labels, (b) implicatures and presuppositions regarding one’s own or others’ identity positions, (c) displayed evaluative and epistemic orientations to ongoing talk, as well as interactional footings and participant roles, and (d) the use of linguistic structures and systems that are ideologically associated with specific personas and groups. Based on the indexicality principle and the scrutiny of the data, we find that speakers construct their expert identity via implicitly deconstructing other-identity in the following ways: (1) explicit or overt mention of identity categories and labels and (2) projecting self-professional competence through implicit characterization cues, such as indicating interactional stances or roles related to professional competence.

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3.1. Overt mention of identity categories and labels According to the indexicality principle (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005), the most obvious and direct way that identities can be constituted through talk is the overt introduction of referential identity categories into discourse. Speakers can construct an expert identity for themselves by using category entitlement, which Potter defines thus: ‘In practice, category entitlement obviates the need to ask how the person knows, instead, simply being a member of some category---doctor, hockey player, hospital worker---is treated as sufficient to account for, and warrant, their knowledge of a specific domain’ (1996:89). In Extract 1, the situational context (the topic) is whether animal abusers should be prosecuted and imprisoned; G1 is against it while G2 supports it. They are talking about whether the law protects all animals, for instance, whether bugs should be included. Extract 1. (G1: 某教授, G2: 某法律研究员, A: 观众, H: 主持人) 01A: 很荒唐, 平等, 为什么不敢来这里, 这光明正大的地方, 你的概念就混淆。 02G1: 你对动物保护法还没有了解, 它包括所有的动物, 小白鼠保护吧? 03G2: 我来插一句, 其实韋教授(G1)你的理解是非常正确的, 就是其实也是包括臭虫的, 但是还有一点呢, 就是我们这个立 法模式啊, 采用的跟其他国家时是差不多的, 先提一个普遍要求, 我们要打臭虫但是一点不能让臭虫, 就是我们要打它不能 使它不应该受到不必要的伤害。 04G1: 要人道地打, 要一下把它打死不能把它打得半死, (H:@@) 05G2: 另外呢, 我是一个比较平和的人, 比较务实的人, 我跟刘仰先生(某学者, 与G1同一阵营)解释一下, 解释一下, 我所在 的单位是中国社科院法学研究所, 我所在的研究室是社会法研究室, 我是社会法研究室的主任, 我们研究室呢是关心社会 问题的, 有医疗、医疗法、教育法、劳工法、社会保障法、环保法, 另外就是我新开辟的这个方向, 我们不只是关心动物, 我们更重要的我们现在还是关心人, 比如说社会保险法我们参加了, 劳动合同法我们参加了, 我们是为了促进这个社会的 平衡发展, ((省略)) 06H: 对, 这是关键点所在。 07G2: 我们保护它是一种预防措施, 就是预防这种疾病可能发生, 预防的代价远远要比最后去事后去灭火性捕杀, 远远代 价要低得多, ((省略)) 。 (选自‘‘一虎一席谈: 虐待动物该不该定罪’’) Extract 1. (G1: a professor, G2: a researcher of law, A: an audience member, H: host) 01A: It is ridiculous. Why not dare to come here, to this place of fair play? Your definition is confusing. 02G1: You don’t understand the law for animal protection; it includes all animals. White mice are protected, right? 03G2: If I may get in a word, Professor Wei (G1). Your understanding is quite correct, and actually it also includes bugs. The legislation mode we adopt is very similar to that of Western countries. We put forth a general requirement first. For instance, we kill bugs, but shouldn’t make them suffer unnecessary pain. 04G1: We should kill bugs with kindness and beat them to death with one stroke. (H:@@) 05G2: In addition, I am a quiet man, a relatively practical person. I will explain a little bit to Mr. Liu Yang (one scholar, belonging to the same group of G1) that I work for the Institute of Law of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. I am the dean of the Institute of Social Law and we are concerned mainly with social problems. We have the law of medical service, the law of education, the law of social welfare and the law of environmental protection. And now we are opening up this new direction, namely the study of law for animal protection. We are not only concerned with animals, but we are more concerned with humans; for example, we study the law of social insurance and the law of labor contract. We try to legislate on animal protection for the balance of the development of our society. ((omitted)) 06H: Right, this is the key point. 07G2: We protect animals, which is one kind of precautionary measure for preventing epidemic diseases. The cost of precaution is much lower than that of killing of animals after epidemics. ((omitted)) (Abridged from Tiger Talk) In this excerpt, G2 argues that the law for animal protection covers all animals, including bugs, and we should legislate to put forth a general requirement. Then he goes on to illustrate it with an example: ‘we kill bugs, but shouldn’t make them suffer unnecessary pain’ (03). Responding to G2, G1 mocks his stance through the utterance ‘we should beat bugs with kindness and beat them to death with one stroke’ (04). G2 does not refute this mockery, but overtly mentions his own organizational affiliation to display his professional identity as the dean of the Institute of Law and further elucidates that ‘we are not only concerned with animals, but we are more concerned with humans’ (05). In this way, G2 diverges from G1 and makes explicit statements about self-category (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005) to clarify that the law for animal protection is drafted for the practical purpose of serving humans rather than just protecting animals from being hurt. Accordingly, G1’s mockery positioning in turn 04 is proved to be superficial and his identity as a professor is hence concurrently deconstructed in an indirect manner. By this implicit negation, G2 reshapes himself to be a practical and humane

