Use Of Personal Pronouns Research Articles

Speaking for the downtrodden

Abstract Most linguistic studies of political speaking in the field of critical discourse analysis tend to focus on speeches delivered by prominent politicians either in a domestic party-political setting or in the international arena. Less attention has been afforded to speeches by civil rights activists and campaigners for other progressive causes. To fill this gap, the present paper focuses on political speaking occurring outside of the party-political setting. The data comprises 120 American activist speeches from the years 1808–2016. The analysis focuses on the construction of ingroups and outgroups, and whether the use of personal pronouns is affected by the type of audience. The frequency trends bring forth new information about the referential complexity of pronouns within individual speeches.

“I have known….” A Corpus-driven Study of Personal Pronouns in Letters of Recommendation in an L2 Context

In recent times, there has been an upsurge of scholarly attention on hitherto occluded genres such as the Letter of Recommendation (LoR). Although several studies have been conducted on the LoR, studies on lexico-grammatical features are rare. This study, therefore, adopts a corpus-driven approach to examine the use of personal pronouns (PPs) in LoRs written by Ghanaian academics. A specialized corpus of LoR, totalling approximately twenty thousand (20, 000) running words was created for this study. The concordance tool in AntConc (v. 3.2.4.) was employed to search for all instances of PPs in the corpus. The concordance lines were manually examined to determine the referents of the PPs. The study revealed the diversity of PP resources in LoRs. It was also found that the PPs were mainly recommender-oriented, recommendee-oriented, or requester-oriented, culminating in a proposed model of discourse-internal and external participants in LoRs. Again, the study revealed that LoR is typified by singular PPs, reflecting the fact that it is mainly authored by an individual for an individual. The findings have implications for the pragmatics of PPs and the scholarship on LoR. It is thus recommended that an intercultural study of LoR be undertaken to establish variations in the use of personal pronouns. Keywords: Corpus Linguistics, L2 Context, Letter of recommendation, English for Specific Purposes

Tumors, Treatments, and Trust: Cancer Characteristics, Outcomes, and Screening Uptake in Transgender and Gender-Diverse Patients.

More than 2.5 million adults in the United States identify as transgender or gender-diverse (TGD), but little data exist on cancer screening and care for this population. We examined cancer characteristics, screening adherence, genetic testing, and provider inclusive language for TGD patients with cancer. This single institution retrospective cohort study identified TGD patients with cancer between 2000 and 2022. Demographic, clinicopathological, treatment, and screening data were collected, as well as data on gender-affirming care (GAC) and use of patients' personal pronouns in medical records. Descriptive statistics and regression analyses were used to report outcomes. Sixty unique patients with 69 cancer diagnoses were included: 63.3% were transgender women, 21.7% transgender men, 6.7% nonbinary, and 8.3% were genderqueer. Sixty-five percent had a family history of cancer. Only 46.2% of thosewho met genetic testing criteria were referred. On review of recommended cancer screening, colorectal screening had the greatest uptake (62%), followed by breast (48.3%), lung (35.7%), cervical (33.3%), and prostate (32%); 8.5% of cancers were diagnosed on screening. Individuals with Medicare had reduced odds of screening uptake (OR 0.07, 95% CI 0.01-0.58) versus private insurance. With respect to GAC, 73.3% used gender-affirming hormone therapy and 41% had gender-affirming surgery. After initiating GAC and asserting personal pronouns, 75% were referred to by incorrect name/pronouns in provider documentation. Our TGD cancer patient cohort had low rates of disease-specific cancer screening and inadequate genetic referrals.Many providers did not use appropriate patient names/pronouns. Provider and patient interventions are needed to ensure inclusive preventative and oncologic care for this marginalized population.

More personal, but not better: The personalization effect in learning neutral and aversive health information

