Abstract
Based on videotaped data from two political interviews, two public speeches, and two political debates, this study intends to illustrate and discuss how the first-person pronouns wo “I” and women “we” are used in Chinese political discourse from pragmatic and sociolinguistic perspectives. The politicians we have chosen for our analysis are Chen Shui-bian and Lien Chan, who represent the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Kuomintang (KMT, the Nationalist Party), respectively. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses will be conducted. Analyzing the data, we have found that wo “I” and women “we” have multiple uses according to different pragmatic contexts. Following Kitagawa and Lehrer’s (1990) and Biq’s (1991) taxonomies, we have divided wo “I” into the propositional wo “I” and the dramatic wo “I,” and women “we” into the propositional women “we,” the impersonal women “we,” and the dramatic women “we.” The propositional women “we” is further divided into the audience-inclusive women “we” and the audience-exclusive women “we,” depending on what referents it takes. Furthermore, we have found that Chen and Lien choose different types of wo “I” and women “we” for different communicative purposes, and that there are frequent switches or substitutions of personal pronouns in their language use. Finally, our quantitative analysis shows that type of speech activity may affect Chen’s and Lien’s uses of wo “I” and women “we.” As for the organization of the study, Chapter 1 is the introduction. In this chapter, the purpose of the present study is stated. Chapter 2 is the review of related works on personal pronouns. Chapter 3 analyzes and discusses the data from political interviews, public speeches, and political debates. In this chapter, Chen’s and Lien’s uses of wo “I” and women “we” in these three speech activities are examined, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Chapter 4 summarizes and concludes the findings in this study, as well as discusses implications for future work in this area of research.