Who are we and who are you? The strategic use of forms of address in political interviews

Bull, Peter; Fetzer, Anita

doi:10.1515/text.2006.002

Cited by 107 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Obviously, they are normally requested to express their views on controversial matters. Whereas in many cases they resort to a first-person plural, indexing either their political team or the entire community they intend to represent (Bull & Fetzer 2006;Aijón Oliva 2013: 591-592), it seems almost inevitable, especially in the course of spoken interaction, that they should often end up by adopting a singular first-person viewpoint. In such cases, they show some tendency to encode themselves as objects when exposing personal stances, as in (23), where the speaker, after conveying a negative opinion with yo creo 'I think', presents his alternative proposal-which we can suspect is equally clearcut to him-as more of a suggestion with me gustaría 'I'd like, lit.…”

Section: Speaker Self-encoding and Contextual Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speaker self-profiling through discursive indexation and syntactic encoding in Spanish radio talk

Oliva

2017

Borealis

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ABSTRACT. Syntactic and discursive choices in context constitute resources for the interactional profiling of the direct participants. This study analyzes the frequencies with which speakers index themselves, as well as the syntactic functions they tend to accord themselves when doing so, in a corpus of Peninsular Spanish radio discourse featuring a variety of textual genres and speaker socioprofessional identities. The analysis is restricted to indexations of the singular first person in central syntactic functions, i.e. those with the capacity to establish agreement with the verb. A dichotomy is proposed between subject and (accusative or dative) object self-encoding, based on the different morphological means through which verbal agreement is carried out in this language, namely verbal endings and clitics. Both the statistical patterning of variation and the discursive-pragmatic motivations of particular choices are subsequently examined. The selection of a specific syntactic function for the encoding of the speaker is found to serve communicative goals related to the textual genre and to the kinds of socio-professional identities speakers intend to develop within it. Significant correlations are obtained between higher percentages of self-encoding as subject and of discursive self-indexation altogether, although speakers presenting themselves as political representatives diverge from this tendency for particular communicative reasons. The results are interpreted as being parallel to a discursive-cognitive continuum between subjectivity and objectivity that underlies speaker interactional self-profiling and discourse construction.Keywords: Syntactic variation; agreement; interactional profiling; subjectivity; objectivity; radio talk. RESUMEN: Las elecciones sintácticas y discursivas en contexto constituyen recursos para el desarrollo de los perfiles interaccionales de los participantes directos. El presente estudio analiza las frecuencias con las que los hablantes se indexan a sí mismos, así como las funciones sintácticas que se atribuyen preferentemente al hacerlo, en un corpus de español peninsular de los medios de comunicación, el cual refleja una variedad de géneros textuales e identidades socioprofesionales. El análisis se restringe a las indexaciones de la primera persona del singular en funciones sintácticas centrales, esto es, las que poseen la capacidad de establecer concordancia con el verbo. Se plantea una dicotomía entre autocodificación como sujeto y como objeto (acusativo o dativo), teniendo en cuenta los diferentes recursos morfológicos con que se realiza la concordancia verbal en esta lengua: desinencias verbales y clíticos. Seguidamente se examinan los patrones estadísticos de la variación, así como las motivaciones discursivo-pragmáticas de ejemplos específicos. Se comprueba que la selección de una determinada función sintáctica para codificar al hablante obedece a objetivos comunicativos relacionados con el * This paper is part of the research project "Variación gramatical y creación del si...

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Section: Speaker Self-encoding and Contextual Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speaker self-profiling through discursive indexation and syntactic encoding in Spanish radio talk

Oliva

2017

Borealis

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“…In addition, s/he describes a specific set of circumstances that would exacerbate this feeling, while twice using the second-person pronoun "you" in a way that could be referring not just to Hussain1000, but also to any number of people facing similar circumstances (see Bull and Fetzer, 2006). RyAn1295 thus treats the troubles being described as shared in common by others apart from Hussain1000, possibly (if the "you" is taken to also refer to him/her) including RyAn1295 (cf.…”

Section: Accomplishing Empathymentioning

confidence: 99%

Producing, ratifying, and resisting support in an online support forum

Kaufman

Whitehead

2016

Health (London)

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“…Smith [46] analyzes reactions to 9/11. Bull and Fetzer [47] discuss forms of address in political interviews. Adetunji [48] studies inclusion and exclusion in speeches of Nigeria's president Olusegun Obasanjo.…”

Section: Literature On the We-formmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Dieltjens

Heynderickx

2014

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication

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The we-form has been analyzed in different theoretical frameworks and domains. Researchers point to the complexity of first person plural pronouns: not only can they refer to different participants in a communicative situation, but they can also be used to avoid other referential forms. In organizational discourse, however, transparency is of the utmost importance to ensure efficient communication. Based on the minute analysis of 3700 we-forms in a corpus of internal communications documents, we developed a framework for the interpretation of the we-form. Thirteen (con)textual and situational identifiers of different kinds are discussed and illustrated. In some cases the interpretation of the we-form is indicated by a single identifying element, in other cases a combination of identifying elements strengthens the interpretation.

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Who are we and who are you? The strategic use of forms of address in political interviews

Cited by 107 publications

References 10 publications

Speaker self-profiling through discursive indexation and syntactic encoding in Spanish radio talk

Speaker self-profiling through discursive indexation and syntactic encoding in Spanish radio talk

Producing, ratifying, and resisting support in an online support forum

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

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