In daily conversations, speakers are engaged in talk-in-interaction to achieve the communicative goal of engaging the participants. On the other hand, the primary purpose of TV interviews is to serve for the intended audience who are absent from the talk; the discussion is therefore specifically for the viewer’s participation.
As the interviews in TV are broadcasted, it follows that the interlocutors usually require attracting the audience’s attention. They provide informative and convincing opinions to obtain the goal. There are two strategies to make speakers appear convincing in their talk—firstly, to speak as the representative of people (by means of the impersonal wo) or to incorporate others’ perspectives in the illustration (by the dramatic wo). The speaker could take himself/herself as a role model and arrange his/her opinions as if s/he were speakers like the authorities so that his/her claim is reinforced. In our data, a scholar speaks as if he were a decision-maker, and make comments on the rise of the electricity rate. Showing one’s knowledge of the current event would also attract the audience’s attention as they could learn things from the speakers. For instance, a journalist considers herself to be the spokesperson of the laborers in discussing unequal Labor Insurance system to appeal to the laborers’
attention. In addition, the speakers could choose the dramatic wo in catching the audience’s eyes. Levinson (1983) points out that the deictic use of personal pronoun is
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ego-centric, that is, the speaker takes first person singular for self-reference, i.e.
deictic wo. The constant use of deictic wo to express their ideas would result in a sense of arrogance if the audience do not concur with their opinions. The shift of speakers’ deictic centers and of their perspectives/ angles makes the speakers less ego-centric.19 That is to say, speakers’ involvement of others’ perspectives in making statements would leave the impression that they are willing to stand in others’ shoes and are thus more likely to win the hearers’ support. However, the speakers’ switch of viewpoints is not merely for making their statement more acceptable. It is observed that the dramatic wo also occurs in conflicting contexts such as stating the inappropriate relationship of the taxpayers and politicians and the unequal social convention imposed on the male role. Thus, the speaker’s switch of perspective to others implies his/her attitude toward the discussed event. That is, without taking the risk of being presumptive by the use of deictic wo, the speaker can embed his/her attitude in statements. Thus, by using the impersonal wo and dramatic wo more often, the speakers in TV interviews obtain the goal of winning the audience’s support and simultaneously, are able to implicate their attitude in the remarks.
Aside from gaining support in their talks, the speakers tend to have stronger intention to invite hearers’ participation and involvement in TV interviews. The use of the impersonal ni and the dramatic ni could achieve this goal. It has been proposed that the impersonal second person singular could result in ‘the rhetorical effect of vividness, immediacy and camaraderie’ (Biq 1991: 310 and Kitagawa & Lehrer 1990).
Stirling & Manderson (2011) also state that English impersonal you could recruit involvement from the hearers and gives rise to a sense of informal camaraderie.
Furthermore, Biq (1991: 310) proposes that Chinese impersonal ni would invite addressees’ participation since ‘the speaker assigns a major actor role to the addressee’. Apart from the impersonal ni, the dramatic ni could invite hearers’
participation by assigning an active role to them. That is to say, when addressing the hearers with the dramatic ni, the speaker shortens the distance between the hearers (in the current context) and the participant roles (in a described context). In our example, the speaker uses the dramatic ni to indicate the accusers of the public servants, and those government officers’ old acquaintances who skip background check. The use of the dramatic ni would make the hearer(s) feel as if s/he were the accuser or the old acquaintance who receive blames from other participant roles in the described situation. If the audience take the blame and shows some follow-up responses, they are unconsciously participating in the discourse event. That is to say, by virtue of bringing the audience and the participant roles closer, the speakers make the audience
19 The deictic center would no longer be the speaker, but the addressee, the third party, or even the imaginary role.
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involved in the discourse. In other words, the frequent use of the impersonal ni and the dramatic ni in TV interviews is because of speakers’ stronger intention to attract hearers’ involvement.