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researcher who has expertise knowledge of the legislation of animal protection. This expertise identity construction culminates in turn 07, where he expresses the ultimate purpose of protecting animals (‘which is one kind of precautionary measure for preventing epidemic diseases’, 07). In addition, in turn 05, G2 not only mentions his self-category but also elaborates its qualifications, which provide important information about expert identity construction (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005). Note that in turn 05, G2 first presents his own personality attribute---‘I am a quiet man, a relatively practical person’--to label himself, and then introduces his practical professional attribute. This indicates that one’s personal and professional attributes can be concurrently merged and contribute to professional identity construction in interaction. It is concluded from the above example that speakers can use overt or explicit mention of self-category and label (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005) and related linguistic elaboration of their qualifications to indirectly deconstruct the other’s stance and identity and to account for their expertise knowledge in a specific field, hence constructing for themselves an expert identity in discourse. 3.2. Projecting self-professional competence Rather than direct or overt mention of self-category for the sake of expert identity construction, speakers often employ implicit means of instantiating professional identities. They include mainly such pragmatic processes as implicature, which requires additional inferential work for interpretation (cf. Bucholtz and Hall, 2005). By conveying implicatures of their positioning, speakers construct for themselves an expert identity and project their interlocutors as nonexpert in terms of professional competence. Based on the data under study, two ways of projecting self-professional competence are identified: (1) Speakers project their own professional competence through narrating an anecdote that is pertinent to their expertise in a field; (2) speakers construct their own professional identity by demeaning their interlocutor’s professional identity in terms of violation of category-bound activities. 3.2.1. Projecting self-professional competence by anecdote narration Speakers project their own professional competence by narrating anecdotes that are related to their expertise in a given field. Specifically, enacting or invoking attributes through implicit negation can be the tactic for constructing selfprofessional identity (Wilkinson and Kitzinger, 2003). In Extract 2, the situational context (the discussion topic) is whether Li Na’s success as champion of the French Open can subvert the national sports system; G1 is for it, while G2 and G3 are against it. They are talking about whether our national sports system can invest sufficient resources to help Li Na win the champion. Extract 2. (G1:某社会评论员, G2: 某媒体评论员, G3: 某媒体评论员) 01G1: 举国体制就是什么意思, 就是全运会, 亚运会, 奥运会, 四大满贯就是一个鸡肋项目, 国家会投入很大财力去帮助她 拿这个冠军吗?绝对不会。 02G2: 不一定。 03G1: 不一定也是一种假设。 04G2: 但是我相信, 可以说是一种假设, 为什么这样的冠军对中国人来讲意义非常重大? 05G3: 在座的朋友们都很熟悉那个段子, 就是吃包子, 我一口吃咣咣咣吃到第八个包子咣当吃饱了, 早知道这样我吃到第 八个就行了, 我何必再去吃第七个呢? (H:@@)。 06G1: 但你不吃第八个就吃不饱, 你没吃饱, 你吃第七个没吃饱啊。 07G3: 单飞就是吃第八个包子。中国金花的单飞是2008年, 奥运会后, 2006年郑洁晏紫温网、澳网双冠军, 为什么她们在 拿女双冠军就没有人称她们是民族英雄, 08G1: 女双与女单不一样。 (选自‘‘一虎一席谈:李娜夺冠能否颠覆举国体制’’) Extract 2. (G1: a social commentator, G2: a media commentator, G3: a media commentator) 01G1: What does our national sports system mean? It means national sports games, Asian Games and Olympics. The four tennis Grand Slams are programs as chicken ribs (which metaphorically refers to things of little value or interest); our country will invest much money to help her win championship? Absolutely not. 02G2: Not for sure. 03G1: Saying it without certainty is an assumption, too. 04G2: But I think it is one assumption. Why is such a champion of great significance to the Chinese people? 05G3: Our friends present today are very familiar with this anecdote, that of eating dumplings. I eat and eat and eat and suddenly feel full when eating the eighth dumpling, and I wonder whether if I had known that I would be full when I ate the eighth dumpling, I would have not eaten the seventh one. (H: @@) 06G1: But if you do not eat the eighth one, you are not full; you eat the seventh one and you are not full.

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07G3: Solo flight1 is like eating the eighth one. The Chinese tennis player began solo flights in 2008. Women’s doubles players Zheng Jie and Yan Zi have won the championship at Wimbledon and the Olympics. Why weren’t they considered to be our national heroes? 08G1: Women’s singles and women’s doubles are different. (Abridged from Tiger Talk) In the first turn, G1 negates the Chinese national sports system and argues that Li Na’s success results from her solo flight. G3 responds by narrating an anecdote about ‘eating dumplings’: ‘I eat and eat and eat and suddenly feel full when eating the eighth dumpling, and I wonder whether if I had known that I would be full when I eat the eighth dumpling, I would have not eaten the seventh one’ (05). In Chinese culture, this anecdote implies that we should not forget the prior basis for our present success of achieving something. Hence, Li Na’s solo flight can be metaphorized as ‘eating the eighth dumpling’ and the cultivation of national sports system as ‘eating the seventh dumpling’, which invites the implication that Li Na could not have succeeded without the cultivation of the national sports system. Therefore, G3 indirectly deconstructs G1’s identity as lacking expertise knowledge about the national sports system and concurrently builds himself up as a humorous media commentator with deep insight into the issue of the cultivation of athletes in China. Narrating an anecdote about eating dumplings is meant to ensure the interlocutors’ comprehension by the mention of relationships typical of daily life (cf. Ciapuscio, 2003; Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2013). As a result, G3 invokes or enacts self-attributes (i.e. being flexible and articulate in public speaking skills), indirectly lodging a claim of expertise on social commentary. In other words, G3 uses anecdote narration as an implicit means to invoke his self-category attribute, and hence comes across as a competent social commentator. It can be seen that through implicit deconstruction of other-identity, speakers invoke or enact their own category attributes, which contributes to the constitution of their expertise identity in interaction. In the meantime, by conveying implications of their positioning through narrating anecdotes, they implicitly negate and demean their interlocutors as having nonexpert identities. 3.2.2. Challenging others’ professional competence The second implicit way in which speakers construct an expert identity for themselves is to challenge their interlocutors’ professional competence in terms of category-bound activities/attributes (Sacks, 1972; Antaki and Widdicombe, 1998; Speer and Stokoe, 2011). As Sacks (1972) argues, participants coselect various category-bound features when doing membership categorization. We argue that if interactants conduct/violate their own category-bound activity, their identities will be (de)constructed in interaction, because category-bound activity is one important way of representing and instantiating identity. In challenging their interlocutors’ category-bound attributes or activities, speakers employ different linguistic strategies and thereby show their own professional competence as an expert in televised debating interactions. In Extract 3, the situational context (the discussion topic) is whether people who torture or abuse animals should be prosecuted; G1 is for it while G2 is against it. They are talking about whether animals can feel pain. Extract 3. (G1: 某自然科学教授, G2: 某媒体评论员) 01G1: 主张动物没有痛觉。 02G2: 所以我们要讲科学的时候, 我们要强调语境问题, 作为一个讲科学的人, 我相信您应该很清楚什么叫逻辑什么叫语 境, 那么好(. . . N)我们先问一下动物能感觉到痛苦吗?一个动物, 你拉它一刀, 它疼满地蹦跳, ^你说它感觉不感觉到^痛苦? 03G1: 我可以做一个机器人, 你轻轻摸它, 它也满地乱跳。 (选自‘‘一虎一席谈: 虐待动物该不该立法阻止’’) Extract 3. (G1: a professor of natural science, G2: a media commentator) 01G1: I don’t think that animals have a sense of pain. 02G2: Therefore, when we talk about science, we should emphasize the issue of context. I think that you, as a scientist, are very clear about what logic is and what context is. Well, okay (. . . N). We can first discuss whether animals feel pain or not. You stab an animal, and it will run around with pain. ^Can you say that it doesn’t feel ^pain? 03G1: I can make a robot. Even if you touch it lightly, it also runs around. (Abridged from Tiger Talk) In this excerpt, G1 argues that ‘animals don’t have a sense of pain’ (01). Replying to G1, G2 challenges his professional identity by uttering, ‘as a scientist, you are very clear about what logic is and what context is’ (02). Then he goes on to create a context or situation (where an animal is running and crying after being stabbed, 02), followed by a rhetorical question (‘can you say that it doesn’t feel pain?’, 02), to prove that G1’s stance is unfounded. Here is a strong normative

