The distribution of pronominal selection of political speeches : pragmatic implications

Abstract EN

The present paper tackles the problem of the pragmatic manipulation of pronouns within various political contexts.

It deals with the selection choices made by different politicians in referring to themselves and to others.

The paper aims at showing how ideological differences display themselves in pronominal selection.

It is hypothesized that each politician may operate with different scale or continuum, of pronominal referencing, and that differences will be generated by various aspects of the context; the speakers, the topic, etc.

It is thought that such differences are pragmatic indicators of shifts in meaning.

Thus, the proportional use of certain pronouns may itself affect the interpretation (meaning) of certain pronouns for certain speakers.

In order to explore this possibility, our study will present the results of the analysis of a number of speeches of two selected British politicians namely Mrs Thatcher and Mr Kinnock.

The analyses focused on the way in which a broad range of personal pronominal choices were indicative of how each politician viewed the world, and how he manipulated the meaning of pronouns in order to present a specific ideological perspective.

The analysis of the data is based on the system of pronominal distribution developed by Rees (1983).

The paper concludes that the selection of pronouns is a sociopragmatically discrete tool in the hands of politicians.

The analysis provided in this work not only highlights the significance of pronominal referencing, but also provides a potentially new, ideologically sensitive linguistic tool.

The ideological orientation of a speech, it is suggested, could in part be mapped by assessing quantitatively the selection of particular pronominal types.

The pronominal claims of this paper undoubtedly include issues of power, status and social identity.