“We Were Not at School Today”: First-Person Pronouns and Discursive Construction of Identities by Emerging Middle-Class Chinese Parents

Abstract In the process of China’s dynamic social changes over the past decades, the young-parent identity construction of an emerging middle class and the resulting changes of social-cultural values in this context have attracted the attention of academic research in recent years. With the focus on the discursive construction of parent identity, this study examines the utilization of first-person pronouns in three different interactional contexts, namely, parent-teacher interaction, parent-parent interaction, and parent-child interaction. The study further explores the patterns of alignment between the parents and their children, parents and teachers of their children, and peer parents during the process of identity construction, followed by a discussion of the implication that young, emerging middle-class Chinese parents fundamentally shape themselves as “concerned” and “involved” parents and the change of values between collectivity and agency. The study not only demonstrates the dynamic and pluralistic nature of parent identity but also deepens our understanding of the indexical roles of first-person pronouns in the discursive construction of emerging middle-class Chinese parent identity and its relationship with the recent social-cultural changes in the Chinese context.