The Indefinite “We” (HET “WIJ”-Gevoel/Le “Nous” Indéfini)—Sender and Receiver References in Top-Down Communication: A Text Type-Based Approach

Abstract

In studies of political communication the use of personal pronouns is often put forward as one of the strategies for influencing sender-receiver relations (e.g., De Fina [1], Haverkate [2], Zupnik [3]). As Rogers and Swales [4] among others have demonstrated, similar techniques can be detected in corporate communication. In this article, the use of French and Dutch personal and possessive pronouns in the first person plural is examined in internal communication documents. The focus is on the link between text types and the use of inclusive, exclusive, or ambiguous we. First the research material is described; then a concise overview of the literary sources is given; finally the results of the research are discussed. It will be demonstrated that managers can exploit personal pronouns strategically and that the use of we is a parameter for identifying text function.

Weis More Than You Plus I. The Interpretation of the We-Forms in Internal Business Communications

“…This illustrates how the strong modals strengthen the position of the sender(s). In earlier publications (see Dieltjens and Heynderickx [1,81]) we demonstrated how a sender-exclusive we-form functions as an evasive strategy for direct instructions. Example (25) contains such an evasive we-form (we = Rs).…”

“…1 The internal documents include personnel magazines, newsletters, e-mails, instructive texts, etc. Table 3 contains the different we-forms in Dutch.…”

“…The research material consists of top-down internal documents of 12 large companies from different industrial sectors. 1 The internal documents include personnel magazines, newsletters, e-mails, instructive texts, etc. Table 3 contains the different we-forms in Dutch.…”

“…Pronouns are necessary links, syntactical turning points, which allow organization of the discourse by designating the participants in a communicative interaction. In earlier publications (e.g., Dieltjens and Heynderickx [1]), we have put forward the hypothesis that a better demarcation of the communicative partners would improve the efficiency of the internal communications in companies and organizations. We have demonstrated that the use of we-forms can influence the relationship between sender(s) and receiver(s).…”

« We do not question your pain »: a pragmatic and sociolinguistic analysis of the distantiation we in a chat dedicated to suicide prevention

“…Au coeur des interactions interindividuelles, quel que soit le contexte, les pronoms personnels tiennent une place qui a déjà été analysée dans plusieurs contextes, qu'il s'agisse d'interactions générales quotidiennes (Hilgert & Palma 2014), de communication d'entreprise hiérarchisée (Dieltjens & Heynderickx 2003), ou encore de discriminations numériques entre communautés nationales (Wagener 2018) -pour ne citer que ces exemples. Depuis plusieurs décennies déjà, linguistique appliquée et sociolinguistique étudient de manière approfondie l'emploi des pronoms dans des contextes discursifs spécifiques, et les représentations sociales que cela permet de saisir et de comprendre.…”