Blurb:

Yongping Ran and Qian Chen focus on advice-giving in the Ph. D. oral defences in Chinese universities and explore how the supervisors construct identities in relation to the management of interpersonal rapport between the participants. It is found that while the supervisors provide the students with some help for the improvement of their dissertation, they also take into account interactional goals which are about the management of personal or interpersonal relationships with the students. As a consequence, the supervisors are found to adopt some strategies for constructing collective identities as well for managing rapport relations with the students.