Second Person Singular Pronoun Research Articles

Pronominal address in the linguistic landscape of Hispanic Philadelphia

Abstract This study explores pronominal address forms in the linguistic landscape of Hispanic Philadelphia, examining how Spanish-speaking communities use second-person singular pronouns (tú, usted, vos) in public signage. The research objectives were to identify which pronouns of address are employed and determine the variables influencing their usage. A corpus of 250 signs was analyzed across three Hispanic neighborhoods and virtual spaces, considering variables such as location, authorship, language composition, and speech act. Chi-squared tests and logistic regression were used to assess the impact of these variables on pronoun choice. The findings reveal that only “tú” and “usted” are present in the linguistic landscape, with “tú” being slightly more prevalent (55.2%). Language composition (p = 0.035) and speech act (p < 0.001) significantly influence pronoun selection, while location and authorship do not. Bilingual signs tend to favor “usted”, whereas monolingual signs prefer “tú”. Regarding speech acts, requests are more likely to use “usted”, while invitations and persuasive messages favor “tú”. The study concludes that while there is no evidence of a new speech community emerging, there is a convergence in pronominal use across diverse Hispanic neighborhoods, suggesting linguistic accommodation in written language. These findings contribute to our understanding of pronominal treatment in diasporic contexts and highlight the complexity of address forms in Spanish.

Hey, You! The Importance of Pragmatics in Localizations of Mass Effect in French and Spanish

The localization of video game dialog for diverse audiences is challenging because of differences in linguistic features between languages and pragmatic norms between cultures. For example, localizers must decide how to translate the English second-person singular pronoun “you” into languages that have a pragmatic distinction between formal and informal pronouns (e.g., “vous” and “tu” in French). These distinctions are used in social interaction to signal politeness, respect, and social distance, which are important elements that shape player experience in role-playing games. We analyze the dialog from French and Spanish localizations of Mass Effect and show they have strikingly different strategies for translating pronouns. French mostly uses formal pronouns while Spanish mostly uses informal pronouns. We explain how these differences affect player experience and argue that effective localization requires a clear strategy for dealing with pragmatics. We conclude by making practical suggestions for how game creators can better support localization.

LINGUISTIC PECULIARITIES OF THE FEMALE CHARACTER ARCHETYPES IN CONTEMPORARY CINEMA DISCOURSE BASED ON THE TV SERIES "WHY WOMEN KILL"

The research focuses on the linguistic characteristics of the female characters' speech in the contemporary British television series Why Women Kill and the peculiarities of creating psycholinguistic images of female characters in accordance with the corresponding film archetypes. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that it attempts to analyze the psycholinguistic images of female characters in television series, and thus determines the originality and significance of this study. This research contributes to the enlargement of works dedicated to cinematography characters' language peculiarities revealing the correlation with a particular psychological archetype that presents the topicality of our research. The script is viewed as one of the primary universal methods for unveiling the character's image in an audiovisual text. Based on theories of character archetypes and the use of language in the media, this article examines the replicas and speech patterns of three prominent female characters to determine the linguistic choices used to convey character archetypes. The research is based on the script from the series Why Women Kill (2019) by M. Cherry. The descriptive method, contextual analysis, and method of quantitative calculations have been the appropriate methodological instruments for achieving the purpose of the study. W. Schmidt's (2007) classification serves as the basis for determining the primary psychological characteristics of the characters. The article examines the formation of psycholinguistic images of three female characters from the film archetypes The Nurturer, The Seductive Muse, and The Amazon. Beth Ann Stanton belongs to the film archetype The Nurturer, Simone Grove belongs to the film archetype The Seductive Muse, and Taylor Harding belongs to the film archetype The Amazon, as determined by W. Schmidt's analysis of the peculiarities of the characters' speech and his study of the implication of film archetypes. Beth Anne Stanton's adherence to The Nurturer film archetype is characterized by the high frequency of implications of formal language vocabulary, appellatives, and second-person singular pronouns, as societal recognition of The Nurturer film archetype is crucial. The defining linguistic characteristics of Simone Grove as The Seductive Muse film archetype are the use of hyperbole, the high frequency of first-person singular and second-person pronouns, and the repeated use of interjections, as The Seductive Muse film archetype is characterized by the constant attention of the audience and the demonstration of the importance of her own personality and other characters. Taylor Harding as The Amazon film archetype is characterized by the use of sarcasm, irony, and speech marked by assertiveness and vulgarity, as the Amazon film archetype is always ready to defend its point of view and professionalism, sometimes aggressively, in order to assert dominance.