1 Solo flight refers to the fact that some Chinese female tennis players (including Li Na) were released from the rigid structure of the Chinese sports system and allowed to manage their own careers without the government’s financial support.

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expectation at play in G2 (and the audience) that G1 as a scientist is supposed to know what the context denotes in science. In other words, the schema of G1’s identity should not fall short of the addressees’ conversational expectation (cf. Culpeper, 2001, 2011; Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2013; Haugh, 2013). It follows that G1’s category-bound activities should include knowing the definition of context. On top of this, G1’s nonalignment to the present topic (i.e. whether animals feel pain) and shift to the subject of a robot in the ensuing turn 03 violates his category-bound activity (i.e. he should discuss the issue of torturing animals rather than turning to inanimate objects such as robots) (Sacks, 1972; Antaki and Widdicombe, 1998; Speer and Stokoe, 2011). Thus, G1’s identity as a scientist is negated or deconstructed indirectly, and G2’s professional identity as a critical media commentator is built up. From this example, it is seen that speakers can create a positive image for themselves as an expert by deconstructing or challenging their interlocutors’ professional competence in light of violation of category-bound activities/attribute(s). To sum up, speakers do not only overtly mention self-identity categories, but also project self-professional competence through implicatures of positioning. Our data analyses reveal that speakers construct their own expert identity through deconstructing their opponents’ as nonexpert in two ways: (1) projecting their own professional competence by narrating an anecdote and invoking or enacting self-expertise in a particular field and (2) challenging their interlocutors’ professional competence in terms of their interlocutors’ violation of category-bound activities. 4. Insider vs. outsider identity construction In interactions, speakers can construct their own professional identity not only through self-representation but also through other-representation. According to the relationality principle (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005), identities are never autonomous or independent but always acquire social meaning in relation to other available identity positions and other social actors. The overwhelming majority of sociocultural linguistic studies on identity have emphasized insider vs. outsider relation, both because social differentiation is a highly visible process and because language is an especially potent resource for producing it in a variety of ways (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005). Among the theoretical foundations for these studies, social identity theory focuses on exploring the phenomenon of the in-group and out-group, based on the view that identities are constructed through a process of differentiation defined in a relative or flexible way depending upon the activities in which one is engaged. According to our data, speakers often ascribe themselves or their interlocutor a social category with associated features and then indicate affiliation with or detachment from it. In this process, speakers can employ the strategy of implicit negation to define where they and their interlocutors belong and do not belong in relation to others, hence building a pair of identities: insider vs. outsider. 4.1. Outsider identity construction It is quite possible to form an impression of a character/identity entirely on the basis of other-presentation (Culpeper, 2001:171). Speakers use descriptive naming or stereotyping to formulate their interlocutors’ group membership and convey the existing schemas related to the group. The pejorative or mocking tone combined in this other-categorization implicates speakers’ detachment or distinction from this group (cf. Coupland, 1999). Through deconstructing other-identity as being insider stereotyped with negative attributes, speakers’ outsider identity with positive attributes is projected and confirmed. Instead of using explicit means of self-categorization, speakers categorize themselves en passant by indexing who they are in contrast to other-categorization. In the following example, the speaker categorizes his interlocutors into a social group of real estate managers, which is perceived as negative by most people in modern China. In Extract 4, the situational context (the discussion topic) is whether housing prices will rise or not; G1 is against it while G2 is for it. Extract 4. (G1:某不购房运动的发起者, G2: 某房地产公司经理, H: 主持人) 01G2: 主张房价会上涨, ((省略)) 02H: 来, 智慧来补充一下。 03G1: 我^强烈要求补充一下, 范总, 陈总, 胡总, 两 个^盖房的, 一个^卖房的 , (H:@@) 所以说他们 04G2: 我是拆房的, 05G1: 连拆带卖, 他们配套的, 我觉得你是在^配套地忽悠。 (H:@@) 所以说有必要我阐述一下, 06H: 来, 给他加油一下, 这边声音太少了。 07G1: 房地产税出台呢, 我觉得这剂药是治感冒的, 就看政府下的量如何, 所以说他们仨在这上面有点投鼠忌器了。 08H: 其实他们心都虚了, 害怕了。 09G1: 所以他们赶紧解释说我们这儿如何如何, 咱就说这个房地产税, 你别管它是投资的, 还是一套房还是八套房, 只要一上税他就会显现出来((省略))跑了和尚跑不了庙。 (选自‘‘一虎一席谈: 房价是否到了拐点’’)

