Grammar and function of<i>we</i>

Helmbrecht, Johannes

doi:10.1075/pbns.98.03hel

Cited by 86 publications

(17 citation statements)

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“…Virtual team members faced with a difficult coworker (a confederate instructed to create a negative impression) frequently used “we” and “you” pronouns (Yilmaz, 2014). Pragmatic theory (Helmbrecht, 2002) and qualitative research in organizational settings (Kane & Levina, 2017) points out that the pronoun “we” tends to be used in an inclusive way, but it can also be used to exclude others, as in this case with virtual team members embracing each other and distancing from the difficult member. Demmans Epp, Phirangee, and Hewitt (2017) found that greater use of pronouns in a classroom online discussion was related to more posting and replies and suggested that use of pronouns created more social presence and reduced psychological distance.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language and Group Processes: An Integrative, Interdisciplinary Review

Swol

Kane

2018

Small Group Research

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This article reviews research that examines the use of language in small interacting groups and teams. We propose a model of group inputs (e.g., status), processes and emergent states (e.g., cohesion, influence, and innovation), and outputs (e.g., group effectiveness and member well-being) to help structure our review. The model is integrated with how language is used by groups to both reflect group inputs but also to examine how language interacts with inputs to affect group processes and create emergent states in groups, and then ultimately helps add value to the group with outputs (e.g., performance). Using cross-disciplinary research, our review finds that language is integral to how groups coordinate, interrelate, and adapt. For example, language convergence is related to increased group cohesion and group performance. Our model provides the theoretical scaffolding to consider language use in interacting small groups and suggests areas for future research.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language and Group Processes: An Integrative, Interdisciplinary Review

Swol

Kane

2018

Small Group Research

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“…The findings in the current study highlight how the authors of the four focal textbooks use we to shape discursive representations of inclusivity and exclusivity. As the most complex and ambiguous pronoun (Helmbrecht, 2002), we affords the authors a linguistic flexibility to fluidly shuttle between ‘reflexive’ and ‘interactive’ positioning (Davies & Harré, 1999) and to concomitantly (re)draw the boundaries of ‘self’ and ‘other’ in their narratives. Taking on different we -positions, the authors negotiate and define who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ of the imagined construction of community or culture, because ‘pronouns can never be extracted from the political process of naming [and imagining] a self, selves, and others’ (Pennycook, 1994, p. 175).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They maintain that we is used not only referring exclusively to the speaker, but also referring to a group that excludes the speaker. Helmbrecht (2002) views we as ‘the most complex category of all person categories’ (p. 33) and discusses its functions for interlocutors’ identification with and membership to social groups. Pavlidou’s (2014) recent volume brings together studies that investigate the function of we , ‘the dynamic process of constructing – delineating, reconstructing, de-constructing, etc.…”

Section: Analytical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inclusive and exclusive uses of we in four American textbooks for multicultural teacher education

Üzüm

Yazan

Selvi

2017

Language Teaching Research

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This study analyses four American multicultural teacher education textbooks for instances of inclusive and exclusive representations through the use of first person plural pronouns (i.e. we, us, our, ours). Positioning theory is used as a theoretical framework to examine the textbook authors’ uses of first person plural pronouns and to understand how these pronouns perform reflexive and interactive positioning and fluidly (re)negotiate and (re)delineate the borders between ‘self’ and ‘other.’ The findings suggest that first person plural pronouns are used extensively in the focal textbooks to refer to such groups as authors, Americans, humans, teachers, and teacher educators. Expressing differing levels of ambiguity in interpretation, these pronouns play significant roles in the discursive representations of inclusivity and exclusivity across topics of multicultural education. This study implicates that language teachers should use criticality and reflexivity when approaching exclusionary discourses and representations that neglect the particularities of individuals from different cultures.

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“…Wortham (1996: 333) argues that ‘we’ represents the speaker as a central or defining member of the group that he or she speaks on behalf of and explains this effect based on the double indexicality of personal pronouns also posited by Mühlhäusler and Harré (1990: 92): Personal pronouns are spatial-temporally anchored in the here and now and also in the pragmatic domain of the speaker’s responsibilities for illocutionary force and perlocutionary effects. That we-pronouns are connected to the establishment of social groups is demonstrated by Helmbrecht (2002: 42).…”

Section: Theoretical Background: Party Conference Speeches and The Comentioning

confidence: 96%

‘Today I offer you, and we offer the country a new vision’: The strategic use of first person pronouns in party conference speeches of the Third Way

Kranert

2017

Discourse & Society

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This article aims to fill a gap in the existing research by analysing the construction of leadership and group identity in a corpus of 13 party conference speeches by the party leaders of the German SPD and the British Labour party between 1997 and 2003. The comparative approach chosen will demonstrate the context sensitivity and strategic use of the pronominal selfreferences. The article will demonstrate how changes of pronominal self-reference in party conference speeches can be understood as strategic changes of footing (Goffman, 1981) to foreground either the voice of the party leader or the voice of the party. It will conclude with the results of an analysis of the combination of pronominal self-references and verb forms construing competence and responsiveness, as suggested by Fetzer and Bull (2012), and demonstrates that these verb forms are used differently in combination with the various forms of self-reference, a fact neglected in their analysis.

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Grammar and function ofwe

Cited by 86 publications

References 0 publications

Language and Group Processes: An Integrative, Interdisciplinary Review

Language and Group Processes: An Integrative, Interdisciplinary Review

Inclusive and exclusive uses of we in four American textbooks for multicultural teacher education

‘Today I offer you, and we offer the country a new vision’: The strategic use of first person pronouns in party conference speeches of the Third Way

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