The Rising Vulnerability of Indonesian Language Culture: Analyzing the Encoded Politeness in the Use of Plural Second-Person Pronouns

This article explored the use of Indonesian pronouns by young people in Indonesia. The way in which they use pronouns erodes Indonesian culture encoded in Indonesian pronouns. They use the pronouns kamu (you, second-person singular pronoun), kalian (you, second-person plural pronoun), kita (we (you and me), first-person plural pronoun), and kami (we (not including you), first-person plural pronoun) that do not comply with Indonesian grammar. The data was collected by observing language used among the younger generation online and in everyday speech. The data was analyzed using a book on Indonesian grammar by A. M. Moeliono et al. The results discovered that Indonesian pronouns express politeness, particularly in the use of kamu and kalian (you, second-person plural pronouns), and the differences between first-person plural pronouns kita (we (you and me), first-person plural pronoun), and kami (we (not including you), first-person plural pronoun).
 Keywords: Indonesian Language, Pronoun, Culture, Politeness

Penggunaan Pronomina Persona dalam Takarir (Caption) Instagram @Jokowi dan Implikasinya terhadap Pembelajaran Bahasa Indonesia

<p class="4Abstrak">This study aims to analyze the use of personal pronouns in @Jokowi's Instagram caption and its implications for learning Bahasa, besides that the author also hopes that readers can understand the language and using pronouns according to Indonesian rules. The method used in this study is a qualitative descriptive method with content analysis techniques. Based on the results of research and analysis, it is known that the use of personal pronouns reached 127 findings from a total of 51 uploads studied, 7 uploads contained no use of personal pronouns. The findings of the first-person singular pronouns were 67 (53%), first-person singular pronouns 38 (30%), second-person singular pronouns 4 (3%) and plural 0 (0%), and the last is third-person pronouns. singular as many as 5 (4%) and plural as many as 13 (10%) findings.</p><p class="8Abstractcontent"> </p><p class="8Abstractcontent"><strong>Keywords:</strong> Pronouns, Persona Pronouns, Indonesian Language Learning, Instagram, Jokowi.</p>

“We” are in This Pandemic, but “You” can get Through This: The Effects of Pronouns on Likelihood to Stay-at-Home During COVID-19

We examine how first-person plural and second-person singular pronouns used in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) communications impact people's likelihood to follow stay-at-home recommendations. A 2 (first-person plural [“we”] vs. second-person singular [“you”]) by continuous trait self-control between-subjects experiment ( N = 223) was used to examine individuals’ adherence to stay-at-home recommendations. Results suggest that “you”-based appeals may be more broadly effective in garnering stay-at-home adherence, whereas low self-control individuals are less responsive to “we” appeals. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Using social-media data to investigate morphosyntactic variation and dialect syntax in a lesser-used language: Two case studies from Welsh

Data gathered from social media have been used extensively to examine lexical dialect variation in widely used languages such as English and Spanish, but their use to date in morphosyntax and for lesser-used languages has been more limited. This paper tests the usefulness of using data derived from Twitter to address traditional questions in dialect syntax and sociolinguistics. It uses two cases studies from Welsh – the form of the second-person singular pronoun in various syntactic contexts, and the availability of auxiliary deletion – to assess whether datasets based on Twitter data can successfully replicate and enhance results derived by traditional means. The results of the case studies coincide to a large extent with distributions established in existing studies, even ones using entirely different methods, such as dialect questionnaires or acceptability judgment tests. Twitter data also show considerable success in establishing implicational hierarchies and conditioning factors comparable to those typical of the field. Where the results differ from existing studies, the differences may be due to the younger demographics of Twitter users, or to differences in the quantity of data provided by different methodologies. The results produce patterns closer to spoken data than to written data, giving us reasonable confidence in such data as a relatively good proxy for spoken usage of large numbers of language users.