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Extract 4. (G1: an initiator of campaign not to purchase houses, G2: a manager of a real estate company, H: host) 01G2: I propose that house prices will continue to rise ((omitted)). 02H: Now, Liu Zhihui (G1), you need to add something. 03G1: I^strongly require that I add something. General Manager Fan, General Manager Chen and General Manager Hu, two of you are^building houses and one is^selling houses.(H:@@) so they 04G2: I am in charge of demolishing the houses. 05G1: Demolishing houses and selling them; they are completing a^set. I guess you are collaboratively fooling us. (H: @@) 06H: Come on, the voice from this side is rather low. 07G1: The new policy for the real estate tax is just like prescribing medicine for a fever. It depends on the government to prescribe how much medicine. So the three guys here are giving somewhat misleading instructions. 08H: Actually they look guilty and afraid now. 09G1: So they are in a hurry to express what their businesses are like. As to the real estate tax, no matter whether you invest or not, and no matter whether it is your first suite or the eighth one, once the real estate tax is collected, the effect will be obvious. ((omitted))The monk may run away, but the temple can’t run with him.2(Abridged from Tiger Talk) In this extract, G2, among others, makes an assertion that house prices will rise (01). G1 does not directly negate this stance but presents the others’ professional identities as real estate managers in the utterance, ‘General Manager Fan, General Manager Chen and General Manager Hu, two of you are building houses and one is selling houses’ (03). By providing this background information with a mocking tone, G1 activates existing social knowledge (i. e. stereotypes) concerning the social category of real estate managers, which currently is schematically attributed with some negative sense in China. This convergent act puts his interlocutors in a social category that is presumably related to profiting off of the common people who buy houses. As names of social groups can be used to identify a particular identity (Culpeper, 2001:173), G1 uses the descriptive naming ‘general managers of real estate companies’ to formulate his interlocutors’ group membership and convey the existing schemas related to the group. Specifically, this other-representation places the interlocutors in the situation where their utterances are self-interest oriented and thus less convincing. Note that the host’s laughter in line 03 and 05 is an interactional indicator of the interpretation or uptake of the above implicature. By situating the other-categorization within a jocular frame (Haugh and Bousfield, 2012), G1 implicates his detachment from this group (De Fina, 2006; cf. Coupland, 1999) and thus builds for himself an outsider identity as a common person, which is also supported by the indexicality of ‘they’ and ‘us’ in 05, ‘the three guys here’ in 07 and ‘they’ in 09. It can be seen that speakers communicate who they are by portraying who they are not (Günthner, 2007), and the distinction focuses on the identity relation of differentiation (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005). Summing up, speakers often use descriptive naming or stereotyping to formulate their interlocutors’ group membership and convey existing schemas related to the group in a pejorative or mocking tone. In this way, speakers indicate their detachment or distinction from their interlocutors’ group belonging (cf. Coupland, 1999). It is what separates us from the other that helps us to construe our own self (Günthner, 2007). Thus, the outsider identity of the speaker is projected or confirmed on a collective and relational level (Spencer-Oatey, 2007, 2008). We find that in Extract 4, the outsider identity is constructed by and favors the speaker rather than the addressee while the insider identity of the addressee has been schematically deconstructed through implicit negation. Another finding is that in Extract 4, the speaker employs descriptive naming ‘general managers of real estate companies’ and ascribes negative attributes to this social group, which reflects the specific Chinese cultural context. This reinforces the view of local and cultural situatedness of identity construction (Kádár and Haugh, 2013). 4.2. Insider identity construction In televised debates, speakers exploit implicit negation to construct an insider identity for themselves in the following cases: (1) presenting their interlocutors as outsiders in terms of the topic in question and (2) constructing for their interlocutors an outsider identity in terms of their liaison with the audience. In Extract 5, the situational context (the discussion topic) is about whether products made in China are facing a crisis of credibility; G2 takes an affirmative stance while G1 and G3 hold the negative view. They are talking about whether the quality of export commodities is problematic.

2 This is a Chinese idiom that means that although you can temporarily avoid a duty, you cannot ultimately shirk the responsibility; you are stuck with the trouble at hand.

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Extract 5. (G1: 某产品制造商, G2: 某媒体评论员, G3: 某化妆品公司经理, H: 主持人) 01G1: 出厂的产品质量是肯定没有问题的。 02G2: 这可能吗?中国的质量检测体系, 还有出口这一块, 海关这一块。本来然后就不完善, 权利的失衡, 好, 我拿到一个国 家免检产品的牌子, 我就可以不检查了吗?以后就不再检查了, 但是能保证以后的产品合格吗? 03H: 你从头到尾都是一直不信任的, 不相信的, 为什么? 04G2: [啊, 是的, 不相信的。H: 为什么你一直抱着这样的概念呢?] 05G1: 我觉得是这样, 你要想吃到面包的味道, 你最好自己去做一个, 你才知道它是合格不合格, 那我站在面包房外边我永 远说它是不合格的, 那你怎么知道呢, 这很简单的。 06G3: ‘‘中国制造’’大多数贴牌接受的严格检验, 你知不知道有多严格, 有好多种贴牌。 07G2: 我跟你说, 中国本土所制造的东西, 所有的东西都存在质量上的问题。现在报道出来, 我跟你说这么多问题, 在国外 还是真那么多问题, 咱们中国人要吃的用的, 要比这个危害还要大, 你知道吧, 中国已经是本末倒置地去发展经济, 靠这种 高污染、高能耗。 (选自‘‘一虎一席谈: 中国制造是不是面临信誉危机’’) Extract 5. (G1: a manufacturer, G2: a media commentator, G3: a manager of domestic company, H: host) 01G1: The export products have no quality problems when they leave the factory. 02G2: Is it possible? The Chinese quality testing system, exportation and customs, none of them are well established. There is a lot of imbalance of rights. OK, if I have a certificate of national inspection-free product, then I don’t need to get involved in the process of inspection? There is no inspection in the future, but who can guarantee these products are quality all the time? 03H: You don’t believe it at all. Why? 04G2: [No, I don’t believe it. H: Why do you always hold such a concept?] 05G1: I think that if you want to taste the cake, you’d better make it yourself. Then you may know whether it is quality or not. If I am standing outside of the bakery, I will keep saying that it is not quality. Yet how do you know it is not quality? This is very simple. 06G3: Most of the brands of ‘‘Made in China’’ go through many procedures of inspection and examination. You don’t know how rigid they are. There are so many labels on the brand. 07G2: I can tell you that all the goods made in China have quality problems. The problems are reported abroad. The daily items we Chinese use are worse than those for export. You know, China has developed its economy at the cost of high pollution and energy consumption. (Abridged from Tiger Talk) In the first turn, G1 as a manufacturer provides an affirmative evaluation of the quality of Chinese export goods whereas in the next turn, G2 makes strongly negative assessments. Without a flat denial of G2’s proposition, G1 employs a metaphor: ‘if you want to taste the cake, you’d better make it yourself’ (05). Here, G2 is categorized as the outsider who is standing outside of the bakery and making comments (05), which implies that G2’s professional identity as a media commentator is not fit or qualified to debate the quality of export commodities. Through this kind of implicit negation, G1 presents himself as an insider (Brewer and Gardner, 1996), a manufacturer with expertise in the field of commodity production and marketing, thus, building up a collective self or identity with a group belonging (cf. SpencerOatey, 2007, 2008). The divergence or disaffiliation from the interlocutor is also indicated by the indexical shift in the metaphor (from ‘you’ to ‘I’ and then to ‘you’ in turn 05). With this shift, G1 first puts himself into his interlocutor’s shoes and then distances himself from the proposition, with a view to implicitly negating his interlocutor’s stance and denoting an unfavorable attitude to and detachment from his interlocutor’s group belonging (cf. Tajfel and Turner, 1986; Bucholtz and Hall, 2005). The second way in which speakers construct an insider identity for themselves is to present their interlocutors as outsiders in terms of their liaison with the audience, as the following extract illustrates. In Extract 6, the situational context (the discussion topic) is whether the government should help the stock market when A-Share decreases sharply; G1 is against it while G2 is for it. At the very end of the debating program, they are asked to offer advice to the audience members. Extract 6. (G1: 某海外嘉宾, G2: 某经济学教授, H: 主持人) 01 G1: 同学们, 大家不要相信三种人的话, 第一是经济学家, 第二是专家的话, 第三是大家的话, 因为这些人的话往往是反 向的。 02 H: 变脸了, 百三。 03 G2: 大家注意啊, 要做好中国股市啊. . . , 外国人和海外朋友的话, 要特别谨慎。(@@@)为什么, 实事求是, 联系中国实 际, 所以对海外朋友的话, 大家做参考参考而已, 就行了。 (选自‘‘一虎一席谈: A股暴跌, 政府该不该救市’’)

