Masaryk university faculty of education
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- Personal pronouns and audience involvement strategies
- Repetition, three part statements and the rule of three
3. Pragmatics
While the previous chapters dealt with the meanings of words and sentence organization, this chapter will deal with the rather less formal but equally important approach of language in context. The basic principle of pragmatics and the difference between this and the previous chapters is that pragmatic analysis is “more concerned with the relationship between the speaker and the utterance, on a particular occasion of use, than with the potential relationship of one sentence to another, regardless of their use.” (Brown and Yule, p. 27) While semantic and syntactic analyses are equally valuable, it should be noted that since the corpus is highly context driven, the pragmatic approach will supersede all others and dictate the final results. According to Brown and Yule, “some of the most obvious linguistic elements which require contextual information for their interpretation are the deictic forms such as here, now, I, you, this, that.” (p. 27) Chilton further claims that the audience “set[s] up discourse worlds, which carry a deictic signature for space, time and modality and relationships among them,” upon hearing the message from the speaker. (p. 138) It is evident that modern political speech is taking advantage of these linguistic inventions, employing deictic forms to conquer spatial or temporal distance, profiting from the use of inference, historical and geographical analogies, knowledge (or other) frames or audience involvement strategies. Just how often these pragmatic elements are employed in all speeches will be analyzed and results will be compared and contrasted to see whether any correlations can be made. Special attention will be paid to the impact of mass media and other features of political speeches and features of war speeches.
John Fowles once remarked that “the pronoun is one of the most terrifying masks man has invented.” (p. 335) Seeing the importance attributed to the use of personal pronouns in political discourse and the impact they actually have on the success of a speech, one might agree with Fowles’s statement. Before getting into details about personal pronouns, their uses and functions, it is important to introduce a very closely related concept of audience involvement strategies. According to Halamari, these strategies are formed by the use of personal pronouns, let’s/let us, let me, vocatives and rhetorical questions and their goal is to “invite the audience to be part of the answer.” (256) The following paragraphs describe applicable personal pronouns, other audience involvement strategies and their use and effect on discourse. Table 3.1 illustrates a pronominal distancing scale, functioning from left to right, representing the position of each pronoun in terms of closeness to the deictic center. Deictic center refers to the speaker him/herself, and distancing refers to how responsible for or involved in the speaker wants to be with the topic. The pronoun I is clearly the most centered (the most left), while the pronoun those is the least centered (most right). That said, this pronominal scale is not an ultimate measurement and can vary according to each speaker and their perception. Table 3.1 Pronominal Scale
By the simple selection of a first person pronoun, the speaker is determining the inclusion or exclusion of the audience from the proposed action. There are some cases where self-reference, i.e. the use of I, “can also be associated with engagement,” but generally, I, me, my focuses on the speaker and excludes the audience (Dontcheva-Navratilova, Some functions 10). As further illustration, take the following three sentences:
All three sentences express the same proposed idea – a war is being declared on Russia. Where we find a difference is “in relation to the degree of personal involvement of each speaker.” (Wilson, p. 48) The first sentence shows a clear commitment from the speaker. The second sentence has an unidentified agent, uses passive voice, and shows no personal commitment. The third sentence is less clear than the first sentence as we can perhaps imply the speaker and the government, but perhaps also the nation. The personal commitment of the third speaker is clearly ambiguous. Indeed, in certain occurrences the use of we is complex, as there is a speaker-inclusive we and also a speaker-exclusive we. For example in the following sentence a doctor is speaking to the patient, asking, How are we feeling today? Using an exclusive we, which “serves to distance the speaker from what it is that is being said, the doctor wants to know about the patient’s condition and not his own. (Wilson, p. 48) As there are no set guidelines on the interpretation of we, it is “unclear what category hearers will conceptualize in these instances.” (Chilton and Schaffner, p. 222) The speaker can intend exclusion, for example when trying to turn away from responsibility, but in most cases it is meant as a powerful inclusive strategy, speaking on behalf of others or inviting a response from the audience. The personal pronoun you is used in political