Pronoun Usage in Online Sexual Predation.

We investigated pronoun usage by sexual predators in their online interactions with "decoys" (i.e., adults identifying themselves as children). Computerized text analysis was conducted for 561 instant messaging conversations between contact-driven solicitation offenders (CDSOs) and decoys. CDSOs not only used significantly fewer first-person and more second-person singular pronouns than the decoys but also used more second-person pronouns than adult romantic partners discussing their courtship. The other-focused nature of CDSOs' text messages is consistent with theories of the luring process positing predators' emphasis on making their targets feel special to initiate the cycle of entrapment.

Investigating geospatial models of the diffusion of morphosyntactic innovations: The Welsh strong second-person singular pronounchdi

Morphosyntactic dialect variation, once a neglected area of dialect research, has recently witnessed a large growth in interest. Various methods from geospatial data analysis have been applied to morphosyntactic data. To date, the focus has largely been on analyzing the distribution of stable patterns of variation. This article extends this work to examine patterns of ongoing change. It uses a body of data from the Syntactic Atlas of Welsh Dialects and the Siarad Corpus of spoken Welsh to examine the innovation and diffusion of a new second-person singular pronoun,chdi, testing the usefulness of Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) as a method for identifying and modeling patterns of ongoing syntactic change. It is shown that GWR provides plausible models of the diachronic development of changes that are still in progress. Furthermore, it allows us to test whether rates of change are constant across geographical space, allowing us to test whether the Constant Rate Hypothesis (that diffusion of change proceeds at the same rate in different environments) holds between dialects.

Register and Forms of Address in Costa Rica: Sociolinguistic Realities and Pedagogical Implications

This article reports the findings of sociolinguistic research investigating the use of second-person singular pronouns in Costa Rica. The study was carried out onsite and involved 132 interviewees from all seven provinces of the country. These subjects reacted to scenarios in which they had to choose their preferred pronoun of use (usted, vos, or tu) when engaging with a variety of categories of interlocutors. Subjects then commented on the reasons for their preference/usage. The pronoun usted (Ud.) was overwhelmingly in evidence throughout the country, and the vos was also noticeably present in many cases. With both pronouns, context as well as other variables played a role in Spanish speakers’ pronoun selection. The pronoun tu was an extremely distant third and did not appear at all in the speech for many interlocutors. Given the prevalent paradigm of teaching tu in U.S. Spanish language classrooms and the near absence of vos, this study has important ramifications for Spanish instructors. Informing students of these patterns of pronoun use and including vos in the curriculum to some degree, particularly at higher levels, is recommended.

Let's talk about you and me

A recent development in Dutch concerns the deictic interpretation of the second-person singular pronounje, which may refer to the speaker only. In such examples the subject refers to the speaker – not the hearer – but at the same time, these examples come along with an implicature stating that the hearer would have done the same thing if s/he were in the speaker's situation. Why is it the case that a second-person singular pronoun may refer to the speaker only? And why is it that when speaker-referringjeis used, it always comes along with an implicature of the kind described above? In this article I argue that this behavior of Dutchjeis a consequence of its semantically unmarked status with respect to the first-person singular pronounik. Along the lines of Sauerland (2008), I propose that Dutchjeonly carries one feature, [PARTICIPANT], whereasikcarries two features: [SPEAKER] and [PARTICIPANT]. Consequently,jemay in principle refer to all participants in the conversation, enablingjeto refer to the speaker as well. The fact thatjedoes not normally refer to the speaker but to the hearer only then follows as some kind of blocking effect resulting from application of the principle of Maximize Presupposition. The paper concludes by spelling out the predictions that this analysis makes for the cross-linguistic variation with respect to the readings that participant and other pronouns may yield.