AbstractBackgroundAccording to the personalization effect in multimedia learning, the use of personal and possessive pronouns in instructional materials (e.g., ‘you’ and ‘your’) is beneficial. However, current research suggests that the personalization effect is inverted for emotionally aversive content (e.g., illnesses).ObjectiveThis study investigates whether a beneficial personalization effect can be observed for emotionally neutral health‐related content whereas the effect may be reversed for emotionally aversive health‐related content.MethodsIn this study, 139 university students learned both emotionally aversive learning content on type 1 diabetes (within‐factor) that was presented in either personalized or non‐personalized language (between‐factor). The presentation order of the content (neutral first vs. aversive first) was controlled (between‐factor), resulting in a 2 × 2 × 2 mixed design. The dependent variables measured include learning outcomes (regarding retention and transfer), state anxiety, extraneous cognitive load, motivation and learning time.Results and ConclusionsIn the transfer test, learners generally performed better when learning with non‐personalized instructional materials than with personalized instructional materials, regardless of whether the content was emotionally neutral or aversive. The results raise questions regarding the robustness of the personalization effect and the underlying mechanisms of the inverted personalization effect. An alternative explanation to be investigated is whether the direct reference to a disease that the participants do not have (here: ‘your type 1 diabetes’) leads to schema interference, which could be responsible for poorer learning performance—even if the learning content about the disease can be considered emotionally neutral.

“We are 9 degrees and sunny”: the use of personal pronouns with weather predicates

AbstractThis squib discusses a construction heard during weather reports on CBC Radio One in Manitoba whereby personal pronouns appear as the subjects of weather predicates. We show that the use of we/you in statements like we are minus 15 degrees and Brandon, you are sunny is unlike other non-prototypical uses for personal pronouns that have been noted in the literature and argue they index place rather than person. We note that the deictic coordinates of the utterance that are spelled out by these pronouns are necessary for a felicitous interpretation of weather statements, even though they are typically implicit. This implicit deixis, in turn, sheds light on a long-standing claim that weather-it, in contrast to a true expletive, is ‘quasi-argumental’ (Chomsky 1981). That is, we suggest that the deictic coordinates of an utterance are ‘quasi-arguments’.

Writer and participant visibility in quantitative and qualitative research: a corpus-assisted study of human agent verbs in health science publications

Abstract Quantitative and qualitative research writing is thought to differ in a number of ways, which include the visibility given to the human agents involved, that is, writers and participants in the study. However, most studies have so far centred on writer visibility alone, which has been measured principally through personal pronoun use. This paper approaches the issue of writer and participant visibility in one area of research where both quantitative and qualitative methods are frequent, namely health sciences. A new methodology is applied, based on the presence of verbs that imply a human agent and thus potentially offer an opportunity for writer or participant visibility. Two corpora are built to represent quantitative and qualitative research writing in health sciences, and quantitative data are obtained. Exploration of the most frequent human-agent verbs, their active uses and their subjects shows that both quantitative and qualitative researchers in health science maintain low writer visibility, but that both writers and participants are more visible in the case of studies using qualitative methodology. These findings are discussed in the light of the bibliography, and pointers are provided for future research. The contribution of the present paper to corpus-assisted research on academic writing is highlighted. Finally, some applications for teaching scientific writing at graduate level are proposed.

German demonstrative pronouns differ in their sensitivity to discourse and sentence topics

German has two demonstrative pronoun series: the short form der, die, das, and the long form dieser, diese, dieses. Both forms can be used anaphorically, and they contrast with the personal pronouns er, sie, es in that they refer to an antecedent that is less prominent at that point in the discourse when the discourse provides different potential antecedents. Demonstrative pronouns are typically used in the preverbal position in a German sentence, i.e., the topic position. Thus, they are assumed to be topic shifters (from a non-topical antecedent to the topical argument in the current sentence). However, der can be repeated, yielding topic chains, thus referring back to a topical antecedent, while this is not the case for dieser. In this article, we argue that der and dieser both contribute to topic management, but they do this in different ways: der is a marker of a sentence topic, while dieser is a marker of discourse topic shift. We present the results of two experiments that compare the use of personal pronouns with either demonstrative pronoun manipulating sentence topic or discourse topic. First, both experiments show that the personal pronoun is not sensitive to either type of topichood of its antecedent. Second, Experiment 1 shows that both demonstrative pronouns prefer a context where discourse topic and sentence topic are shifted. Third, Experiment 2 shows that only dieser prefers a context with a shifted discourse topic, but der is not sensitive to discourse topichood alone. We take the results as supporting our claim that the two demonstratives have different discourse functions: der marks a sentence topic, while dieser is a shifter (and marker) of the discourse topic.

