A Study on the Discourse Construction of WeChat Salesmen’s Personal Identities: Based on Data from the Moments of WeChat

The analysis in this paper examines how the salesmen construct their identities through the Chinese messaging app WeChat by applying Karen Tracy’s identity theory. Using a data set consisting of 17 WeChat salesmen’s discursive practices posted in the Moments of WeChat, the analysis found out 6 types of identities constructed, which are as salesmen, product users, competitors, evaluators, friends and organizers. Both rhetorical and cultural perspectives are adopted in analyzing how these identities are constructed.


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Published by SCHOLINK INC. works. Therefore, a dialectic and bi-directional perspective which combines the two is employed in the present study.

Data Analysis and Findings
The data in this paper were collected by the authors and their seven friends from seventeen WeChat salesmen. After getting permission from those WeChat salesmen, we got 655 screen shots about the discursive practices they posted in the Moments of WeChat and covered their private information by mosaic. According to the data we have collected, here are the main identities WeChat salesmen constructed in the Moments of WeChat through their discursive practices.

As Salesmen
Example 1 Caiyun Jia weighs more than 70kg after giving birth. With the help of this milk shake, she has lost 15kg of weight within 3 months. Now she keeps a standard weight (Pictures: two pictures of Jia before and after drinking the milk shake).
This is a kind of pro-biotics yeast fudge with pure natural extracts. And it is a kind of plant gum gel candy without any side effects. It has many advantages such as being easy to carry, excellent taste, eliminating toxin, beautifying skin, keeping fit, improving health, etc. Austin held that people use language not only to describe and present the outside world, but also to conduct social action (Tracy, 2013). The discursive practices in example 1 mainly conducts one speech act: information providing. The WeChat saleswoman in this example provides specific information about the name, characteristics, usage and the content of the new product. By providing that information, she presents herself as the one who is familiar with the product. In example 2, the WeChat salesman tells the story of her customer's loss of weight after using the product. In her book Everyday such as making an argument, performing speech acts, self-presentation, etc. (Tracy, 2013). The WeChat salesman in example 2 makes an argument by telling a story: the products are really helpful for losing weight. And during the process, she conducts two speech acts: providing information about the effects of her products and advertising for her products indirectly by showing the two pictures of Jia to testify her obvious loss of weight after drinking the milk shake. In example 3 and 4, the WeChat salesmen describe the quality and effects of their products exaggeratively, advertising for their products directly.
Hyperbole is frequently used in the discursive practices WeChat salesmen posted in the Moments of WeChat, which is a kind of linguistic device that can accomplish specific pragmatic function by expressing facts in an exaggerative way (Pang & Xu, 2011). WeChat salesmen usually exaggerate their products' advantages and avoid the disadvantages in order to attract others' attraction.
Various speech acts and stories about their products shape those WeChat salesmen as polite and kind who know the products well and support the products positively, which is helped by the anonymity and absence of audio-visual context in the CMC. With clear communicative purpose, those WeChat salesmen sometimes violate the quality maxim (He, 2000), overstating the effects of their products to meet people's wishes. Most WeChat salesmen become product sellers because of their good experiences of the products. In the Moments, WeChat salesmen post details about the process of using the products through storytelling and lots of first-person pronouns such as "I", "myself" and so on. For example, in example 5, the mother tests the hygroscopicity of her baby's paper diaper, the main product she sells in the Moments. During this process, she provides many details about how long a piece of the diaper can endure and how it is like after being used for several hours; in example 6 and 7, these WeChat salesmen sell skin care products and nutritious food. They construct themselves as consumers of the products by showing how they use their products and what great effects the products bring to them.
By presenting details about their products, talking about their experiences of them and making favorable evaluations, WeChat salesmen build themselves as real consumers, attracting more and more friends in the Moments to buy their products. However, their identity construction is goal-oriented and the lack of visual and paralinguistic cues gives WeChat salesmen more freedom to present their products selectively. They describe their products positively and exaggeratively most of the time with fewer negative descriptions. another WeChat salesman's products as "so-called". Generally, the word "so-called" is used to show one's negative attitude to something, disclose and criticize its irrationality (Zhou, 2009). In this example, the WeChat salesman indicates that the commodities from another WeChat salesman are fake by the "so-called" description and by classifying them and other false products into the same category, which shapes a competitive relationship between the two WeChat salesmen in this example.
