Deviational Pragmatic Identity of Chinese College EFL Teachers in Shuoke Contests

In tandem with the social constructionist turn in identity studies, the pragmatic identity of EFL teachers is an emerging topic of interest, particularly in light of the discursive view of identity. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the deviational pragmatic identity of EFL teachers. Drawing upon the Pragmatic Identity Theory, this corpus-based study examines how salesperson identity is constructed through the discursive practices at macro and micro levels by teacher contestants in shuoke contests. Shuoke is a teaching and research activity in which a teacher articulates the teaching process and explains the rationale of the teaching design to colleagues or experts for feedback. Data reveal that salesperson identity is constructed through four moves at macro level including greeting, introducing the teaching design, making positive evaluations, and ending, with six steps in the second move; and through three types of discursive practices at micro level, including speech acts, grammar, and lexical features, with assertives, adverbials, and meta-discourse appearing most frequently in each type. The research explores how the deviational pragmatic identity of EFL teacher contestants is discursively constructed in shuoke contests, seeks linguistic models for the shuoke practices of EFL teachers, and provides implications for the improvement of EFL teachers’ discursive competence in their professional development.