This article considers how ideas from relevance-theoretic pragmatics can be applied in understanding the construction of identity in interaction, while presupposing that consideration of ideas about identity can make a significant contribution to pragmatic theories. While previous work on pragmatics has focused on the construction and performance of identity, this has not been much discussed in work from a relevance-theoretic perspective. For illustration, the article refers mainly to a video recording of a UK House of Commons Select Committee session on drug addiction. While the video provides considerable relevant data about identity construction, the article does not develop a detailed analysis of the video or the extracts it focuses on. Instead, it uses them to argue for the usefulness of relevance-theoretic ideas in understanding identity and impression management. The ideas focused on are that communication can be stronger or weaker (i.e. it can be more or less clear that particular assumptions are being intentionally communicated), that there is no clear cut-off point between very weakly communicated implicatures and non-communicated implications, that interpretation generally involves going beyond what the communicator intended to derive the addressee’s own conclusions, that the effects of communicative interaction include more than the derivation of new assumptions and that adjustments to ‘cognitive environments’ (the sets of assumptions which are accessible to individuals at particular times) can continue after interactions take place. These ideas can be useful in a number of areas including in understanding identity in general, literary identities, attitudes to language varieties, the production of communicative acts and the teaching of spoken and written communication.

本文考虑了如何将关联理论实用主义的思想应用于理解互动中的身份建构，同时假设对身份认同的思想思考可以对实用主义理论做出重大贡献。尽管先前的语用学工作集中于身份的建构和表现，但从关联理论的角度来看，这在工作中并未得到太多讨论。为说明起见，本文主要参考了英国下议院专职委员会关于吸毒成瘾的会议的录像带。尽管视频提供了有关身份构造的大量相关数据，但本文并未对视频或其重点摘录进行详细的分析。代替，它用它们来论证相关理论思想对理解身份和印象管理的有用性。所关注的思想是，交流可以更强或更弱（即，或多或少可以清楚地知道有意地传达了特定的假设），在交流不畅的含义和非交流含义之间没有明确的分界点，这种解释通常包括超越沟通者意图得出收件人自己结论的意图，沟通互动的影响不仅仅包括新假设的推导，还包括对“认知环境”的调整（个人可以理解的假设集合）。特定时间）可以在互动发生后继续。