The ninth example is from a WeChat saleswoman who works in a chain store for acne treatment. She lists several lower prices from other WeChat salesmen, indicating her pricing may be higher. She makes an inference from the relationship between the quality and price in the ice cream and car industry and draws the conclusion that one gets what he pays for (there is no such thing as that of in high quality and low price). Based on the analogy with ice cream and car industry, she testifies that the high price is reasonable for products of a high quality. Therefore, she then makes promises about the good quality of her products and her considerate services, which might be at a high price. In the end, she conforms to the potential hearers' thirst for beauty and tries to persuade them to pay more attention to quality rather than price. In this way, she identifies herself as an excellent competitor for the treatment of acne. the absence of audio-visual context makes exaggerative and flattering expressions more natural and impoliteness more common. For example, WeChat saleswoman in example 10 builds herself (the speaker) as a seller by addressing the hearers with "clients" and "you" and flatters her clients by calling them gods and goddesses. So many emoticons (smiley face and the picture of bowing) compensates for an absence of visual context, making her compliments more polite and sincere. By making a compliment to her clients ("gorgeous", "goddess"), the WeChat saleswoman establishes herself as an easy-going person, keep a close relationship with her clients and attract more people to be her clients.
However, the situation is a bit different in example 11. The WeChat saleswoman in this case takes herself as a clothing seller and the hearers as consumers ("you"). The address form "clothing seller" not "I" makes what she says more objective, indicating that the following opinions are actually what all clothing sellers think about their consumers. She shows her sympathy for the sellers and her criticism of the buyers. Her criticism of the consumers' censorious action violates the approbation maxim (He, 2000), but actually, this is an adaption to the virtual context. The formal and contextual qualities or constraints of CMC intensify the maxim of efficiency while sacrificing the maxim of politeness in comparison with face-to-face conversation (Benwell & Stoke, 2006). what they think or do in daily lives as common users, which is an adaption to the characteristics of WeChat as a social software. Example 12 comes from a WeChat saleswoman selling skincare products.
She posits herself as a child by the first-person pronoun of "we" and gives suggestions about "caring for parents" in this case, which has nothing to do with her commodities. The girl in example 13 sells weight-losing products, but in this case, she expresses her love for a hamster and constructs herself as a pet lover. In example 14, the WeChat saleswoman identifies herself as a mother through the kinship address form "my baby" and the positive evaluation of her baby's dancing. WeChat salesmen are common WeChat users. This preexisting identity shapes their discursive practices. They post discursive practices like any other common users in the Moments. At the same time, their choices of the discursive practices relating to real daily life also shape them as nice and empathetic friends, which is helpful for getting trust from others and attracting more consumers. answer.
Many WeChat salesmen often initiate interactions to attract others' attention to their products and build themselves as kind and generous friends to their customers. WeChat salesmen usually address the hearers with "babies" in a polite way. This intimacy address form helps to shorten the social distance and build an intimate relationship between them and the hearers, and make themselves more sincere and friendly. During the interaction, WeChat salesmen take their products or discount coupons as prizes, which actually aims to popularize their products. For example, in example 15, she invites hearers to discuss a popular topic among women and award someone with her products. And in example 16, although the WeChat saleswoman is appreciating friends, what she really aims to do is to organize people to talk about her products and the brand and make more people know about her commodities.

Conclusion
WeChat salesmen construct various identities in the Moments. Those identities are not independent of each other. Rather, they overlap and influence each other. The information they post in the Moments may build several identities and one of them is the most conspicuous. In addition, the virtual context of computer-mediated communication provides a free environment for WeChat salesmen to post their discursive practices purposefully. It is possible that some information they post in the Moments are false and the identities they construct in the Moments might be fake, which is a topic not discussed in this paper. It is worthy of thorough research with the help of a larger number of data set.