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element, on the other hand, consists of the remaining part of the verbal group: ‘going to’, and the adjunct: ‘plant a row of poplars in the park’. Apparently, based on the above premise therefore, clausal ellipsis operates in the realm of both modal and prepositional contraction. The Modal element embraces the speech function of the clause, which consists of the subject plus the finite element in the verbal group. Halliday and Hasan (1976:197) demonstrate how clausal ellipsis operates between the modal and prepositional contractions in the following expressions:
(a) What was the Duke going to do? (b) Plant a row of poplars in the park.
In response to question/structure provided in (a), the modal element, the subject (The Duke) and the finite operator (was) are omitted in the response/structure (b), giving rise to operator ellipsis. Without ellipsis of the modal element and the finite operator, the response in sentence (b) would have been: (a) What was the Duke going to do? – (b) The Duke was going to plant a row of poplars in the park. It is obvious therefore that the finiteness that goes in the modal block is fused with the remainder of the verb; as in simple past and present tenses such as: planted, plant(s).
Prepositional ellipsis, according to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 198), consists of the residue; the remainder of the verbal group and any other complement or adjunct that may be present. For example, in the structure illustrated above: ‘Who was going to plant a row of poplars in the park? – The Duke was’. There is elision of the complement: ‘going to plant’, and the adjunct: ‘a row of poplars in the park’. A complete and non-elliptical response should have been: Who was going to plant a row of poplars in the park? – The Duke was going to plant a row of poplars in the park.
These elliptical situations, which are anaphorically inclined in nature, are exploited as referential properties by writers to scheme the various aspects of information in the networks of the narrative structure of their recreations of socio-cultural realities.
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perceived role relationship between interactants. Furthermore, applying the concept of power and solidarity semantics to analyse the pronominal systems in four European languages which have both a familiar and formal pronoun, Brown and Gilman (1960) discovered that exchange in use of pronouns shapes and signifies the power dynamics and solidarity of the relationship existing between interactants in the communicative event. Apparently, Sai-Hua (2002) suggests that while reciprocal use of pronouns suggests relative equality and solidarity, nonreciprocal use, on the other hand, implies social distance and an unequal power relationship between the interlocutors, with the dominant speaker using the informal pronoun.
In similar studies about the use of pronoun in dialogue in political spheres, for instance, attempts are made to explore how politicians from various parts of the world make use of pronouns for political gains and to achieve personal purposes. For instance, Wilson (1990), focusing mainly on the personal pronouns employed by three British politicians, investigates the pragmatic manipulation of pronouns within various political contexts. These studies demonstrate how pronominal choices reflect the thinking and attitude of politicians towards particular political topics, involving particular political personalities and given political contexts. These studies expatiate that politicians tend to
‘manipulate pronouns to develop and indicate their ideological positions on specific issues’ (Wilson, 1990: 46).
The dynamics of pronominal choice is facilitated by a number of factors. In the first instance, the choice of pronouns is seen as an indication of the speaker’s presentation of ‘self’; to show solidarity in which the speaker either identifies himself as a member of a group or indicates non-membership to particular group, or to maintain his stands on a specific issue. Taking cues from Wilson’s (1990) model for the English pronominal system as a point of reference and Goffman’s (1981) notion of ‘participation framework’, De Fina (1995), carried out a comparative analysis of two speeches involving two Mexican participants in a conference on the Chiapas revolt of January 1994 in Mexico.
She observes that, the predominant use of ‘we’ as self reference item, on the one hand, shows that the speaker is not speaking as an individual but rather his words are pointing to a principal; that is the group or organisation that he represents. And on the other hand, the choice of the first person plural pronoun, ‘we’, is a means of self-referencing which is realised in discourses with the use of first person singular pronoun ‘I’, to indicate the
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speaker’s total commitment of ‘self’ to the words that he is saying, and therefore of authorship as the most relevant concern in his speech.
Apart from the above, the genres involved and situational contexts surrounding an utterance may also affect the choice of pronouns in discourses. For instance, in examining the use of pronouns by two opposing Venezuelan politicians in political interviews and speeches at different occasions, Bolivar (1999) discovers that because the questions in the interview often require an answer about the individuals’ personal positions and opinions, the first-person pronoun ‘YO’ ( I ) is more often used in political interviews. And that both politicians tend to use first-person pronouns differently at different political forum. Bolivar (1999) stated that, these politicians therefore tend to exclude themselves in the plural reference when there is a need to distance themselves from responsibility of their future actions, and make use of the first-person pronouns for self-reference during the early periods of their electioneering campaigns.