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Extract 6. (G1: an overseas guest, G2: a professor of economics, H: host) 01G1: Students, we should not believe the words of three kinds of people---the first kind is the economist, the second is the expert, and the third is the big figure (in the economic field)---because what they say is usually the opposite. 02H: Baisan, you have changed your face. 03G2: Attention, everyone. We should be. . . particularly cautious about what foreigners and overseas friends say if we want to invest in Chinese stocks smoothly. Why? We should seek the truth from facts and consider the Chinese reality, so what overseas friends say is only for our reference. (Abridged from Tiger Talk) In the first turn, G1 warns the students in the studio of the incredibility of three kinds of people (i.e. economists, experts and big figures), indirectly including G2 (a professor of economics). In the ensuing turn, the host elicits G2’s reaction (02). G2 responds with a suggestion that ‘we should be. . . cautious of what foreigners and overseas friends say. . . and consider the Chinese reality’ (03). In uttering ‘we’ instead of ‘you’ in 03, G2 presents G1 as an outsider (i.e. an overseas friend) in terms of his liaison with the audience. This kind of divergence and disaffiliation gives the speaker himself an ingroup membership with the audience and hence constitutes an insider identity (Brewer and Gardner, 1996) when discussing the issue of Chinese stocks. By taking the stance ‘‘we should. . . consider the Chinese reality, so what overseas friends say is only for our reference’ (03), G2 uses ‘we’ and ‘our’ to further contrast his in-group identity with G1’s out-group one, because ‘the value of a group membership often derives from its relation to other groups’ (Tajfel, 1981:124). Up to this point, it is evident that G2’s insider identity as a Chinese professor of economics is constructed on a collective and relational level (Spencer-Oatey, 2007, 2008). It is worth noting that in this case both speakers make use of a third party (i.e. the students in the studio) as a device to implicitly negate the stances and deconstruct identities of each other. In other words, they play on the theme of offering advice to a third party to attack their opponents, which reflects the Chinese idiom jiè tí fā huī (借题发挥). Through this kind of implicit negation, G2 reinforces his in-group solidarity with the audience and detaches himself from the out-group belonging of his interlocutor while maintaining a humorous tone in the interaction. To sum up, during the debating process, speakers often enact and present self- and other social roles, categories or group belongings for the purpose of constructing themselves and their interlocutors as an outsider/insider pair, or vice versa. We find that speakers use implicit negation to position themselves and their interlocutors as insider or outsider, but always show a favorable attachment/convergence to their own identity and detachment/divergence (Giles and Powesland, 1997) from their interlocutors’ identity. This supports Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) proposal that the distinction addresses the process in which differences from other perceived groups are constructed. In other words, speakers attempt to focus on the identity relation of differentiation, which suppresses the similarities that might undermine the construction of the difference; this is reflected in our study of insider/outsider identity construction. 5. Genuine vs. artificial identity construction According to Bucholtz and Hall (2005), identities are intersubjectively constructed through another complementary relation, genuineness/artifice or authentication/denaturalization. These are the processes by which speakers make claims to realness and artifice respectively. While both relations are associated with authenticity, the first focuses on the ways in which identities are discursively verified and the second on how assumptions regarding the seamlessness of identity can be disrupted. Denaturalization or deconstruction focuses on the ways in which identity is crafted, fragmented and problematic. This process may also appear whenever an identity violates ideological expectations (Barret, 1999). In televised debating discourse, interactants often implicitly attack the authenticity and credibility of their interlocutors’ professional identity for the sake of enhancing their own professional image and professional ethic integrity in particular. They make salient or latent their professional ethics and construct an authentic professional identity for themselves and an artificial identity for their interlocutors. According to our data, speakers often deconstruct their opponents’ identity into crafted identities, problematic identities and fragmented identities. Crafted identity means the interlocutor’s identity is not authentic but artificial in some respects. Problematic identity means the interlocutor’s identity is problematic or not suitable for addressing the issue in hand. Problematic identity is different from outsider identity: The former highlights the unprofessionalism of the interlocutor’s identity in regard to addressing or discussing the issue in hand while the latter emphasizes the distinction between insider and outsider and the speaker’s favorable attachment to the in-group. In our study, fragmented identity refers not to partial identity in the common sense but to inauthentic identity, as it overshadows the authentic identity that can be unveiled by inferences in interactions. These artificial other-identity constructions are performed for the sake of constructing selfauthentic identity.