Do Sitcom Conversations Fully Depict Those in Natural Settings: A Corpus-Based Lexical Analysis

An increasing number of studies in pragmatics, second language acquisition, and related fields have opted to use sitcom conversations as a substitute for natural conversations in their analyses. However, few studies have critically examined the validity of this substitution. Taking this into consideration, the present study aims to examine the lexical similarities and differences between sitcom and natural conversations by utilizing the Friends Corpus and the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English as samples under a synthesized analytic framework of six lexical categories that have been frequently examined in previous research. The findings indicate that there are significant differences between sitcom and natural conversations at the lexical level, particularly in terms of word lengths, keywords, and the use of discourse markers, personal pronouns, vocatives, and religious words. While sitcom conversations tend to be more concise, interactive, evaluative, and involving, natural conversations provide more explanations for their speech acts and refer to their parties who are not present in the conversations. Additionally, sitcom conversations use more intensifiers and vocatives while using fewer tentative modals, expletives, and religious words. Based on these results, it can be concluded that sitcom conversations do not fully depict the conversations in sitcoms, and thus substituting natural conversations with those in sitcoms should be approached with caution in language teaching and research. This study provides insight into the differences in lexical patterns between two types of conversations, and highlights the importance of using natural conversations as a basis for language teaching and research.

EVALUATING THE COMMUNICATIVE VALUES OF PERSONAL PRONOUNS

Personal pronouns have various uses in English grammar and communication. However, experiences have shown that many learners of English as a second language, especially students in Nigerian schools have problems with the effective use of personal pronouns in spoken and written communication even though adequate knowledge of the personal pronouns and usage is crucial to individual student’s educational advancement and sustainable national development in this country. This article is therefore aimed at minimizing the problem encountered in the use of personal pronouns. To achieve this, the paper critically examined the concept of personal pronouns with copious illustrations. Finally, some recommendations were made that will serve as a guide to learners of English as a second language (students in particular) on the proper use of personal pronouns.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0758/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

EXPLORING PRONOUN USAGE ERRORS IN ENGLISH WRITING: A CASE STUDY OF THAI UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

This research examines the errors in the use of personal pronouns in English writing by third and fourth- year students from the Faculty of Engineering, Rajamangala University of Technology Rattanakosin. The study focuses on 85 students who registered for the English Writing course in the second semester of the 2022 academic year. The objectives of the research are to identify the errors in pronoun usage among the students and provide recommendations for improving their English writing skills based on grammatical principles. The research findings reveal three main types of errors. The most common type of error is "misformation" which refers to cases when students construct incorrect pronoun patterns. This type of error accounts for 66.66% of the total errors and ranks first among all types. The second most prevalent error is "omission," which involves instances in which students skip or omit pronouns. This type of error occurs 25% of the errors and ranks second in frequency. The third type of error is "addition," which occurs when students add unnecessary pronouns. This type of error represents 6.94% of the errors and ranks third. The analysis of pronoun errors in the English writing of Thai students provides valuable insights into common issues in pronoun usage and offers suggestions for enhancing their writing skills.

MANAGING HUMAN-TO-HUMAN APPROACH WITH NO HUMANS PRESENT: A LOOK INTO POLITE FORMS OF ADDRESS IN SOFTWARE LOCALIZATION

Using examples extracted from the author’s work on software localization i n the field of automobile industry (English translated into Serbian Serbia locale), this presentation centres on the issue of polite forms of address. Since software localization relies on the resources from linguistics, business and marketing, and informa tion technologies, politeness is considered in relation to all three aspects: 1) as an important element of human to human approach to marketing, whereby 2) the use of personal pronouns has to be taken into account considering the differences between Engli sh and Serbian, and contextualized within 3) the largely impersonal process of localization itself. The analysis of the examples aims at defining certain patterns which could potentially facilitate practical work in this branch of translation studies.

"The Art of Monologue" is published in The Short Novel of Mullazm Tahsin and other things by Farhad Pirbal.

This study، titled "The Art of Monologue" is published in The Short Novel of Mullazm Tahsin and Other Things by Farhad Pirbal. It is clear that the art of monologue between narrative theories in modern and modern literature is unique، because it has direct contact with other elements within the novel، especially the characters. Although this art existed in other classical narrative genres، it only included a simple and more external form of the characters، so along with the appearance of theories. Psychologists and psychoanalysis (Freud، Jung and Adler... He has been involved in literary studies in general and novels in particular. The art of monologue is separated by the use of cross-sections and personal pronouns according to the type of monologue that changes، sometimes it wants the writer to express a monologue in a way that the writer makes a sound، and he speaks in his face، because many writers think that it is a disorder of the monologue. Among them is Adon، so monologue is a very important technology، and for today the novel is very important by the novelists، because the individual can go deep inside the character، the thought، the mind، the heart، the mind، the heart، he is the one who hears the word، and he hears it. It has expanded into novels. In this study، it is briefly mentioned that some of the important opinions of foreign and Kurdish scholars and writers about monologues and genres in novels، so it is important for us to understand how Kurdish literature and our novelists felt the importance and necessity of this technical art of narration، as well as how Farhad Pirbal embodied and reflected it in his short novel (Molazm Tahsin and Other Things).

