Register, genre and referential ambiguity of personal pronouns

Abstract

This paper argues for revisiting the traditional adscription of ambiguous readings of personal pronouns, such as hearer-dominantweor genericyou, pluralis maiestatis and pluralis modestiae to specific genres and/or registers. Indeed, in many languages these phenomena are considered typical for a certain genre, register or discourse context. In this paper, I will argue, on the basis of quantitative data and a qualitative analysis of examples taken from different genres (including purposefully creative language use in fiction), that a more accurate account may be formulated in terms of (inter)subjective effect, viz. the attention to the (inter)locutor (among others Benveniste 1966), as a more suitable explanation for the variation of these phenomena attested in corpora.The hearer-oriented uses ofwe, for instance, are considered typical for relationships characterized by power asymmetries such as teacher-student, doctor-patient (Haverkate 1984: 87; Brown & Levinson 1987), whereas generic and speaker-referringyouhave been considered a feature of (informal) oral language than written discourse (Hidalgo Navarro 1996). Recent corpus-based analyses including quantitative and qualitative analyses, however, call for a more nuanced view (De Cock 2011 on Spanish and English; Tarenskeen 2010 on Dutch). We may, for example, find hearer-oriented or even hearer-dominant 1stperson plural forms (Have we taken our medicine?) in contexts where no power- relationship can be defined, e.g. among couples.It will be shown that these uses have different intersubjective effects, however. Their distribution is in line with overall differences as to intersubjectivity according to register and genre, beyond referential ambiguity. The concept of (inter)subjectivity then allows for a more comprehensive analysis of these phenomena and their occurrence in specific registers and genres, addressing the way in which the (inter)locutor is taken into account in each genre.

Who are “we”? Examining relational ethos in British Columbia, Canada's COVID-19 public health communication

“…For example, in the context of COVID-19 when a public health officer states "we must all follow public health measures," "we" refers inclusively to both speaker and audience whereas the statement "we are increasing testing capacity" refers exclusively to "we" in public health. Exclusive "we" sometimes designates an individual speaker as in cases of pluralis maiestatis (the "royal we"e.g., the statement "We are not amused" attributed to Queen Victoria) or pluralis modestiae (author's plural -e.g., in a single-authored research paper, using "we" to refer to the individual author) and sometimes, in a true-plural sense, designates a group that includes the speaker and others, but not the addressee (as in the above example of "we" in public health) [De Cock, 2016]. Thus, the meanings and functions of "we" in English are inherently heterogeneous, ambiguous, and context-dependent [Du Bois, 2012;Makmillen & Riedlinger, 2021;Scheibman, 2014].…”

Impersonals intersubjectius en context: una anàlisi multivariant de l’espanyol «uno» i «se» en la llengua oral

“…The non-correlation of uno with the 2 nd person singular, however, does stand out, since it is the only deictic person form to not significantly correlate with uno. Further research is needed to clarify this but I would hypothesize that the tension between purely deictic and generic readings of the 2 nd person singular plays a role in this result (Kluge 2010;De Cock 2016;and Rasson 2017: 170 ff on the interaction between uno and generic 2 nd person singular). As the relation with the 2 nd per-7.…”

Primera persona del plural en los juicios orales. Valor representativo y estrategia atenuante

“…Además de referirse al propio hablante o autor del texto, también es posible hallar casos donde la primera persona del plural se refiere al destinatario. Esto es lo que sucede en el caso del plural sociativo (Alcina/Blecua 610), el nosotros paternal (paternal we, Jespersen 217) o el nosotros tú (we you, De Cock 2016). Por una parte, Alcina y Blecua adscriben este plural a contextos coloquiales, más concretamente, a apreciaciones y saludos del tipo (¿Qué hacemos?, ¡Qué vida nos pegamos!, ¡Sí que estamos bien!).…”

“…D entro de los elementos deícticos, la primera persona del singular se caracteriza por remitir inequívocamente al emisor (Benveniste 228;Bühler 99), mientras que la primera persona del plural puede adoptar valores más flexibles. De ahí que el interés de los investigadores se haya centrado sobre todo en estudiar la primera persona del plural y los valores que pueden ir asociados a ella (sirvan de ejemplos algunos trabajos como los de Bazzanella; Blas Arroyo; De Cock 2011Cock , 2016García Negroni;Haverkate 1984Haverkate , 1992Hyland 2002;Nogué Serrano 2010).…”