3.2 Non-canonical Uses of Personal Pronouns…
3.2.2 Second Person Singular Pronoun: Ni ‘you’
3.2.2.3 Dramatic Use
The dramatic use is identified when speakers use personal pronouns to change their viewpoints from self to others and construct a context distinct to the current one.
The dramatic ni ‘you’ occurs in both speech genres with a higher frequency in the TV interviews.
Table 3.8: Dramatic ni in the two spoken genres
Sources Daily conversations TV interviews
Tokens (Frequency) 24 (1.02) 153 (5.39)
Daily conversations
In (3.13), the speaker, M describes his resultless date with a girl he likes. The
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female speaker, F then, advises him how to repair the situation.
(3.13) M: ….Oh 說， Oh 知道 他 姊 叫 什麼 名字，
for a while and after that she went home.’
F: ‘Where were you?’ alternation from the current scene to a hypothetical one. The current finding supports Lin’s (1993: 105) study which proposes that not only a verbal verb, shuo ‘say’ but also ‘the non-verbal means such as a change of voice and/or a short pause’ could function as a hint for the switch of frame. By playing the role of M and speaking to
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the girl M likes, F not just implicitly involves the non-present girl in the current speech but she also encourages M to provide further information between M and the girl, i.e. she told me that she would like to go home at night. Therefore, it is proposed that the use of the dramatic ni can function as a distance-shortening strategy to invite the addressee’s/audience’s participation in the current discourse context.
TV interviews
In addition to increasing involvement and eliciting response from the addressee and the audience by means of presenting an imaginary talk, in the TV interviews, the dramatic ni tends to be embedded in a speculated conversation that reveals the interlocutors’ position toward the discussed event. That is, the presentation of the conversation in a hypothetical context by using the dramatic ni to involve the hearers is to express speakers’ stance toward the event. They may propose a statement which is followed by a position-revealing conversation that supports it. In (3.14), the journalist, J states that the government officers haven’t checked the background of the public servants thoroughly.
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J: ‘You can tell that most (of the government officers) do not do the background check because these people are their (the government officers’) acquaintances. They don’t need to check. I pick you to work for me. You become my subordinates, and (I found that) there is something wrong. Due to the lack of background check on you, I did not realize that you have been so close with your students when we are friends. Right?’
There are six tokens of ni in the above passage. Except the first vague ni, the other five are dramatic ni, indicating the government officers’ acquaintances. The speaker argues that it is necessary to do the background check of those working for the government, but they are usually not checked because these people are mostly the old acquaintance(s) of the government officer(s). After this argument, the hypothetical conversation between the government officer(s) and their friends is presented. This immediate shift of speech context not only works as a support to reinforce his opinions, but also shortens the distance between the hearers and the described roles, i.e. the government officer’s old acquaintance(s). It is as if the conversation between the participants in the described situation was presented in front of the addressee(s), and this presentation would bring vividness into speakers’ statement. Most importantly, the hypothetical conversation is used as ‘a positioning device for the speaker’ (Thornborrow 1997: 258) who initiates it. That is, the speaker suggests his disagreement with those people in a hypothetical context. By means of presenting this hypothetical speech interaction, he not only aims to convince the hearers of his statement, but also releases his disagreeing attitude toward the current event. Another example is taken for further illustration.
The journalist, J presents his friends’/relatives’ opinions toward the discussed event, the insurance system that benefits public servants more than laborers.
(3.15) J: 我們 現在 在 討論 這個 過程 當中，
Women xianzai zai taolun zhege guocheng dangzhong 1pl now DUR discuss this process amid
有 很多 軍 公 教 的 朋友，
you henduo jun gong jiao de pengyou have many solider public-servant teacher ASS friend
我 的 親戚 朋友 當中 也 有， 但 他
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we number be few PRT nine hundred more
萬 勞工， 關 我 什麼 事？ 我們
wan laogong guan wo shenme shi women ten-thousand labors care 1s what thing 1pl
也 是 幹 了 那麼 多 年。 而且 當初
ye shi gan le name duo nian erqie dangchu also be do PRT so many year and originally
我， 那 你 怎麼 不 去 考？
wo na ni zenme bu qu kao 1s then 2s why NEG go test
J: ‘While we discuss, there are people who are soldiers, public servants and teachers—including my relatives and friends. They may contend that you should not keep talking about me. We are few in numbers, but these nine millions of works are none of my business. We have been working for so many years. Why don’t you choose to be one of us?’
There are two tokens of ni in (3.15) which do not refer to any participant in the speech context, but to people who accuse the public servants of receiving a better insurance system in the described context. The speaker takes up the role of his relatives who may be soldiers, public servants, or teachers and creates a scenario of arguing against others’ accusation. The dramatic ni not only refers to the accusers in the described situation but extensively points to the audience and the participants in the TV interviews. The speaker expects that the hypothetical conversation he presents could invite the audience’s reaction, for instance, arousing the hearers’ sense of justice to the responses of the hypothetical speakers who speak for themselves. Thornborrow (1997:
260) points out that the function of stories in the public talk like TV interviews is the
‘production of story evaluation’. The speaker’s attempt to present the store allures the hearers to produce the intended evaluation—disagreement, not merely toward the described event but extensively to the current discussed event. The use of the dramatic
ni reveals speakers’ intention to engage the speech participants in the described event
which arouses the intended evaluation the speakers try to make.Based on the discourse distribution, the dramatic ni can be divided into two situations—either being preceded or not preceded by the verb, shuo ‘say’, i.e. [+shuo/
dramatic ni ] or [-shuo/ dramatic ni ]. In the daily conversation genre, 66% of the dramatic ni (14/24 tokens) occur in the environment, [+shuo/ dramatic ni ], while only 10% of it in the TV interviews (16/158 tokens) appears in the same environment. This tendency suggests that the speakers in daily conversation tend to distinguish their own voices from others, whereas in TV talk, they would switch in a covert way and embed their perspectives within a described context.
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Summary of Dramatic Ni ‘You’
The dramatic ni works as a distance-shortening device to actively involve and passively invite the speech participants in the discourse in the two speech genres. It is observed that the speakers would switch contexts to introduce a ‘story’ or a hypothetical context that contains speakers’ positions and thus further guides hearers’
evaluation toward the event—a function which is exclusive to the TV talk.