Pronoun Use Reflects Standings in Social Hierarchies

Five studies explored the ways relative rank is revealed among individuals in small groups through their natural use of pronouns. In Experiment 1, four-person groups worked on a decision-making task with randomly assigned leadership status. In Studies 2 and 3, two-person groups either worked on a task or chatted informally in a get-to-know-you session. Study 4 was a naturalistic study of incoming and outgoing e-mail of 9 participants who provided information on their correspondents’ relative status. The last study examined 40 letters written by soldiers in the regime of Saddam Hussein. Computerized text analyses across the five studies found that people with higher status consistently used fewer first-person singular, and more first-person plural and second-person singular pronouns. Natural language use during group interaction suggests that status is associated with attentional biases, such that higher rank is linked with other-focus whereas lower rank is linked with self-focus.

God and the Poet Transposed: The Thou-I Chiasmus in George Herbert’s Poetry

God and the Poet Transposed: The Thou-I Chiasmus in George Herbert’s Poetry Kensei Nishikawa Of the many intriguing features of Herbert’s poetry, one we immediately notice is how often the relationship between the speaker and God is couched in dialogical terms, that is on a thou-I basis. From “thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine / And sanctify this ALTAR to be thine,” of “The Altar” to “You must sit down . . . and taste my meat” of “Love” (III), Herbert’s poems are marked by the presence of the first- and second-person singular pronouns.1 According to James Boyd White, these two words, “as radically necessary to speech of any kind . . . as any we could name [are] made essential throughout ‘The Church.’”2 More specifically, of their possessive forms mine and thine, William Nestrick writes that they are “the formula of formulas” and “the central rhetorical topos of Herbert’s poetry.”3 As long as religious faith can be regarded as love between a believer and God and as such it is little different from any intimate relationship, we need not be surprised at the frequent appearances of thou (or you) and I in his poems, but what strikes me as remarkably Herbertian is the skillful way he places those pronouns notably in chiasmus, with the effect of making that thou-I relationship into a hieroglyphic structure. That chiastic pattern is what I would like to explore in this essay. In considering the attractions chiasmus offered to the poet, it may be useful to confirm some of the names under which this ABBA figure has been known, together with their etymologies. The word chiasmus originally meant in Greek the arrangement of words in the form of χ (chi), the letter in the Greek alphabet having the shape of a cross as well as being Christ’s monogram.4 The significance of this cannot be missed by any Christian writer, including Herbert, given that the Cross is at the center of the salvific relationship between God and a believer. No less worthy of note for the present discussion is the term antimetabole, which Herbert would have been familiar with for this figure.5 Consisting of the Greek anti (άνγί) and metabole (μ∈ταβख़λή), the word literally means “turning around in the opposite direction.” This notion was well conveyed when George Puttenham in The Art of English Poesy (1589) applied the word “counterchange” in anglicizing the term.6 Thus, chiasmus was understood to be a device that involved the sense of reciprocation, or re-turning or re-versing. [End Page 55] It is this sense of reciprocation, or to use Max Nänny’s words, the figure’s usability as an “ ‘emblem’ or icon of reversal or inversion,” that must have attracted Herbert to chiasmus.7 If Herbert’s spirituality is characterized by reciprocity, where his speaker as I calls out to God as thee and God responds to him in return, it was only natural for the poet to use the figure capable of suggesting such mutuality. Moreover, as a Christian poet Herbert had his texts “readie-penn’d” (“Jordan” [II], l. 17) in the Bible from which he could “copie” and learn how to use the figure. According to Ruth apRoberts, chiasmi offer the “commonest example of reversibility” in Hebrew poetry, and Psalms are no exception.8 Moreover, since many of them address God directly in the second person, Psalms often contain chiasmi involving thou and I. To list but a few examples: “I have called upon thee, O God, for thou shalt hear me” (Psalm 17:6); “O Lord my God, I cryed unto thee: and thou hast healed me” (Psalm 30:2); and “Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord; and my mouth shall shew thy praise” (Psalm 51:15). Those and other Psalms must have served as a model for Herbert as he sought to translate the divine-human intimacy into a poetical structure. In this connection one may remember that in his version of the 23rd Psalm the poet has added a chiastic line that is not in the original (“he is mine and I am his” [l. 3]): though God is referred to in the third, not in...