The component of obtaining good communication requires the incorporation of the recipient’s perspective (Holtgraves 2002: 133). In TV interviews, there is an obvious struggle between the establishment of common ground and the construction of authority in the speech event. In TV interviews, the speakers form a group of expertise to discuss the current issue. These experts are expected to offer professional advice or suggestions; however, if the comment from the expert is too subjective, it may give rise to a sense of presumption and loses the audience’s attention. The result would conflict with the speech purpose of TV talk which aims at engaging the audience in speech interaction. On the other hand, if the suggestion is not authority-like, they may lose their audience for the lack of the expertise and for not being convincing enough. To solve the dilemma, the impersonal ni is adopted. Its high frequency reveals the speakers’ intention to strike a balance between obtaining the common ground and constructing the authority. Stirling & Manderson (2011: 1599) propose that speakers tend to adopt English impersonal you in displaying their authority and creditability as well as in involving the addressee(s). In our examples, the speakers adopt the impersonal ni when stating the value principle in economics or showing their understanding of the Labor Insurance system. As they show their identity as experts in economics or identify themselves with experts in insurance system, the speakers ‘display the authority as a member of this group and thus enhancing the creditability of their account and evaluation with it’ (Stirling &
Manderson, 2011: 1587). That is, by showing one’s identity as experts or relating one’s to those experts, the speaker exhibits the knowledge of what a member of the expert group should know in the domain. They would display their authority about the subject and also make the evaluation more credible. Besides, Stirling & Manderson (2011: 1587) point out that instead of adopting other generalizing expression, such as
we and one, the speakers ‘implicate the addressee as at least a potential member of the
group, hence the involving effect’. That is, the impersonal ni creates a sense of involvement that makes addressees feel as if they were one member of the experts.Moreover, in daily conversation, speakers would also employ the impersonal ni to invite addressee’s participation (i.e. the instance of explaining the baseball rule), to show their understanding and increase their credibility over the subject, even though it is comparatively less frequent in TV talk. Therefore, it is proposed that the tension of involving the audience and displaying the knowledge in TV interviews can be resolved by incorporating the impersonal use of the second person singular.
In daily conversations, apart from adopting the impersonal ni and the dramatic
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ni, the speakers would adopt the vague nimen to involve their speech participants.
Instead of saying ni de xiaogou ‘your (sing) dog,’ the speaker choose to say nimen de
xiaogou ‘your (pl) dog’, which implies that the speaker knows the addressee does not
raise the dog alone. The use of the vague nimen shows the speaker’s understanding of the addressee, i.e. the addressee is not the only member in an event. The display of his/her understanding could further work as a strong invitation to engage hearers’responses since the speaker brings up an event that is highly relevant to the addressee who is capable of responding to it. However, in TV interviews, it is less likely that the speakers would publically show interests in engaging participant-related talk since the speech purpose of TV talk targets at catching the attention of the non-present participants, not of the current speech participants. Therefore, the speakers in daily conversations use not merely the impersonal and dramatic ni but the vague nimen to maintain the interpersonal relation among the speech participants in the speech event.
Furthermore, the speech purpose is participant-oriented in daily conversations.
As the speech participants refer to the third parties, they would usually not be specified. For one thing, the speakers have more familiarity with the ‘daily event’
script, i.e. the people and the scene, constructed in the everyday life and need no further explanation (e.g. the basketball-playing example in (3.30). For another, the third party is not the main focus of the entire talk and the identification is not necessary (e.g. the church construction example in (3.32). Since the major goal in daily conversations is to engage the speech participants in the discourse events, not to identify and involve the non-present third parties in exchanging ideas and thoughts related to the everyday events, this lack of specification and identification of the uninvolved others may account for the comparatively higher use of the vague and inferred tamen in daily conversations.
It is argued that the speech purpose is one factor for the differences in the atypical use of personal pronouns in the two speech genres. In TV interviews, the speakers tend to win the viewers’ support and to invite their participation through the frequent use of non-canonical first and second person singular, while in daily conversations, the speakers would also adopt vague nimen to attract the involvement.
The unequal frequency distribution of the unidentified or unspecified third parties in the two genres also supports the influence of the distinct goals in speech. Moreover, the speech purpose in communication varies with the speech event. The discussed topic of the discourse event may have covert effects on the uses of personal pronouns under interactive speech contexts and thus would be discussed.