The Old Man and the Sea Revisited in a Linguistic Perspective

Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea was published in 1952 and won the Nobel Prize for Literature two years later. As an excellent work created by Hemingway, the language style of the Old Man and the Sea highlights Hemingway’s literary characteristics. He likes to use simple and colloquial language and flexible collocation of verbs and nouns to drive the plot development of the story, and then combine various rhetorical devices with his own language style to enrich the ideas of the whole novel. Many creative skills make the whole novel memorable, fully show the linguistic features of the Old Man and the Sea. From the perspective of linguistics, this paper analyzes the unique aesthetic style created by the powerful expression techniques in the novel. This paper analyzes the novel from two perspectives: linguistic features and metaphorical meaning. In terms of linguistic features, this paper mainly analyzes the concise language style, the ingenious use of personal pronouns and the appropriate code-switching. In terms of metaphorical meaning, this paper mainly analyzes the metaphorical meaning of the old man, the sea, the shark and marlin and the lion in this novel.

Representation of the “business‐self”: Professionals’ construction of multifaceted identities in written business communication

AbstractThis study explores professionals’ construction of their multifaceted identities as representatives of their corporations in business writing. The self‐mention framework is applied to explore the representation of the “business‐self” which I propose encompasses the projection of individual, collective, and corporate identities. A corpus of 100 CEO's letter to shareholders was examined for the use of personal pronouns and company referential terms and collocation analysis performed to understand the surrounding discourse contexts. The findings reveal a distinct hierarchy of identities; US business professionals communicate with stakeholders by immersing themselves in the identity of the collective and make a concerted effort to project the corporate identity, whereas representation of the individual self is minimal. The study provides important insights into the identity construction work undertaken by professionals in authentic business texts and the findings can help inform English for Specific Purposes (ESP) practitioners of business communication courses in higher education.

‘Malgré la pandémie’

This article presents an analysis of the 2021 New Year address to the nation given by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, after nine months of the COVID-19 crisis. The theoretical perspective used is systemic functional linguistics, and comparisons are made with my prior analysis of his address for the previous year. The study focuses on Macron’s use of personal pronouns. It was found that the first-person singular subject pronoun, je, occurs predominantly with mental processes, but that the plural subject pronoun, nous, occurs more frequently, and that the dominant process type is material. Further, whereas the first-person singular is rarely present other than as the subject, the first-person plural frequently occurs as a possessive. Thus, as is common in Macron’s discourse more generally, je is avoided in favour of nous, and Macron plays on the ambiguity of this pronoun to draw the public into shared responsibility for governmental policy. One difference with the 2020 address is that here he uses few expressions of modality, and these are rarely deontic (obligation), most being dynamic (physical possibility).

Pronoun use in preclinical and early stages of Alzheimer's dementia

The present study aims at improving the predictive power of the use of pronouns in computational modeling of the risk of Alzheimer's dementia (AD) by (i) further determining the onset of increased pronoun use in AD and (ii) providing insights into the linguistic contexts affected by the increase early on. Pronoun use was compared longitudinally between subjects who either stayed cognitively intact (CTR-group, n = 5) or who had developed AD upon follow-up after 10–12 years (AD-group, n = 5). Data were taken from semi-structured biographical interviews, which stem from the Interdisciplinary Longitudinal Study on Adult Development and Aging (ILSE). The first interview (baseline) was conducted when all participants were still cognitively healthy. Analyses concerned the proportional distribution of 12 pronoun types and linguistic contexts of increased use. Already at baseline, the AD-group produced a significantly higher proportion of D-pronouns (der, die, das, etc.) than the CTR-group. The increase in D-pronouns did not affect linguistic contexts favoring the use of personal pronouns. Instead, we found a significantly higher proportion of D-pronouns referring to family members and a significantly higher proportion of personal pronouns referring to non-family humans in the AD-group than in the CTR-group. Our results suggest that the predictive power of the use of pronouns can be significantly improved in computational modeling of the risk of AD by assessing language material that induces the use of pronouns in linguistic contexts affected by the increase.