Choosing Thou or You to Reveal Ideal Relationships in “The Knight’s Tale”

Choosing Thou or You to Reveal Ideal Relationships in “The Knight’s Tale” Raychel Haugrud Reiff If a noble person living in fourteenth century England attended a party and thanked the host by saying, “I thank you for inviting me to your wonderful party,” the host would willingly accept the guest’s gratitude. But if the guest said, “I thank thee for inviting me to thy wonderful party,” the host would be offended, thinking either that the guest was mocking him or that the visitor had no manners. On the other hand, if a fourteenth-century noble person’s son or daughter gave the party and the parent said, “I thank you for inviting me to your wonderful party,” the child would hurt, questioning why the parent was acting in such a cold manner. But if the parent said, “I thank thee for inviting me to thy wonderful party,” the son or daughter would be happy. Thou and you pronouns could not be used interchangeably by the English noble men and women of Chaucer’s time. Addressing a person with the correct pronoun was extremely important; in fact, proper pronoun usage was part of the chivalric ideal that showed “both the social awareness of the speaker and the relationship between the speaker and the person addressed.”1 In the fourteenth century, the second-person singular pronoun had two forms: thou/thee/thy and ye/you/your, with thou and ye being used as subjects of clauses, thee and you as objects of clauses, and thy and your as possessives. This is not the way in which the English language was originally spoken. In the era of Old English and early Middle English times, these same pronouns were used, but the pronoun you was always plural while thou was singular. But starting in the late thirteenth century, English-speaking people began using the plural you when speaking to a single person to signify a polite but distant relationship between members of the upper class, or to address a person of a higher rank, or to display emotional coldness. Thou pronouns continued to be spoken, but they now demonstrated either a close intimacy or social distancing. English linguistics professor David Crystal explains these distinctions: [End Page 69] The you forms would normally be used: *by people of lower social status to those above them (e.g., ordinary people to nobles, children to parents, servants to masters); *by the upper classes when talking to each other, even if they were closely related; *as a sign of a change (contrasting with thou) in the emotional temperature of an interaction. The thou forms would normally be used: *by people of higher social status to those below them (e.g., nobles to ordinary people, parents to children, masters to servants); *by the lower classes when talking to each other; *in addressing God; *in talking to ghosts, witches, and other supernatural beings; *in an imaginary address to someone who was absent; *as a sign of a change (contrasting with you) in the emotional temperature of an interaction.2 Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale” demonstrates this usage; it is a medieval romance that shows ideal relationships since the tale is, as critic W. A. Davenport writes, “the epitome of the fourteenth-century court poem, expressing in wide-ranging poetic language the interest in chivalry of the court of Edward III, combining military techniques and courtly practices with elaborate rituals of love.”3 In this romance, which critic Laurel Amtower claims “may well represent the most penetrating critique of identities and their idealized form in the entire Canterbury Tales,”4 the knights and ladies, who are all honorable, display model relationships with people, including other members of the gentility, sworn brothers, and courtly lovers; with the natural world; and with the gods. Part of their ideal code of behavior includes the way they speak to one another, something the fourteenth-century knight Geoffroi de Charney, author of Livre de Chevalerie or Book of Chivalry, claimed was a requirement of chivalry because knights, he writes, must always seek honor “while maintaining in word and deed and in all places their honor and status.”5 One way Chaucer shows...

Erratum to Kashima and Kashima (1998) and Reiteration

The relationships between cultural dimensions and the language use involving pronoun drop (whether the subject of a sentence can be dropped when it is a personal pronoun) and the number of second-person singular pronouns (2PS) available in a language (one or multiple) reported by Kashima and Kashima were reexamined by using a new, correct coding for Hindi and Urdu. The reanalysis reconfirmed the major part of our previous results but indicated the need to revise the previous report that the availability of multiple 2PS pronouns was associated with higher Integration, namely, harmonious interpersonal relationships. The new analysis showed that availability of multiple 2PS and Integration were independent of each other.

