The different uses of the pronoun ‘we’ by EFL teachers in classroom interaction

The pronoun ‘we’ is understood only to refer to the first-person plural. In fact, the pronoun ‘we’ can also refer to other references. The primary purpose of this study is to examine the different uses of the pronoun ‘we’ by EFL teachers in classroom interaction. This study employed a qualitative approach by using three instruments: observation, audio-recorder, and interview in collecting the data. The subjects of this research are two English teachers and the second-grade students at a vocational high school in Makassar. The data were analyzed by formulating Miles et al.’s method of analysis. The result of this study shows that, in classroom interaction, the pronoun ‘we’ can refer to six distinct references: (1) ‘we’ that refers to speaker and more than one addressee, (2) ‘we’ that refers to speaker and more than one-third party, (3) ‘we’ that refers to speaker and indefinite group, (4) ‘we’ that indicates ‘you’, (5) ‘we’ that indicates ‘I’, and (6) ‘we’ that indicates “they”. From the interviews, the researchers found that both teachers have different reasons for using the pronoun ‘we’ in classroom interaction. The first teacher intends to use the pronoun to help him create an enjoyable learning environment and establish better relationships with the students. In contrast, the other teacher uses the pronoun ‘we’ to show politeness to the students. Despite the differences, they both seem to have the same intention of creating a positive learning environment.

Analysing authorial identity construction in the review article genre in Applied Linguistics

Authorial identity construction is one of many professional rhetorical strategies employed by authors in academic review genres. Authors usually create a persona to represent themselves, their seniority in the field, and the community to which they belong. The author’s visibility is made possible through several rhetorical devices. Perhaps the most remarkable way of such authorial identity construction in the review article genre is self-mentions. The aims of this research are (1) to find out what types of self-mention are frequently used in review articles, (2) to determine the frequency of use and distribution of self-mentions in the review articles, and (3) to investigate the rhetorical function of self-mentions in the different analytical sections of the review articles. The data, drawn from a randomly selected corpus of thirty-two review articles, were analysed using WordSmith Tools Version 6. The findings indicated that first-person plural pronouns were more frequently used than singular pronouns in the whole corpus except in the two review texts. It was also observed that the frequency of occurrence for the exclusive and inclusive pronouns was very close to each other. Most importantly, the inclusive pronouns were used not only as a politeness strategy to appreciate the readers and keep the writers’ claims balanced but also as a persuasive tool to seek the readers’ agreement in the evaluation of research developments. This study revealed that authors construct various professional personas as a rhetorical strategy to carve their authorial identity and credibility in the review article genre. The findings of this study have pedagogical implications in the field of academic writing in applied linguistics as well as other disciplines.

Expressing the Author's Position in the English-Language Network Film Review

Introduction. The article presents the results of the analysis of the author’s position verbalization methods in the English online professional film review addressed to the mainstream audience. The authors proceed from the position that the methods of subject verbalization are determined by functional characteristics of discourse. The relevance of the study is due to the interest of modern linguistics in the study of the subject factor in “personal” types of discourse. The paper considers the factor of the subject in the discourse, defines the concepts of authorization and its nomination, analyzes the role of identifying categories of subjective modality and describing prevalent evaluation types in the study of the author's position in evaluative genres.Methodology and sources. Research methodology is based on the approaches to classification of modus and evaluation types developed by N.D. Arutyunova. The methodology of describing the author's position in evaluative genres is proposed, which boils down to the following steps: identifying the leading linguistic means of self-nomination; displaying main genre-typical patterns of subject modality (modus types); describing evaluation semantics specificity and linguistic means of dominant evaluative meanings verbalization. The study was conducted on the material of the corpus of texts selected on the English-language portal metacritic.com which includes 50 professional film reviews addressed to a wide audience (39,765 words in length).Results and discussion. Based on the methods of quantitative and contextual analysis the distribution of modus types verbalized by “subject-predicate” models with personal subject-representing pronouns was carried out; the distribution of personal and possessive pronouns as the main method of self-nomination in the discourse of the network English-language professional film review was revealed; on the basis of the analysis of the semantics of evaluative adjectives of the corpus, the types of evaluative meanings in the genre under study were identified. The leading methods of discourse subject nomination were shown to involve the 1-st person pl. inclusive pronoun, which indicates the author’s intention to establish a connection with the reader and to increase the manipulative potential of the text. The main types of evaluative meanings verbalized by the corpora adjectives were identified, which are emotional, intellectual, aesthetic and regulatory types.Conclusion. The conducted research allowed us to conclude that the specificity of the expression of the author's position in professional network film review is reduced to the following characteristics: the dominant nature of the perceptual mode and the mental mode of knowledge in the field of subjective modality of texts; the predominance of first-person plural pronouns in an inclusive meaning as a means of self-nomination of the subject discourse and the dominance of partial-evaluative meanings over general-evaluative ones. The predominance of emotional-psychological and intellectual-psychological types of evaluation indicates the author's intention to express an individualized subjective-emotional opinion about the evaluated object.

Hvem er “vi” egentlig?

This article explores Paul’s use of first-person plural forms in Galatians (specifically Gal 2:15-16; 3:13-14; 3:23-29; 4:1-7 and 4:26 and 31). Proponents of the ‘Sonderweg perspective’ and of ‘the radical new perspective on Paul’ argue that Paul uses these forms as a rhetorical device. He seeks to identify himself with his non-Jewish audience without implying that he himself nor his fellow Jews share in ‘our’ (i.e., non-Jewish) experiences. In opposition to this view, this article presents a ‘new Pauline perspective’ understanding of Paul’s use of ‘we’/’our’. Instead of assuming that his ‘we’ should be construed as ‘you’, it is argued that it ought to be seen as an inclusive ‘we’. Throughout his argumentation in Galatians Paul actively alludes to experiences that he himself and his fellow Christ-believing Jews have partaken in, including the reception of the Spirit, adoption, and liberation from slavery of the flesh and from being ‘under the Law’.

