Exclusive Pronouns Research Articles

Calibrating recipiency through pronominal reference

AbstractParticipants in conversation have a range of options for referring to co-conversationalists – lexical, grammatical, embodied – regardless of their language. Personal pronouns have been described as the most unmarked way of achieving reference, where little else is accomplished other than the action of referring. We demonstrate that speakers in a multi-party conversation whose language distinguishes between second and third-person pronouns, or between inclusive and exclusive pronouns, are constantly attributing and managing participation roles when referring to co-participants, even when using the default reference forms. Grammatical contrasts within pronoun inventories are recruited, often in conjunction with points and gaze, to indicate which co-participants are being addressed and which are being referred to. Address is constantly recalibrated through practices of reference. Speakers also draw on more marked referential expressions in order to emphasise the attribution of participation roles more explicitly. This study is based on a corpus of casual multi-party conversations in Jaru, an endangered Australian language with a dual pronominal system which encodes three grammatical numbers (singular, dual, and plural) and specifies whether the referents of first-person dual and plural pronouns exclude or include the addressee(s).

Clusivity and the history of personal pronouns in East Caucasian

Abstract Personal pronouns are among the most stable lexemes in the East Caucasian family, which consists of at least forty different languages distributed over eight well established branches, with nevertheless important variations and paradigmatic reshaping across branches, languages, and even dialects. The 1st and 2nd singular pronouns have been replaced or changed shape at least once in many subparts of the family, and the main 1st person singular innovation was apparently followed by areal spread. Most languages retain two different pronouns for the 1st person plural European pronoun, but the cognates are not always clear, suggesting that although clusivity is an inherited feature of East Caucasian pronominal paradigms, its history is complex, with various types of loss and renewal. This paper attempts to draw a fine-grained and accurate picture of these 1st person plural pronouns and their history within the larger setting of personal pronouns in general. Most individual stories behind variation across branches, languages and dialects provide reasons to see inclusive pronouns as prone to be maintained or renewed over time, whereas exclusive pronouns (1st person singular or plural) are specially targeted by avoidance and replacement processes.

Self-representation in political campaign talk: A functional metadiscourse approach to self-mentions in televised presidential debates

Self-mentions (i.e., first person pronouns and self-citations) have proven to be one of the most powerful ways of rhetorical self-projection in academic discourse and their role in the construction of a self that engenders credibility in more overtly persuasive genres, such as political debates, has been extensively studied, given the vast literature on pronouns in political discourse analysis and specifically on their uses in political debates. To gain a better insight into the ways in which politicians can build a credible ethos through a competent and authoritative presentation of themselves in electoral debates, this paper compares the frequency and rhetorical roles of the self-mentions used by the candidates of the two major political parties (i.e., Democrats and Republicans) during the debates held for the United States presidential election of 2016. The Republican candidates (i.e., Trump and Pence) were found to make a notably greater use of self-mentions than their Democratic counterparts (i.e., Clinton and Kaine). Significant differences were also found in the rhetorical roles most commonly adopted by each politician to convey authority through the use of exclusive pronouns and self-citations.

Metadiscursive Role of Author(s)’s Exclusive Pronouns in Pakistani Research Discourses

Exploiting author(s)’s exclusivity in academic and research discourses has been manifested with various viewpoints within the broader spectrum of formality versus informality, subjectivity versus objectivity, and self-display versus self-effacement. The interpersonal role of self-mentioning from metadiscursive perspective of text and reader orientedness has been neglected in this whole debate. The current study explores these metadiscursive functions of author(s)’s exclusive pronouns in 104 research articles published in Pakistani research journals from hard and soft fields in order to establish their metadiscursive role in research discourses especially. This role, furthermore, determines the extent of association/affinity of these pronouns with Hyland’s (2005) interactive and interactional categories of metadiscourse. There were 308 metadiscursive author(s)’s exclusive pronouns found performing 464 interpersonal functions of metadiscourse revealing multifunctional nature of these pronouns. Firstly, interactive affinity of author(s)’s exclusivity was found more than interactional association with frequency of 291 and 173 respectively. Secondly, among interactive roles, framing discourse (Frame Markers i.e., FM) through these pronouns is the most visible schematic pattern with the value of 48%. On the other hand, thirdly, Boosters i.e., BST, among interactional metadiscourse, in associative behavior with author(s)’s exclusive pronouns occur with highest rate i.e., 55%. Finally, author(s)’s exclusive pronouns were observed to be showing bi-covalent and tri-covalent metadiscursive bond suggesting multifunctional interpersonal role of author(s)’s exclusivity. In the light of these findings, we suggest an Associative Interpersonal Model of Author(s)’s Exclusivity (AIMAE) which is promising in exploring author(s)’s affinity with certain cognitive patterns of metadiscursive interaction.