Other previous studies on pronominal choices in political discourse by critics like Urban, 1986, 1988; Lakoff, 1990 and Johnson, 1994, focus on how the use of the first person pronoun in political speeches projects the participants. Arroyo (2000), for instance, introduces new dimensions in the use of pronouns. He used Goffman (1981) and Zupnik’s (1994) theoretical concept of ‘frame’ and ‘space’ to analyse the main reference meanings of personal pronouns by the socialist and the conservative presidential candidates in the Spanish presidential debate of June 1993 (Sai-Hua, 2002).
Arroyo (2000) discovered that, apart from the fact that the structure of the debate itself affected the pronominal choice, there were remarkable differences in the two presidential candidates’ use of pronouns. While there was a balance in the use of singular ‘I’ and plural ‘we’ pronouns by the socialist candidate, the conservative candidate, on the other hand, used personal pronouns to attack his opponents rather than to explicate his political manifestoes.
What is apparent is the fact that, pronominal choice in discussions, as observed by Sai-Hou kou (2002), is influenced by the participants’ perception and interactive goals of the speech activity. O’Connor (1994) observes further that sometimes when the speaker in an interactive situation, for example, switches to the use of the pronoun ‘you’, such a speaker might still be indexing self. Apparently, self-indexing, by the use of the pronoun
‘you’, according to O’Connor (1994), serves three communicative purposes: (i) self-distancing (the speaker is self-distancing himself from the act), (ii) other-involving (the
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speaker is drawing the other interactant to share his feelings), and (iii) self-addressing (the speaker is addressing the figure of the self in his own past). O’Connor observes that such variation in pronoun use tends to appear in segments of evaluative discourse and
‘contributes to the construction of story as well as the social construction of self’
(O’Connor, 1994: 45).
Kitagawa and Lehrer (1990), on the one hand, identify three uses of personal pronouns. These include: ‘referential’, ‘impersonal’, and ‘vague’ uses of personal pronouns. The referential uses identify specific individuals; the impersonal use of pronoun refers to reference to anyone and or everyone; and the vague use, on the other hand, is considered to be reference to a specific but not identified individual referent in the structure. Sai-Hou (2002: 35) points out that, Kitagawa and Lehrer’s reference to impersonal use of ‘you’ is similar to the indefinite ‘tu/vous’ discussed in Laberge and Sankoff (1979), which expresses ‘the theme of generality’. Sai-Hou (2002: 35) observes further that by using impersonal ‘you’, the speaker assigns the main ‘actor-role’ to the addressee; therefore, a sense of informal camaraderie is also conveyed.
Benventise (1971), a pioneer analyst of the pragmatic function of pronouns, describes pronouns as empty signs whose role is to provide the instrument of a conversion that one could call the conversion of language into discourse. This argument must have influenced discourse analysts like De Fina (2003: 52) to define pronouns as
‘…indexical elements per excellence in that by pointing to concrete individuals, they (pronouns) establish a relationship between the linguistic and extra-linguistic world’. De Fina (2003) argues further that since reference to self or to the interactant is a reflexive act that can best be interpreted in relation to the immediate and social context of the interaction, it implies, therefore, that pronouns are central to the establishment of connections between language and contexts. Apparently, pronouns perform not only textual cohesive functions but referential functions which convey subtle inputs about interactants’ social standing, experiences and topics being discussed; which projects, according to Levinson (1983: 89) therefore ‘…the social relationships existing between them, or between one of them and persons and entities referred to’. The social relations existing between the interactants could account for solidarity as well.
Furthermore, De Fina (2003: 53) observes that, though the uses of plural pronoun such as ‘we’ might be ambiguous at certain referential instances but also have some positive self affirmative effects. De Fina submits further that discursive functions of
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pronoun therefore include indicating distance, involvement, and or solidarity either with topics and participants and conveying responsibility or lack of it. With this kind of discursive function therefore pronominal choice plays a very crucial role in narrative events since it indexes meanings of both the story world and the storytelling world. For instance, in the examination of the roles played by Igbo, and, more outstandingly, English, in Achebe’s No Longer At Ease, Gema and Mercedes (2000) using the semantics of solidarity have revealed the important roles played by the two languages, Igbo, and, more outstandingly, English, as vehicles of fellowship and brotherhood. This discovery has re-echoed the discursive function of pronominal choice in narrative events which include that of distancing self, involvement, or in solidarity with other interactants.
The use of pronouns in narratives, aside from being a grammatical stricture, is a condition which must be fulfilled, indexes meanings about the interactants, their social identities such as familial and kinships bonds, religious affiliations, regional and national solidarity.