Blurb:

Wei Ren investigates the linguistic strategies employed by the host in a radio-mediated call-in programme in China as a means of identity construction. His study reveals five partly overlapping local identity categories: caring helper, responsible helper, authoritative host, media propagandist, and public authority, which influence the host’s choices of linguistic strategies, including (im)politeness based on the argument that the use of (im)politeness is a linguistic index for the host’s identity construction.