discourse perhaps the least but is still very versatile in terms of speech acts. With the exception of thanking the audience (Thank you for your support.) or posing rhetorical questions (And you know what?), it also serves “to reflect upon a kind of conventional wisdom as opposed to actual experience.” (Wilson, p. 57) It can also be used in a declarative/directive function, a call or a plea, I ask you to stand up and fight. But perhaps its most effective function is as a commissive, to pose an ultimatum or a threat, Either you write the letter, or there is no money. Finally, the third person plural pronoun they is used to distract the audience from what is being discussed, to show contrast and difference, often ideological or moral. In terms of the aforementioned pronominal scale, they or them is most often used as a distancing strategy, or even further, a projection of negative connotation, as in the following example, where the accompanying words punishment and negation provide an altogether intimidating image. …and those of you who did not do the homework will stay after school and re-write the text by hand, as a punishment. In order to conclude the notion of audience involvement strategies, the use of let us and let’s, will be discussed. While let us invites the audience to be included, the let’s excludes the audience. Consider the following:
That said, both versions still make up part of the audience involvement strategies, but one acts as declarative (Let us) and the other as a directive (Let’s). Personal pronouns, counts of let’s/let us, as well as vocatives and rhetorical questions will be identified and counted in all speeches and presented in a chart as part of the audience involvement strategies.
Political speeches are characterized by well thought out rhetorical discourse, with phrases or ideas often being repeated for the sake of the argument, but also as simple emphasis. War rhetoric is no exception, and Drabková agrees that “word repetition is used especially in long speeches to hold the speech together but also to emphasize moral values.” (p.2) Repetition can be lexical (repeating words) or grammatical (repeating word classes, tenses, phrases or paragraphs). A particular type of repetition is a three part statement, where a new idea or suggestion is first presented, then emphasized and finally reinforced, thus being skillfully presented three (or more) times. Consider the following example: We will not ignore… We will not hesitate… We will not rest… The phrase ‘We will not’ functions not only as a principle cohesive device but also as a topic sentence in each paragraph. According to Beard, three part repetition is closely related to the rule of three, where three, closely related concepts are introduced in a sequence. John Locke’s enlightenment principles, life, liberty and property, which are the basic human rights appearing in his Second Treatise on Government (1689), serve as a good example. Other famous examples of the ‘rule of three’, where one word cannot fully function without the other and where each subsequent word brings more power to the previous ones, include the following: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité Veni,vidi vici
Dealing with style in discourse, in general, is perhaps refreshing, but also complicated. Not only is every discourse unique, but every reader is also unique, shaped by distinctive socio-cultural and ideological influences, among other things. Likewise, every analyst can identify elements in text they deem important, and thus offer a new perspective, which is frequently happening in literary criticism. Verdonk agrees that “stylistic analysis can direct attention to specific linguistic features in a text and so provide textual substantiation for the different kinds of literary effect it might have on the reader.” (p. 67) Now that the intricacies of stylistic analysis have been noted and considered, attention can be paid to the corpus. Clearly, there are some obvious commonalities concerning style of political speeches. The discourse is rather formal, with a majority of lexical words, used rather implicitly, with occasional sound bites, metaphors and analogies. As stated, the speakers have “alternatives at hand for referring to the same object, the same process, the same fact,” which makes each speech distinctive and inimitable. (Sandig and Selting, p. 138) The level of stylistic analysis will attempt to use critical discourse analysis (CDA), which according to Verdonk “assumes that linguistics choices in texts… are consciously and unconsciously motivated by particular value systems and beliefs and that the resulting discourses are therefore always presented from some ideological perspective.” (p.75) Again, this analysis will offer only linguistic representations of these ideological perspectives and will let the reader decide about its implications. Presumably, the language style of the speeches is carefully crafted to appeal to the audience and to further the acceptance of the message. While some speakers focused on metaphors, others used personal pronouns or emphasized repetitions. All of these particular linguistic choices will be tracked, contrasted and compared.
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