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5.1. Crafted identity construction Speakers can construct an authentic identity for themselves by imposing a crafted identity upon their interlocutor in the interaction, which is exemplified in the following. In Extract 7, the situational context (the topic) is unveiling the so-called Taoism follower Li Yi. G1 strongly opposes the behavior of G2, who is a follower of Taoism. G3 is G1s partner, who fights against pseudoscience. They are talking about whether the practice of Pi Gu3 can help one lose weight and cure diseases. G1 and G3 are against it while G2 practices it and teaches a class of Pi Gu. Extract 7. (G1: 某反伪科学学者, G2: 某道教徒, G3: 某反伪科学学者) 01G1: 你这是招摇撞骗的^骗子。 02G2: 你说我是骗子, 这已经是人身攻击了。辟谷这两个字是我发明的吗?《辞海》里都有。 03G3: 原来呢=我们以为说的是李一, 结果是说着说着说到^‘‘李二’’了, 李先生比^李一还‘‘火’’。(H&A: @@) 04H: 我们听一下观众, 好不好, 观众等了半天了。 (选自‘‘22度观察: 揭穿李一道长的真面目’’) Extract 7. (G1: a scholar against pseudoscience, G2: a Taoism follower, G3: a scholar against pseudoscience) 01G1: You are the one ^cheating and lying everywhere. 02G2: You call me a liar and this is personal attack. Was the word ‘Pi Gu’ created by me? It can be found in ‘Ci Hai’ 4. 03G3: At first = we thought that we talked about^Li Yi, but then turned to be^Li Er. Mr. Li is much more popular than^Li Yi. (H&A: @@) 04H: Let’s listen to the voice of the audience, OK? They’ve been waiting to talk for quite a while. (Abridged from 22 Survey) In the first turn, G1 strongly opposes G2 by categorizing him as a liar. G2 first claims that G1’s remarks are a personal attack rather than a debate, and then mentions the dictionary Ci Hai as a reference resource for his Pi Gu class (02). Unlike G1, who directly opposes G2, G3 mocks G2 through a marked vocative or addressing: ‘Li Er’ (李二) (03). This vocative is a derivative of ‘Li Yi’ (李一), who is criticized for his fraud in the name of Taoist practices. In Chinese culture, the marked vocative ‘family name + Er’ (姓 + 二) is often used to ironize a target who is similar to ‘family name + Yi’ (姓 + 一) in some respects. Their common attributes are often ascribed negativity in an indirect manner. In this context, the word ‘popular’ (火) in the utterance ‘Mr. Li is much more popular than Li Yi’ (03) also invokes the pejorative meaning. Therefore, G2’s professional ethics in terms of the real purpose of opening a Pi Gu class is doubted and negated. Consequently, a crafted identity as a false Taoism practitioner is imposed upon G2. Through such implicit negation, G3 mocks G2’s activity (i.e. opening the Pi Gu class as self-asserted practice of Taoism) and attempts to fight against such kind of pseudoscience. Thus, he constructs himself as a humorous scholar with the attribute of authenticity, which is confirmed by the host and the studio audience joining in the laughter. It can be seen that speakers construct an authentic identity for themselves by denaturalizing and demeaning their opponents’ identity in terms of professional ethics (cf. Bucholtz and Hall, 2005; Spencer-Oatey, 2007, 2008). From the above analysis, we can conclude that speakers use implicit negation to make salient their interlocutors’ (lack of) professional ethics and impose a crafted identity on their interlocutors in such a way that their interlocutors’ claims to rightness of identity are subverted indirectly and the speakers’ self-authentication is played out in discourse (cf. Bucholtz and Hall, 2005). 5.2. Problematic identity construction In some debating interactions, speakers implicitly negate their interlocutors’ identity through foregrounding the problematic aspect of their interlocutors’ present identity in terms of addressing the topic. In other words, speakers’ construction of professional selves is built against a backdrop of the other, who is presented to be inferior to or problematic for speakers in terms of having specialized knowledge (cf. Dyer and Keller-Kohen, 2000). In Extract 8, the situational context (the discussion topic) is whether the tomb of Queen Wu Zetian should be unearthed; G1 supports it while G2 opposes it.

3 Pi Gu refers to a way of keeping fit by refraining from eating grain, which is a popular Taoist practice. Its aim is to maintain the balance of the body via adjusting the energy. 4 Ci Hai is a well-known dictionary of Chinese lexicon and characters first published in 1936.

