Second-person pronoun use in French-language blogs

2009 ◽  
pp. 213-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Douglass
Keyword(s):  
French Language ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Person Pronoun ◽  
Pronoun Use

Second-person pronoun use in French language discussion fora

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAWRENCE WILLIAMS ◽  
RÉMI A. VAN COMPERNOLLE
Keyword(s):  
French Language ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Person Pronoun ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
Discussion Threads ◽  
Pronoun Use ◽  
On Line

ABSTRACTThis article examines the use of second-person pronouns in on-line French language discussion fora, with specific focus on Doctissimo and Meilleur du chef, two fora from which approximately 400,000 words were collected for this corpus. Two hundred discussion threads (i.e., series of linked postings), with a minimum of fifteen postings (i.e., messages) and a maximum of twenty per thread, were analysed in three different ways in order to determine whether tu, vous-singular, or neither could be considered the default address pronoun. The results of the analysis suggest that while tu is clearly preferred in many cases, its use has not become systematic.

‘Whatever form you spoke of you were right’: Multivalence and ambiguous address in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road

2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 333-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Warde
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Second Person ◽  
The Road ◽  
Person Pronoun ◽  
Ontological Uncertainty

This article explores the workings of second-person pronoun forms in Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 post-apocalyptic novel The Road. More particularly, the analysis focuses on examples of ‘doubly deictic you’ (Herman, 2002), and demonstrates how the novel exploits the uncertain deictic, referential and address functions of this particular pronoun form to develop what I term a ‘post-apocalyptic poetics’, through which it attempts to explore – and enact – the spatial and temporal dislocations that ensue from the fictional apocalypse. The article also demonstrates how the novel’s indeterminate use of narrative you creates profound hermeneutical (and often ontological) uncertainty for readers, who must often suspend any attempt to fix the positions from and to which the story is addressed. McCarthy’s opaque use of the terms you and your throughout the novel creates profound polyphony and multivalence by preventing readers from clearly distinguishing the discourse and perspectives of protagonists from those of the narration, and by thus impelling readers to develop several interpretations of key passages, all of which must be sustained simultaneously. Finally, the analysis explores how the (potential) apostrophic effects associated with doubly deictic you serve to immerse readers in the horrors of the post-apocalyptic world, thus increasing the novel’s ecocritical import.

The use of second person pronouns in a literary work

2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen de Hoop ◽  
Lotte Hogeweg
Keyword(s):  
Literary Work ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Person Pronoun

AbstractFor this study we investigated all occurrences of Dutch second person pronoun subjects in a literary novel, and determined their interpretation. We found two patterns that can both be argued to be functionally related to the de-velopment of the story. First, we found a decrease in the generic use of second person, a decrease which we believe goes hand in hand with an increased distancing of oneself as a reader from the narrator/main character. Second, we found an increase in the use of the descriptive second person. The increased descriptive use of second person pronouns towards the end of the novel is very useful for the reader, because the information provided by the first person narrator himself becomes less and less reliable. Thus, the reader depends more strongly on information provided by other characters and what these characters tell the narrator about himself.

Pronoun reversals: who, when, and why?

1993 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 573-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip S. Dale ◽  
Catherine Crain-Thoreson
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Pronoun Use ◽  
Processing Resources ◽  
Unstructured Play

ABSTRACTSeventeen of a sample of 30 precocious talkers aged 1;8 produced at least one pronoun reversal (I/you) during unstructured play. This finding led to an examination of the role of cognitive and linguistic individual differences as well as contextual factors and processing complexity as determinants of pronoun reversal. Contrary to predictions derived from previous hypotheses, there were few differences between reversers and non-reversers, other than higher use of second person forms by reversers. Reversals were more likely to occur in certain contexts: semantically reversible predicates with two noun phrases, and in imitations (though the rate of imitation was lower overall in reversers). We propose that pronoun reversals commonly result from a failure to perform a deictic shift, which is especially likely when children's psycholinguistic processing resources are taxed. Children who did not produce any pronoun reversals tended to avoid pronoun use, especially second person forms. Overt reversal may thus reflect a risk-taking approach to language acquisition, which may be particularly characteristic of precocious children.

scholarly journals UTTERANCE NOMINALIZATION PECULIARITIES BY MEANS OF PERSON NAMES IN THE ENGLISH AND TATAR LANGUAGES

2021 ◽  
pp. 28-33
Author(s):  
Эльмира Рафаилевна Ибрагимова
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Person Pronoun ◽  
Peripheral Type ◽  
Autonomous Functioning ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Colloquial Speech