A COMPARISON OF THE INTERACTION OF PRONOMINALS AND WORD ORDER IN NARO AND GǁANA

ABSTRACTThis article compares PGN markers, the pronoun system and word order in declaratives in Naro ǁGana. These languages are similar in that (a) nouns are marked for person, gender and number; (b) both have complex pronoun systems; (c) the plural and dual categories distinguish inclusive from exclusive pronouns; (d) main lexical items in both languages can be focused through fronting. They differ in that ǁGana NPs are marked for nominative and oblique case through the PGN marker, while in Naro this is not so. In Naro if constituents are re- ordered, the PGN marker of the fronted constituent hosts the PGN marker of the subject NP, thus identifying the subject. The use of pronouns in a sentence impacts word order at sentential level in Naro but not in ǁGana. PGN markers are obligatory for subjects only in ǁGana.

Multimodal Action and Speaker Positioning in Closing Argument

AbstractThis paper examines how gesture, gaze, and objects function in speaker positioning, epistemic stance, and the production of evidence during closing argument in a criminal trial. While most research on closing focuses on descriptions of witnesses’ testimony, this research considers the role of objects as communicative action in the construction and co-construction of persuasive legal oratory. We demonstrate how an attorney can reduce social distance between himself and jurors through the use of impersonal and exclusive pronouns and how speech, gesture, and objects integrate along the aesthetic dimension of communicative practice to emphasize and evaluate testimony. More specifically, we demonstrate how a novel form of evidential action emerges through a recurring flow of gaze, objects, and coding practice.

Pronominal system in Croatian Sign Language

In this article we present some fundamental properties of the Croatian Sign Language (Hrvatski Znakovni Jezik, HZJ) pronominal system. The most common functions of pointing in HZJ are pronominal, demonstrative, locative, possessive and reflexive. Examination of the first person pronoun shows that the signer uses nonmanuals to indicate that she has taken the role of another person. Thus, the signer points to herself, but the intended reference is to a character in the story and not to the signer. These findings are used to provide evidence for grammatical first person. Viewed from Berenz’s (2002) perspective, grammatical second and third person pronouns show some degree of consistency within each category and differences across categories. When reference to the second person is intended, the characteristics hand orientation, eyegaze and the head will usually line up. In contrast, when reference to third person is intended, disjunction of some of these features occurs. Thus, the distinction between second and third person pronoun is linguistically marked in HZJ. Therefore we argue against Liddell (1995, 2003), who treats pointing as deictic, gestural, hence nonlinguistic. Furthermore we argue with Berenz against Meier (1990), who claims that at least for ASL there is no distinction between second and third person reference. Our morphological analysis reveals no gender distinction in the pronoun system, but there are distinctions between singular, plural, inclusive and exclusive pronouns. No correlation between spoken Croatian case marking and either HZJ handshape choice or systematic mouthing was found.