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Extract 8. (G1: 某博物馆馆长, G2: 某地质学家) 01G1: 联合国教科文组织的人看到了之后感到十分的惊叹。我们文物壁画保护的技术很高。 02G2: 首先我当然我不客气的说法, 周先生是搞室内的, 不是搞考古学的, 应该说, 是吧, 你是搞^历史学的。从我这个比如 河北揭取北奇帝王墓的壁画来看和陕西的壁画来看, 应该说是破坏是多, 保存是少的。不单是从壁画本身包括资料本身比 如你们的张淮太子墓, 70年代中期发掘, 发掘时候已经过去多年了, 还没出来啊。 03G1: 这个问题啊, 其实我应该把这个球^踢回去, 我现在反而要问问考古工作者他们是以什么心态工作的, 说句很不好听 的话, 小农意识太浓厚了, 互相封锁。为什么做不出来?我做的东西是我的, ^别人不能^碰。 (选自‘‘一虎一席谈: 女皇墓有料能不能挖看看’’) Extract 8. (G1: the curator of a museum, G2: an archeologist) 01G1: The UNESCO members were greatly surprised at these protections of historical relics and said that the skills of protecting them are very advanced. 02G2: Firstly, it is impolite to say, but Mr. Zhou works on something^interior. Is it right? You majored in^history rather than archeology. For example, considering the frescoes unearthed from the King tomb and Shaanxi, it is the fact that they are quite destroyed with little left. For instance, not only the frescoes but also related information, including the tomb of the prince Zhang Huai, which was unearthed in the mid-’70s. After so many years, they have not yet come out until now. Why? 03G1: As to this question, I should ^pass the buck; now I would rather ask the archeologists, what kind of attitude do they have toward work? It is unpleasant to say, but they have a strong smallholder consciousness and mutually block information; the things I have done are mine that ^others cannot ^share. (Abridged from 22 Survey) In the first turn, G1 holds that the skill of protecting the historical relics is very advanced, as affirmed by the UNESCO members. In his response, by uttering ‘it is impolite to say’ in 02, G2 frames the upcoming talk as impolite, and then he narrates G1’s personal background with the pragmatic indicator of identity construction---the reformulation ‘You majored in ^history rather than archaeology’ (02). Hence, he presents to the audience G1’s real social role, which stands out of the surrounding context, and implies that it is problematic for someone with G1’s social role or profession to take the stance that ‘the skills of protecting [historical relics] are very advanced’ (01). Furthermore, by providing this background information, G2 reaffirms G1’s social category, and creates for him a problematic identity in that his stance is unprofessional and unauthoritative in regard to addressing the archeology issue. This kind of divergent linguistic device--reformulating a recipient’s group category---is employed here to denaturalize or deconstruct G1’s identity as a problematic one. As Günthner (2007) argues, the construction of alterity serves as a resource for the construction of self. In other words, the portrayal of the other becomes the antithesis of the definition of self. By implicitly negating other-identity, the speaker enacts and conveys a self-authentic identity as an expert on archeology (cf. Bucholtz and Hall, 2005). It is seen that this kind of deconstructing other-identity as problematic to construct self-identity evokes the opponent’s rebuke in 03, where G1 in turn attacks G2 by invoking the category of archeologists. From what has been discussed above, it can be concluded that speakers often use implicit negation to make salient and reformulate their interlocutors’ social category to disqualify them from meeting the professional standard required to deal with the issue at hand. The reformulation may lead the audience to doubt the interlocutors’ professional qualifications and even their professional ethics by believing that the interlocutors are concealing their real professional role and background information, which indirectly diminishes their professional ethics. By virtue of the same linguistic resources, speakers’ authentic professional identity is instantiated and enhanced against a backdrop of their interlocutors. 5.3. Fragmented identity construction In some cases, participants attempt to make latent their negative identity attributes while making salient their positive ones, leading to fragmented identity construction. In this situation, their opponents employ implicit negation to lead the audience to doubt and make inferences about their interlocutors’ authentic identity and professional ethics in particular. In our study, fragmented identity refers not to the partial identity in the common sense but to the inauthentic identity. The fragmented identity overshadows the authentic identity. Thus, speakers often exploit an implicit negation strategy to help reveal their opponents’ authentic identity, as is illustrated below. In Extract 9, the situational context (the discussion topic) is whether the rich second generation can become the kind second generation. Here the rich second generation is represented by the daughter of a manager of a charity foundation (G1) (who has opened his own company) that donates money to the African people. The daughter and the manager are the chief leaders of the foundation.

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Extract 9. (G1: 某慈善组织经理, G2: 某社会评论员) 01G1: 我两个春节都是在做慈善, 一个是汶川地震, 一个春节我在非洲考察, 做慈善, 你们做什么呢春节? 02G2: 但是做慈善, 在今天慈善受到质疑的年代, 慈善无国界, 慈善家似乎应该有国界, 为什么这么讲呢, 我来举两个著名 慈善家都比你们两个厉害, 一个叫比尔盖茨, 也是做生意的, ((省略)) 比尔盖茨做生意的时候人家生意归生意, 人家那个不 叫做慈善, 人家叫肩负社会责任, 第二个纯粹的慈善是谁, 很穷能不能做慈善, 能, 德兰修女, 没银子, 但是以心灵的烛照别 人, 温暖了全世界, 这两个是真正的慈善。现在盝老师呢处在一个转型阶段呢, 我比较理解他, 因为制度不完善, 他承受了 巨大的压力, 但是呢他确实是给人造成了一个印象, 什么印象呢, 就是, 是做生意呢, 还是做生意呢, 还是做生意呢? 03G1: 我在太阳村捐款6万, 打了一口水井, 汶川我和陈光标, 刘永好发红包。 (选自‘‘一虎一席谈: 富二代能否变成仁二代’’) Extract 9. (G1: a manager of a charity foundation, G2: a social commentator) 01G1: During two Spring Festivals, I was doing charity work, one in Wenchuan5 and the other in Africa. What did you do during the Spring Festival? 02G2: But in this era doing charity work is often questioned. Doing charity work transcends national boundaries, but philanthropists should be aware of national boundaries. Why do I say so? I can give you two examples that are more powerful than you two. One is Bill Gates. He is also a businessman ((omitted)). But when Bill Gates does business, he does his business only. He does not call it charity, but a kind of social responsibility. The other pure philanthropist is a nun from Holland. She is very poor, but she can do charity work. Her purely kind soul lightens others and warms the whole world. These two are genuine philanthropists. Now Mr. Lu is at a transitional stage. I understand him. He is under extreme pressure, but (+ne, a pause marker) (. . . N) he really gives people an impression. What impression?=. That is, is hedoing business, doing business or doing business? 03G1: I donated 60,000 yuan to the Taiyang Village and the villagers dug a well with the money. After the Wenchuan earthquake, Chen Guangbiao, Liu Yonghao and I went there to donate money to the victims. (Abridged from Tiger Talk) In the first turn, G1 presents his charity work in Africa and Wenchuan during one Spring Festival. Responding to G1, G2 first illustrates the nature of doing charity work with two genuine examples of Bill Gates and a nun from the Netherlands. Then he makes use of the linguistic device of a repetition: ‘is he doing business, doing business or doing business?’ (02). Through flouting the maxim of quantity and the maxim of manner, he implies the question, ‘Is he doing business or doing charity work or doing business by doing charity work?’ With each word distinct and emphasized in producing this indirect strategy, he forcefully negates G1’s professional identity as a manager of a charity foundation by casting doubt on his identity. The implicit negation ascribes the fragmented attribute to G1’s identity, i.e. ‘doing charity work’. In other words, the use of repetition can help us infer that ‘doing charity work’ may be an inauthentic identity of G1 and ‘doing business by doing charity work’ may be his authentic identity. In other words, G1 makes salient or projects G1’s fragmented identity to the extent that this inauthentic identity as a genuine philanthropist overshadows his authentic identity as a businessman. Hence, by presenting G1’s identity as fragmented, G2 attempts to prompt the audience to doubt G1’s projected identity as a genuine philanthropist and to align with himself accordingly. In this vein, G1’s claims of rightness of professional ethics are subverted indirectly (cf. Bucholtz and Hall, 2005). It is apparent that this kind of other-representation and -reformulation via implicit negation serves to construct an authentic or seamless self-identity for G2 as a down-to-earth commentator in regard to evaluating G1’s professional ethics. Note that the selection of indexical ‘he’ (02) instead of ‘you’ in the repetition functions as a device to mitigate the potential impolite effect that is inherent in the implicit negation. To sum up, in line with Bucholtz and Hall (2005), we have discussed authentication and denaturalization, in particular their interrelationship. In televised debating discourses, interactants often implicitly undermine and demean their interlocutors’ professional identity to enhance their own professional identity in terms of rightness or integrity of professional ethics. Speakers often use implicit negation to denaturalize or deconstruct their interlocutors’ identity into crafted identity, problematic identity and fragmented identity to construct an authentic identity for themselves. Our data analyses reveal that speakers use implicit negation to make salient their interlocutors’ (lack of) professional ethics when their interlocutors attempt to make latent or hide the artifice of their professional ethics. In this way, speakers successfully negate, demean and subvert their interlocutors’ identity and meanwhile come across as debaters with professional ethical integrity. 6. Conclusion In this paper, we have taken the socioconstructivist approach defining identity as one’s self-image characterized by multiple self-attributes that are both cognitively represented (Simon, 2004; Spencer-Oatey, 2007) and locally and culturally