‘Sam of Streatham Park’

This paper discusses Samuel Johnson's membership in the Thrale family circle from the perspective of his language use. The focus of the study is on the degree of linguistic involvement that is revealed in Johnson's personal letters to his correspondents. The hypothesis is that the more involved the communication situation is, the more such markers as evidential verbs, degree adverbs and first- and second-person singular pronouns are used. The results are compared with Randy C. Bax's (2000) study on the network strength scale of the Streathamites. The results suggest that involvement can serve as a relevant indicator of the closeness of the relationship between two people.

Involvement Vs Detachment: Gender Differences in the Use of Personal Pronouns in Televised Sports in Taiwan

Based on 24 hours of videotaped data, this study investigates, both qualitatively and quantitatively, gender differences in the use of person pronouns in televised sports in Taiwan. This analysis has found that, regardless of their speaker role, male sports reporters use the second-person singular pronoun nimuch more frequently than their female counterparts. In addition, there is a significant difference in the distribution ofpragmatic functions of nibetween men’s and women’s reporting. While male sports reporters use niin a more varied way, i.e. to refer to the TV audience, a specific athlete or team, an indefinite or non-specific athlete, or to include this pronoun in direct speech to dramatize their reporting, female reporters use this pronoun predominately to referto a non-specific athlete. In other words, male sports reporters tend to employ impersonal niand dramatic nito signal their strong self-involvement, their interpersonal involvement with the athlete and the TV audience, and their involvement with the reported sports event. Finally, malesports reporters’ more frequent use of the second-person pronoun niin the data also marks their informal and conversational speech style.This result contradicts those previous studies which claim that formality and detachment characterize men’s information-oriented public discourse.

From solidarity to antagonism: The uses of the second-person singular pronoun in Chinese political discourse

Based on videotaped data from two televized Taipei mayoral debates from 1998, this study examines, both qualitatively and quantitatively, how the use of the second-person singular pronoun ni ‘you’ by three Taiwanese politicians reflects their attitudes and relations toward other participants as well as their perceptions of the interactive goals of the speech activity. My analysis has found that compared with the first debate, the frequency of ni in the second debate increased from 63 to 221. More importantly, the functions of ni in these two debates are very different. In the first debate, more than 60 percent of the occurrences of ni are used by the three debaters either to address the audience/voters or to refer to an indefinite person (i.e., the impersonal ni), thereby establishing solidarity with the audience or voters. In contrast, more than 80 percent of the occurrences of ni in the second debate (which took place only four days before the election) are used when debaters address their opponents directly to challenge or attack them. I suggest that the different uses of ni in the two debates signal that the interactive goal of the debate has changed from establishing or reinforcing solidarity with the audience to expressing antagonism and confrontation vis-a`-vis one’s opponent. In addition, the different uses of ni among the three mayoral candidates also reflect their distinct communicative styles, e.g., casual or formal.

A Note on τύνη

The Doric form of the second-person singular pronoun, τύνη, appears infrequently in Ancient Greek literature, and then primarily in dactylic hexameter poetry. Studying this pronoun like an Homeric formula, we find that it serves to mark a pronounced shift not only in addressee but also in realm (mortal, heroic, divine).

Culture and Language

The relationship between culture and language was examined across 39 languages spoken in 71 cultures. Correlations were computed across languages and cultures between the use of first- and second-person singular pronouns (e.g., "I" and "you") and global cultural dimensions such as Individualism, which were previously extracted in large-scale cross-cultural surveys. The personal pronouns were analyzed in terms of the number of first- and second-person singular pronouns and whether the pronouns can be dropped when used as the subject of a sentence in speech. Cultures with pronoun drop languages tended to be less Individualistic than those with nonpronoun drop languages. The number of personal pronouns correlated with some cultural dimensions that reflected different conceptions of the person. Personal deixis (person-indexing pronouns) may provide a window through which cultural practices can be investigated.