В данной статье анализируются высказывания из национальных лингвистических корпусов татарского и английского языков с точки зрения возможности их номинализации посредством наименований лица, включенных в состав данных высказываний. Рассмотрены как традиционно выделяемые типы номинализации - события, факта, пропозиции, так и номинализация посредством наименования лица как периферийный тип. Установлено, что как английское, так и татарское номинативное предложение не выполняет по отношению к называемому одушевленному лицу функции субституции и конкретное наименование лица, выражая признак, обладает лишь предикативной референцией. Выявлены сходства и различия в функционировании наименований лица как средства номинализации в английских и татарских высказываниях. Сделаны выводы о том, что в английском языке автономное функционирование наименования лица как отдельного предложения возможно только в разговорной речи. В стилистически нейтральных высказываниях английского языка всегда имеет место глагол. В татарском языке оценка может выражаться как наименованием лица, так и прилагательным. В обоих языках достаточно частотными являются наименования лица, образованные от имен прилагательных путем инверсии. И в английском, и в татарском языках исследуемые примеры довольно часто содержат сопровождающее местоимение второго лица. This article analyzes the statements from the national linguistic corpus of the Tatar and English languages from the point of view of their nominalization potential by means of the person names in these above-mentioned statements. The author considered both the traditionally distinguished types of nominalization (events, facts, propositions) and nominalization by the person name as a peripheral type. It has been established that both the English and Tatar nominative sentences do not fulfill the function of substitution in relation to the named animate person, and the specific person name expressing the feature has only a predicative reference. The similarities and differences in the functioning of the person names as the means of nominalization in English and Tatar expressions have been revealed. The author concluded that in English the autonomous functioning of the person name as a separate sentence is possible only in colloquial speech. In stylistically neutral expressions of the English language, a verb always occurs. In the Tatar language, the assessment can be expressed both by the person name and by the adjective. In both languages, the person names formed from adjectives by means of inversion are quite frequent. In both the English and Tatar languages, the studied examples quite often contain an accompanying second person pronoun

scholarly journals LA SEGONA PERSONA COMPARADA: “EL POBRE RANDALL JARRELL” I GABRIEL FERRATER, CARA A CARA

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-199
Author(s):  
Edgar Tello Garcia
Keyword(s):  
Well Water ◽  
Second Person ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Third ◽  
Main Thesis ◽  
Person Pronoun ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Randall Jarrell ◽  
Original Relation

The aim of this paper is to study the second person pronoun in the poetry of Randall Jarrell and Gabriel Ferrater. The main thesis goes against the commonplace that holds that the second person pronoun is a mere trace dependent on the poetic I. As we shall demonstrate, the You is absent or evanescent, and its relation to I cannot be reciprocal but shifting. Since both poets were conspicuous literary critics this article first draws up an outline of the possible theoretical implications for selecting that voice. The commentary on their poems is divided into four sections taking up Genette’s concept of palimpsest. Based on a comparison of Ferrater’s “La cara” and Jarrell’s “The Face,” second person clues lead us to comment on the different reading conventions they could have considered before writing a poem. The third section analyzes the second person anchorage, conceived less as an imprisoning structure than as an impossibility of naming (reading) the You properly. Studies of “Well water” and “Si puc” show how naming things that are open to the senses is the only way we can indirectly glimpse, reconstruct or interpret the original relation between first and second person pronouns —a relation we cannot help thinking of as the real— rather than phantasmal —overlapping realism.

The Stylistics of ‘You'

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandrine Sorlin
Keyword(s):  
Second Person ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Person Pronoun ◽  
Digital Texts ◽  
Wide Range

This book takes 'you', the reader, on board an interdisciplinary journey across genre, time and medium with the second-person pronoun. It offers a model of the various pragmatic functions and effects of 'you' according to different variables and linguistic parameters, cutting across a wide range of genres (ads, political slogans, tweets, news presentation, literary genres etc.), and bringing together print and digital texts under the same theoretical banner. Drawing on recent research into intersubjectivity in neuropsychology and socio-cognition, it delves into the relational and ethical processing at work in the reading of a second-person pronoun narrative. When 'you' takes on its more traditional deictic function of address, the author-reader channel can be opened in different ways, which is explored in examples taken from Fielding, Brontë, Orwell, Kincaid, Grimsley, Royle, Adichie, Bartlett, Auster, and even Spacey's 'creepy' 2018 YouTube video, ultimately foregrounding continuities and contrasts in the positioning of the audience.

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