Metalinguistic Use - First Person Singular Pronoun: Wo ‘I’

3.2 Non-canonical Uses of Personal Pronouns…

3.2.1 First Person Singular Pronoun: Wo ‘I’

3.2.1.3 Metalinguistic Use

The metalinguistic use indicates a propositionally redundant yet referential category. The metalinguistic wo only occurs in TV interviews where the speaker makes personal suggestions related to the discussed event.

(3.7) L: 沒有，我跟你，這樣講。沒有一個

H: 我同意。喔，這個阿！

Wo tongyi o zhe a 1s agree PRT this PRT

L: ‘No, I am telling you that there is no country that makes its insurance system so complicated. It should be one single social insurance system’

G: ‘If you cannot do that, you really.’

L: ‘(You) Single social insurance system, you can divide it into, for instance, (I) three systems. (If) you insist on receiving more, you should pay more in advance.’

L: ‘I agree with this idea. ’

The wo here shares characteristics with Chinese metalinguistic ni in terms of its semantic status and position. The wo hardly carries propositional meaning, nor does it

‘involve in the structure of the upcoming clause’ (Biq 1991: 315). It is proposed that the metalinguistic wo here appears mainly for achieving a pragmatic function—to relate a good attribute, i.e. a better insurance system, to a participant role who adopts a three-level insurance system.

3.2.1.4 Summary of First Personal Singular

As has been shown in Table 3.2, TV genre has higher incidence of non-canonical use of first person singular (4.1 in TV and 0.7 in daily). Further comparison shows that it is mainly the dramatic and the impersonal uses that contribute to the distributional difference in the two speech genres.

Table 3.5: Non-canonical categories of first person singular

Sources

Types Daily conversation TV interviews

Impersonal

8 (0.34)

55 (1.90)

Dramatic

8 (0.34)

61 (2.15)

Metalinguistic 0 (0.00) 1 (0.04)

Total (Frequency) 16 (0.68) 116 (4.09)

The interlocutors’ uses of the impersonal wo as a role model to address occur more often in TV interviews than in daily conversation since the former displays diverse functions such as constructing authority and displaying attitude toward the discussed event. The more frequent use of the dramatic wo in TV interviews reveals the speakers’ concern in explicitly expressing their attitude toward the discussed events in public talk, while the concern is less required in private talk like daily conversations.

It is worth exploring whether the frequency and genre discrepancy could be found in other atypical use of personal pronouns.

3.2.2 Second Person Singular Pronoun: Ni ‘You’

There are five categories of the non-canonical use, metalinguistic, dramatic, impersonal, vague, and projective use in the current data. The following discussion will focus on the metalinguistic, dramatic, and impersonal use for the lower occurrence frequency of the vague and the projective use.

3.2.2.1 Metalinguistic Use

The metalinguistic ni ‘you’ is propositionally redundant and refers collectively to the participant roles in speech (Biq 1991: 317). It is equally frequent in both speech genres.

Table 3.6: Metalinguistic ni in the two spoken genres

Sources Daily conversations TV interviews

Tokens (Frequency) 41 (1.74) 50 (1.76)

It is found that the metalinguistic ni tends to co-occur with verbs such as kang ‘see’,

shuo ‘say’ or xiang ‘think’, especially in the daily genre.

Daily conversations

The combination of the metalinguistic ni and the perceptual verb, kan ‘see’ is highest (23/41), and that of verbal verb, shuo ‘say’ ranks the second (10/41). This use could work as a hint to alert the addressee(s) for the speaker’s upcoming remarks about the discussed event. Take ni kan ‘you see’ in (3.8) as an example. The two speakers A and B are discussing a baseball game.

(3.8) A: 所以往後，打得好的話，其實

Suoyi wanghou da de hao de hua qishi So afterward play CSC good DE word actually

味全還有可能上來。那兄弟象

weiquan haiyou keneng shanglai na xiongdixiang Wei-Quan still probably catch-up that Brother-Elephant

大概會被壓下去。

dagai hui bei ya xiaqu probably will BEI press down B: (0) 真的喔？

Zhende o Really PRT

 A: 陳義信， 你看嘛， 陳義信現在投球

Chenyixin ni kan ma chenyixin xianzai touqiu Chen-Yi-Xin 2s see PRT Chen-Yi-Xin now pitch

投不到 140 公里，投沒有

tou bu dao 140 gongli tou meiyou

47 Brother-Elephant would probably get suppressed by their performance.’

B: ‘Really?’