‘YES, WE CAN’: THE USE OF DEICTIC UTTERANCES IN THE INAUGURAL SPEECH OF PRESIDENT NANA ADDO DANKWA AKUFO-ADDO

The study examines President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo's use of personal pronouns to create different identities and to sway public opinion, and support for a political goal in his inaugural address. The goal of the study is to identify the individual to whom the President is referring when he employs the personal pronoun ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘you’, and ‘we’. The key emphasis of the study is to determine whom the President refers to when he uses the personal pronouns I and me, you, and us from the three-tier analytical framework of Fairclough (1980) thus description, interpretation, and explanation. The results suggest that the pronominal choices and their referent swing greatly depending on the context of the speech. The findings reveal the ideologies that Nana Addo aims to espouse. Again, the findings have far-reaching consequences for inaugural address research as a tool for understanding the relationship between rhetorical substance and style and the characteristics unique to presidential political and social perspectives.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0014/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Variations in the use of personal pronoun agreement in Acehnese: A sociolinguistic approach

This study aims to identify variations in the use of personal pronoun agreements in the Acehnese language based on a sociolinguistic approach, by focusing on the North Aceh dialect. A descriptive-qualitative method was used and data were collected through interviews. These interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using the sociolinguistic approach by structure and semantics. The results of the study showed that the personal pronouns of the Acehnese language are influenced by social factors such as age, social status, and familiarity. In the context of the age factor, there are variations in the use of personal pronoun agreements related to communication patterns between the younger and older generations. In social interactions with differences in social status, the use of personal pronoun agreements that reflect respect and recognition of social status is more dominant. Meanwhile, in familiarity, the use of more formal or informal personal pronouns depends on the degree of familiarity between the speakers. Overall, variations in the use of agreement personal pronouns in the Acehnese language are influenced by sociolinguistic factors that reflect social dynamics, cultural norms, and relationships between individuals. Understanding these variations can provide better insight into social interactions, social hierarchies, and familiarity norms in Acehnese society.

Syntactic Characteristic Analysis of Colloquial Makassar Indonesian Based on the Use of Personal Pronoun Affixes: From Interference to Borrowing

This paper will prove the existence of colloquial Makassar Indonesian (CMI) by showing its syntactic characteristics based on the use of personal pronoun affixes. This is very interesting and important because in general colloquial Indonesian languages are spoken in other cities in Indonesia, for example Jakarta, Manado, Ambon, etc. is a subsystem of the Indonesian language (hereinafter abbreviated as IND), but CMI is really a subsystem or subvariant of the Makassar language (MAK), the mother tongue of the Makassarese people. Therefore, it is not easy for Makassar newcomers to master this CMI. To master it, they must first learn the basic rules of MAK syntax. The fundamental thing in this case is the change in language typology, namely CMI has been proven to have adopted the V-S-O (Verb-Subject-Object) typology of MAK. Meanwhile, IND has the S-V-O (Subject-Predicate-Object) typology. This happened because there was language contact between MAK and Malay (now IND), a language which became the forerunner to the birth of IND as the national language and the state language of the Republic of Indonesia. In this case, at first Makassar city residents tried to use Malay, but with MAK syntactic interference. Gradually this form of interference became the entry point for the borrowing of the MAK syntactic subsystem in the IND speeches of Makassar city residents. IND utterances with the characteristics of MAK syntax then become the characteristics of CMI, which has now reached the level of integration and convergence.

A Corpus-based Study of Personal Pronouns in Shakespeare's Plays

Based on corpus comparative analysis of Shakespeare’s plays Zhu Shenghao and Liang Shiqiu’s translations of Shakespeare’s plays in terms of personal pronouns. The analysis reveals that Liang Shiqiu chooses more explicit personal pronouns, while Zhu Shenghao pays more attention to the divine rhythm of the translation. Compared with the two translations, the use of personal pronouns in Liang Shiqiu’s translation is more frequent. Thereby analyzing the influencing factors of this phenomenon, the study shows that the differences between Chinese and English languages, the subjectivity of translators and social factors affect the explicit pronouns in translation and variation.