The Hungarian Hubris Syndrome

Powerful figures, such as politicians, who show a behavioural pattern of exuberant self-confidence, recklessness, and contempt for others may be the subject of the acquired personality disorder, the ’Hubris Syndrome’, which has been demonstrated to leave its mark on speech patterns. Our study explores characteristic language patterns of Hungarian Prime Ministers (PMs) with a special emphasis on one of the key indicators of Hubris, the shift from the first person ‘I’ to ‘we’ in spontaneous speech. We analyzed the ratio of the first-person singular (‘I’) and plural (‘we’) pronouns and verbal inflections in the spontaneous parliamentary speeches of four Hungarian PMs between 1998-2018. We found that Viktor Orbán during his second premiership (2010-2014) used first person plural relative to singular inflections more often than the other three PMs during their terms. Orbán and another Hungarian PM, Ferenc Gyurcsány, who were re-elected at some point showed an increased ratio of first person plural vs. singular inflections and personal pronouns by their second term, likely reflecting the process of getting drunk with power. The results confirm the hypothesis that extended periods of premiership and more specifically, re-elections increase hubristic behaviour in political leaders.

Do Words Matter? Detecting Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults Using Natural Language Processing

Introduction: Social isolation and loneliness (SI/L) are growing problems with serious health implications for older adults, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined transcripts from semi-structured interviews with 97 older adults (mean age 83 years) to identify linguistic features of SI/L.Methods: Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods were used to identify relevant interview segments (responses to specific questions), extract the type and number of social contacts and linguistic features such as sentiment, parts-of-speech, and syntactic complexity. We examined: (1) associations of NLP-derived assessments of social relationships and linguistic features with validated self-report assessments of social support and loneliness; and (2) important linguistic features for detecting individuals with higher level of SI/L by using machine learning (ML) models.Results: NLP-derived assessments of social relationships were associated with self-reported assessments of social support and loneliness, though these associations were stronger in women than in men. Usage of first-person plural pronouns was negatively associated with loneliness in women and positively associated with emotional support in men. ML analysis using leave-one-out methodology showed good performance (F1 = 0.73, AUC = 0.75, specificity = 0.76, and sensitivity = 0.69) of the binary classification models in detecting individuals with higher level of SI/L. Comparable performance were also observed when classifying social and emotional support measures. Using ML models, we identified several linguistic features (including use of first-person plural pronouns, sentiment, sentence complexity, and sentence similarity) that most strongly predicted scores on scales for loneliness and social support.Discussion: Linguistic data can provide unique insights into SI/L among older adults beyond scale-based assessments, though there are consistent gender differences. Future research studies that incorporate diverse linguistic features as well as other behavioral data-streams may be better able to capture the complexity of social functioning in older adults and identification of target subpopulations for future interventions. Given the novelty, use of NLP should include prospective consideration of bias, fairness, accountability, and related ethical and social implications.

Does it matter whether we or I talk about us? Distinguishing we-talk in couples’ conflict discussions and partners’ private thoughts before and after conflict

According to extensive evidence, we-talk—couples’ use of first-person, plural pronouns—predicts better relationship quality and well-being. However, prior work has not distinguished we-talk by its context, which varies widely across studies. Also, little is known about we-talk’s consistency over time. To assess the stability and correlates of we-talk in private versus conversational contexts, 43 married couples’ language was captured during a marital problem discussion and in each partner’s privately recorded thoughts before and after conflict. Participants were asked to describe any current thoughts and feelings in the baseline thought-listing and to focus on their reaction to the conflict itself in the post-conflict sample. Couples repeated this protocol at a second study visit, approximately 1 month later. We-talk in baseline and post-conflict thought-listings was largely uncorrelated with we-talk during conflict discussions, but each form of we-talk was consistent between the two study visits. Their correlates were also distinct: more we-talk during conflict was associated with less hostility during conflict, whereas more baseline we-talk predicted greater closeness in both partners, as well as lower vocally encoded arousal and more positive emotion word use in partners after conflict. These novel data reveal that we-talk can be meaningfully distinguished by its context—whether language is sampled from private thoughts or marital discussions, and whether the study procedure requests relationship talk. Taken together, these variants of we-talk may have unique implications for relationship function and well-being.

“We” are in This Pandemic, but “You” can get Through This: The Effects of Pronouns on Likelihood to Stay-at-Home During COVID-19

We examine how first-person plural and second-person singular pronouns used in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) communications impact people's likelihood to follow stay-at-home recommendations. A 2 (first-person plural [“we”] vs. second-person singular [“you”]) by continuous trait self-control between-subjects experiment ( N = 223) was used to examine individuals’ adherence to stay-at-home recommendations. Results suggest that “you”-based appeals may be more broadly effective in garnering stay-at-home adherence, whereas low self-control individuals are less responsive to “we” appeals. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Variation in Ampenan Sasak pronominal forms

This study investigates the variation of pronominal forms in Sasak, an Austronesian language spoken in eastern Indonesia. The study marks the first variationist sociolinguistic work on Sasak. Using data from eight conversations between 15 non-noble speakers, pronominal forms were coded for whether they were realized as a free pronoun or a clitic. Further, the discourse was examined to identify the referents and to observe the pragmatic effect of the forms used. The results show clitics dominate the distribution. Further, the results demonstrate that a higher percentage of clitics are preferred with the basic form for first person referents, but speakers apply a different strategy for second person referents; speakers use first person plural and third person singular forms to address their interlocutor when triggered by a Face Threatening Act (see Brown & Levinson, 1987).