A: ‘Chen-Xin-Yi, you see, Chen-Xin-Yi’s ball velocity is less than 140 km now.

He couldn’t do better than that.’

B: ‘He overuses (his arms).’

The ni ‘you’ in ni kan ‘you see’ does not carry any propositional meaning since the interlocutors are not sitting in the baseball field and watching the ball game while having the conversation. The metalinguistic ni here, though gradually losing its direct reference to the addressee, still obtains its referential function (Biq 1991). The ni kan

‘you see’ functions as a discursive attention-getter to engage addressees and to connect the speaker’s upcoming utterances.

TV interviews

The metalinguistic ni in TV talk can be used as a means to alter the focus of the current topic. An example from the TV interviews is given. The interlocutors are discussing the unequal policies of the insurance system.

(3.9) L: ….那可是在當初立法的時候，就是 public-servant teacher PRT include national annuity

 這些，是政府強制保險。 你今天

zhexie shi zhengfu qiangzhi baoxian ni jintian these are government compulsory insurance 2s today

L: ‘….But when the law was made at that time, the pension for soldiers, public servants, and teachers, and the national pension are guaranteed by the government for their validity. Actually, our Labor Insurance and the insurance system for soldiers, public servants, and teachers are compulsory insurances. (You) For instance, the Labor Insurance, we are required to pay for it. Your delay would be asked to pay the non-reporting surcharge.’

H: ‘It’s not okay.’

There are two tokens of ni in the dialogue above. The former is a metalinguistic ni since it does not carry propositional meaning and there is no pause between the ni and the following utterance; the latter is an impersonal ni that refers to anyone who gets a fine for paying late. Biq (1991: 317) suggests that despite the lack of propositional meaning, the metalinguistic ni ‘refers to the intended recipient(s) as a group’. Besides, the metalinguistic ni makes speakers’ talk relevant to the current discourse and thus could work as an intermediate pragmatic connector to link the previous utterance with the upcoming one. That is, the metalinguistic ni not only introduces related information, i.e. the delayed payment to the current discourse, but it also indicates the switch of topics from the controversial issue, the government’ sole guarantee on the insurance of public servants, to a less controversial aspect, the compulsory insurance, and finally to the least controversial one, the delayed payment. It is pragmatically motivated as it implies the speaker’s intention of calling the group’s attention to focus on the related yet the least controversial aspect of the insurance system, i.e. getting a fine for the delayed payment. The metalinguistic ni in the TV interviews can function as a connector to shift the current focus to another.

Summary of Metalinguistic Ni ‘You’

There are three common effects in the two speech genres as the second person singular is used in a non-propositional sense—engaging the addressees, calling the addressee’ attention, and connecting the previous utterances to later ones. Additionally, the metalinguistic ni could work as a transition point to move to another relevant

event in the current discourse, the function of which is only observed in TV interviews.

3.2.2.2 Impersonal Use

The use of the impersonal or generic ni ‘you’ has been a widely discussed atypical use of the personal pronouns. It occurs when the second person singular does not refer to the addressee alone but to anyone in a speech situation. The token frequency in the current data is shown in Table 3.7.

Table 3.7: Impersonal ni in the two spoken genres

Sources Daily conversations TV interviews

Tokens (Frequency) 31 (1.32) 54 (1.91)

As can been seen in Table 3.7, the impersonal ni does not display a pervasive phenomenon in both speech genres even though this use has been observed in the previous studies. There are two possible reasons for this discrepancy with preceding studies. For one thing, preceding research on the atypical use of second person singular places their emphasis on the classificatory and the contextual description of the functional characteristics (Kitagawa & Lehrer 1990, Biq 1991, Lin 1993, O’Conner 1994, Wang 2006, Wang 2007, Wang 2008, Chen 2009, Yates & Hiles 2010, Stirling & Manderson 2011, and Liu & Xiong 2012). The frequency-oriented investigation is few.¹⁵ For another, the criteria of the generic ni vary from study to study. Liu & Xiong (2012: 18), for instance, follow the criteria of Stirling &

Manderson (2011: 1582-1583) and contend that context works as a vital role in the identification and classification of the diverse cases of atypical second person singular.

On the other hand, Lin (1993), Wang (2006) and Wang (2007) adopt Kitagawa &

Lehrer’s (1990: 742-743) five characteristics in categorization of these non-canonical use found in Chinese.¹⁶ In the current study, we incorporate both contextual information and the concept of the generality of personal pronouns in the identification as well as classification of Chinese second person singular.

