Author(s)

Bingjie Xu ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ School of Foreign Studies, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China

Corresponding Author

Bingjie Xu

ABSTRACT

Grounded in social constructivism, the research treats identity as a contextual and communicative transactional resource rather than a static trait. Using Harris’s discourse from the September 10, 2024 Trump–Harris TV debate as the corpus, the study focuses on her responses to questions and her closing remarks on key topics such as the economy, immigration, and abortion.The findings show that Harris mainly alternates between two types of pragmatic identity: a default identity appropriate to the presidential debate context and a deviational identity tailored to specific communicative purposes. By selectively highlighting these identities, Harris strengthens persuasion and credibility, thereby making her policy and value claims more committed and convincing. 

KEYWORDS

Pragmatic identity, U.S. Presidential debate, Commitment strategies

CITE THIS PAPER

Bingjie Xu. A Case Study of Commitment Strategies in U.S. Presidential Debates from the Perspective of Pragmatic Identity. Lecture Notes on Language and Literature (2026). Vol. 9, No.1, 88-94. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/langl.2026.090113.

REFERENCES

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[5] Chen, X. R. (2018).  Pragmatic Identity Theory: Doing Things with Identity Discourse. Beijing: Beijing Normal University Press.
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[9] Wang, B. (2014). Discourse–identity–stance: A discourse analysis of the spokespersons of the Taiwan Affairs Office regarding related-to-Taiwan discourse. Journal of Zhejiang International Studies University (3): 23–29.
[10] Xu, X. P., & L, Y. (2022). Discourse construction and negotiation of pragmatic identity in conflict discourse management. Modern Foreign Languages (5): 585–596.
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