Pronominal system in Croatian Sign Language

In this article we present some fundamental properties of the Croatian Sign Language (Hrvatski Znakovni Jezik, HZJ) pronominal system. The most common functions of pointing in HZJ are pronominal, demonstrative, locative, possessive and reflexive. Examination of the first person pronoun shows that the signer uses nonmanuals to indicate that she has taken the role of another person. Thus, the signer points to herself, but the intended reference is to a character in the story and not to the signer. These findings are used to provide evidence for grammatical first person. Viewed from Berenz’s (2002) perspective, grammatical second and third person pronouns show some degree of consistency within each category and differences across categories. When reference to the second person is intended, the characteristics hand orientation, eyegaze and the head will usually line up. In contrast, when reference to third person is intended, disjunction of some of these features occurs. Thus, the distinction between second and third person pronoun is linguistically marked in HZJ. Therefore we argue against Liddell (1995, 2003), who treats pointing as deictic, gestural, hence nonlinguistic. Furthermore we argue with Berenz against Meier (1990), who claims that at least for ASL there is no distinction between second and third person reference. Our morphological analysis reveals no gender distinction in the pronoun system, but there are distinctions between singular, plural, inclusive and exclusive pronouns. No correlation between spoken Croatian case marking and either HZJ handshape choice or systematic mouthing was found.

Language learning

Language learning

‘We Do Not Seem to Have a Theory … The Theory I Present Here Attempts to Fill This Gap’: Inclusive and Exclusive Pronouns in Academic Writing

This paper is a qualitative and quantitative corpus-based study of how academic writers use the personal pronouns I and inclusive and exclusive we. Using a multidisciplinary corpus comprising of journal research articles (RAs) from the fields of Business and Management, Computing Science, Economics, and Physics, I present data extracts which reveal how I and we can help writers create a sense of newsworthiness and novelty about their work, showing how they are plugging disciplinary knowledge gaps. Inclusive pronouns can act as positive politeness devices by describing and/or critiquing common disciplinary practices, and elaborating arguments on behalf of the community. They can also organize the text for the reader, and highlight the current problems and subject areas which preoccupy the field. The quantitative analysis reveals that while all instances of we in the Business and Management articles and all but one of the instances of we in the Economics articles are inclusive, only a third of the instances in the Computing articles and under 10 per cent of the instances in the Physics articles are inclusive. The study ends with a brief discussion of what a few English for Academic Purposes (EAP) textbooks tell students about inclusive and exclusive pronouns, and offers some suggestions for EAP classroom activities.

Speaking the Unspeakable: Discursive Strategies to Express Language Attitudes in Legon (Ghana) Graffiti

In Ghana, as in most multilingual sub-Sahara African countries, language preferences and ethnic identity often pull in the same direction. Through the graffiti on Legon walls and doors, students show their like or dislike for certain ethnic groups (especially the Ewe and the Akan-Asante) and their languages. The discursive strategies used to express language attitudes in the graffiti include intertextuality (imitation and influence) and draw on linguistic and pragmatic resources. Regarding intertextuality, graffiti authors borrow from previous texts or from public knowledge in creating their texts. Pragmatic strategies included name calling, insults, and in-group slang. The linguistic resources used were inclusive and exclusive pro-nouns, verbs denoting strong emotional valence, repetition of specific syntactic frames, and adjectives of quality with the semantic subcategorization feature of [+derogatory]. Two main graphological features-exclamation marks and upper case letters-were also used as agreement or disagreement signals. The article concludes with implications for language attitude theorizing.

What's Happened to Us? Some Developments in the Malay Pronoun System

We examine the development of the Austronesian first-person pronouns in nonstandard varieties of Malay/Indonesian. The fact that of the inclusive and exclusive pronouns only the form of the inclusive, * kita?, is ever retained in the nonsingular forms when the inclusive-exclusive distinction is lost, or extended to a singular meaning, is taken as a sign of an oppositional relationship being retained even after the functional basis for that opposition has ceased to exist. Evidence for the markedness relationship that exists between the two pronominal forms is presented on the basis of qualitative and quantitative data, with both Classical Malay and Modern (written) Indonesian being examined. A discussion of the shifts in meaning that have been observed to occur, and the shift in the pronominal paradigm in the light of Blust's treatment of the politeness shifts in earlier varieties of Austronesian, offers a functional explanation for the kinds of changes observed. Additional data from local languages of Southeast Sulawesi, in which both forms are preserved, even though the function encoded is now one of plural/paucal, strengthen this argument.

Inclusive and Exclusive Pronouns in English

Inclusive and Exclusive Pronouns in English