Daily conversations

It is found that speakers tend to display his knowledge by using the impersonal

15 The recent study takes a qualitative approach is Hsiao’s (2011) study. He explores the amounts and discourse distribution of the mismatched use of Chinese first and second personal singular.

16 The five characteristics of English impersonal you proposed by Kitagawa & Lehrer (1990: 742-743) are (1) it conveys the generality, (2) it is replaceable with an indefinite pronoun, (3) it resists pronoun shift, (4) its deictic use would be included (e.g. an impersonal you would surely include the addressee), and (5) the sentence including the impersonal you would ‘approximate that of sentences with universally qualified NPs or variable bound by them’ (p.743).

ni (Stirling & Manderson 2011 and Liu & Xiong 2012). In (3.10), the speaker A and B

are discussing baseball games and A appears to have more understanding on the some people are very GY. That is, they’

B: ‘Take off their pants?’

A: ‘No.’

The speaker A was describing a baseball rule at that time. Since they are not baseball player, it should be those players who should obey the rules during the game.

However, the speaker A suggests that not only the addressee but anyone who plays baseball should obey the rule he talks about. The display of his understanding toward the rule suggests the speaker’s attempt to exhibit his knowledge toward the subject.

The use of the impersonal ni implies A’s intention of engaging the addressee in the discussed event. In daily conversation, two effects are found by using the impersonal

ni—to invite the addressee’s participation and to display the addresser’s

understanding toward the event.

TV interviews

Another example illustrating the impersonal ni ‘you’ is (3.11), where the scholar, S is talking about the negative effect of expectation of one’s death.

(3.11) S: …. 事實上，在經濟學裡面呢，預期

S: ‘….As a matter of fact, in the field of economics, expectation receives great attention in the recent thirty years because we know that

expectation can murder people. You tell one person that s/he gets cancer, and that it’s in the last phase. Even if s/he has not got the cancer, s/he would die.’

H: ‘S/he snaps, too. ’

The speaker mentions that the power of expectation is so strong that could kill people—this claim is immediately followed by a supporting statement which begins with the subject, ni. The second person singular does not refer to the addressee(s) but to unspecified and unidentified people who reveal the bad news to others. The selection of the second person singular here could have two effects. Firstly, the impersonal ni could ‘draw the interlocutor in’ and contributes to an ‘interpersonal, involving function’ (O’Conner 1994: 59). Secondly, the impersonal ni could achieve a distancing effect when the speakers do not want to include themselves in the negative description (Yates & Hiles 2010), in this case, a man-killing instance. The speaker’s instance exhibits his knowledge about the discussed event and this example suggests his intention to strengthen his credibility toward the subject.

Apart from exhibiting knowledge and credibility, speakers would embed their attitude toward the subject matters—a phenomenon occurring especially in TV interviews. In (3.12), the speaker J proposes that the laborers may be subject to

J: ‘….It is different in laborers’ situation. First, you are lucky. Your boss would never take advantage of you. S/he is an honest boss. However,

even if you got fifty thousand dollars a month, your premium ratable wage is 43900 at most.’

H: ‘It’s the maximum. It never equals to your salary.’

J: ‘This is the first situation. Secondly, unfortunately, your boss knows exactly how to find a loophole in a law. You may wonder why plenty of Taiwanese workers insure a basic wage.’

There are a total of eight tokens of ni with the impersonal use in the TV talk. Except for the last one that refers impersonally to anyone, the remaining seven tokens indicate the laborers. The speaker demonstrates her knowledge and understanding toward the discussed events through analyzing the laborers’ situation. She addresses the participants and the audience as if she is an expert of this particular area. As proposed in Stirling & Manderson (2011: 1597), the speaker would ‘display the authority as a member of this group and thus enhance the creditability of her account and evaluation with it’ by means of the impersonal ni. Simultaneously, she speaks from laborers’ viewpoint and identifies herself with the laborers by saying hen

buxingde ‘unfortunately’. It is proposed that the speaker’s intention to speak for the

laborers’ experiences is in support of Stirling & Manderson’s (2011: 1589-1590) claim that the impersonal ni is used to ‘seek recognition and acknowledge of the shared understanding from and to evoke empathy and epistemic agreement of the addressee’.

Summary of Impersonal Ni ‘You’

Based on the current data, it is found that the impersonal ni in both genres shares two common functions: to attract the hearers’ involvement and to display the speakers’

credibility/knowledge on the subject. In addition, in the TV interviews, the use of impersonal ni could reveal the speaker’s attitude toward the speech events.

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

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

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.

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

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

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