5

Wenchuan had been struck by a major earthquake.

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situated (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005; De Fina et al., 2006). By framing identity work within the Chinese televised debating context, our study represents a significant addition to the Western-heavy body of work on identity (de)construction in different discourses. Our data analyses reveal that due to the interplay between the goal of televised debates and various expectations, participants often indirectly deconstruct their interlocutors’ identity for the purpose of constructing their own identity. More often than not, interactants not only enact some attributes or elements of their own and others’ professional identity (such as professional competence, role and ethics) but also construct and negotiate them in debating interactions. Our analysis has revealed that interactants exploit implicit negation strategies to enact, construct and negotiate their own and others’ professional competence, role and ethics, and construct three main respective dyads of professional identity: (1) expert vs. nonexpert identity, (2) insider vs. outsider identity, and (3) authentic vs. artificial identity. Our focus on self-identity construction via other-identity deconstruction extends the identity literature methodologically because these studies have seldom probed, as we have here, three main elements of professional identity (such as professional competence, role and ethics) and their related three dyads in one specific discourse genre and in a Chinese context in particular. We have revealed many subtle ways in which debaters construct ‘self-through-other’ identities via undermining identities in the televised debating discourse. Specifically, speakers construct a self-expert identity by challenging their interlocutors’ expertise and revealing their interlocutors’ violation of category-bound activities. They construct self-insider identity via casting their interlocutors as outsiders by means of descriptive naming or stereotyping and liaison with the topic and the audience. They construct self-authentic identity by portraying interlocutors as a crafted identity such as ‘Li Er’, a problematic and fragmented identity in terms of professional ethics. These kinds of self-through-other identity constructions bring to light the reciprocity of relational work and identity work in social interactions. In this vein, our analyses have instantiated and developed Van Dijk’s (2000) principles of positive self-presentation and negative otherpresentation: Interactants highlight negative other-identity attributes not simply as a goal in and of itself, but as a selfthrough-other means of optimizing positive self-identity construction. This finding can shed light on other related interpersonal pragmatic phenomena (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2013; Haugh and Kádár, 2013; Locher, 2013) such as self-through-other face/identity issues, other-through-self face/identity issues and the interconnectedness between self-/ other-identity (de)construction, face and (im)politeness. In our view, this area is ripe for future research, not only in the context of televised debates but also in other contexts. One of our future studies will examine the effect of these selfthrough-other identity constructions on interpersonal (im)politeness in televised debating discourse. We have developed Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) principles of identity construction: (1) Interactants’ multiple selfattributes are not preexisting but emergent in the ongoing debating interactions, and interactants make salient/latent selfand other-attributes for constructing different identities even in the same interaction; (2) professional identity construction is the dynamic and interactional act of enacting, presenting, negotiating, challenging or verifying self-/other-professional attributes of professional role, competence and ethics in a specific sociocultural discourse context such as a televised debate; (3) identity construction is not only a relational but also an interrelational phenomenon, and should be addressed by an interrelational approach that captures ways of constructing self-through-other identity and other-through-self identity. We have examined the complexity and interrelationality of self-professional identity construction and otheridentity deconstruction. We have not just applied Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) principles, but have revealed concrete examples of how these principles are manifested within the context of a televised debate. These examples include selfexpert via other-nonexpert identity, self-insider via other-outsider identity, and self-authentic via other-artificial identity. This interrelationality of self-identity construction and other-identity deconstruction was not addressed in Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) study. Based on our detailed analysis of self-through-other identity construction, we propose that such interpersonal pragmatic issues as self-through-other identity construction or other-through-self identity construction should be tackled in their own right with further elaborated principles developed from those of Bucholtz and Hall (2005). Finally, our study may contribute to the understanding of the Chinese sociocultural elements that are at play in constructing self-professional identity via implicit other-identity deconstruction in debating discourse. Our data show that speakers often undermine and subvert their interlocutors’ stance and identity in subtle ways, which include formulating the descriptive naming like Li Er, playing on the theme of the third party (jiè tí fā huī) and calling attention to how individuals of certain identities are stereotyped. From Example 4, we can find that in modern China, real estate managers are often stereotyped as businessmen who cause housing prices to rise, while in Western contexts, the same social identity may not be subjected to such negative stereotype. This is consistent with locally and culturally situated identity construction (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005; Kádár and Haugh, 2013). It is thus worthwhile to carry out a comparative study of self-identity construction via other-identity deconstruction in Chinese and British/American televised debating programs.

Acknowledgement The study has been supported by the research project (15BYY045) about the pragmatics of media discourse in the context of crisis funded by the National Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Sciences in P. R. China.

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Appendix 1 Table A1 Transcription conventions. Transcription conventions Speech Transitional continuity Final Continuing Appeal (seeking a validating response from listener) Speakers Speech overlap Accents and lengthening Primary accent (prominent pitch movement carrying intonation meaning) Lengthening Pause Long pause Vocal noises Laughter Transcriber’s perspective Researcher’s comment

。 , ? [ ] ^ = ... @ (( ))

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