In:The Politics of Person Reference: Third-person forms in English, German, and French
Naomi Truan
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 320] 2021
► pp. vii–ix
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Published online: 12 October 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.320.toc
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.320.toc
Table of contents
List of figuresIX
List of tablesXI
AcknowledgmentsXIII
Chapter 1.Introduction1
1.1Person reference: A strategic, argumentative, and dialogical act2
1.2The third person and the target6
1.3Scope and structure of this study7
Chapter 2.Finding the missing third person11
2.1Assigning reference, or who are you talking about?11
2.2(Why) Is the third person so special?13
2.3The third person in political discourse18
Chapter 3.Speech roles revisited27
3.1Who frames speech roles? A note on the speaker28
3.2Macro and micro levels: Speech event, turn, utterance30
3.3Public and audience: A macro perspective on hearers’ types32
3.3.1The public attending the debate32
3.3.2The absent audience40
3.4Addressee vs. target: A micro perspective on speech roles45
3.5A tentative definition of target as a speech role50
Chapter 4.Referring to people in parliamentary interaction53
4.1Corpus: Parliamentary debates in comparison53
4.1.1Defining a common genre and a common topic54
4.1.2A brief note on the xml annotation56
4.1.3On the role of reference corpora60
4.1.4The genre of parliamentary debates as an entry point63
4.2Talking and debating at the parliament64
4.2.1Debates between monologue and dialogue64
4.2.2Parliamentary communities of practice67
4.3Methodology: Searching for third-person forms71
4.3.1Perks and challenges of lemmatization73
4.3.2Ensuring the comparability of the data73
4.3.3Performing queries on selected lemmas74
4.3.4Contrasting, counting, analyzing?78
Chapter 5.Performing democracy: Political discourse as a polyphonic space85
5.1Alternative views86
5.1.1‘Naturally one can go this way’87
5.1.2‘For those who believe […], naturally, there is no problem’95
5.2Discourse and metadiscourse99
5.2.1‘As one says’99
5.2.2‘One can debate’101
5.3Questions and answers102
5.3.1‘Some may ask’103
5.3.2Shifting referents105
Chapter 6.Targeting the opponents: Shaping an image of the other111
6.1Assessing the opponents’ views as wrong112
6.1.1‘Those who think that… are wrong’112
6.1.2‘Anyone who believes… is wrong’121
6.2When illocutionary force is at stake: Acting on the targets129
6.2.1‘Those who should’129
6.2.2‘All should’133
6.2.3‘All should, that is: You should’135
Chapter 7.Pragmatic meaning & plasticity of third-person forms141
7.1‘Some, thinking they were Zorro’142
7.2‘Some found it and still find it too dramatic’154
7.3The plasticity of some
164
Chapter 8.Pointing at colleagues: Indirectness and politeness revisited169
8.1Non-specificity, indirectness, and politeness170
8.2Addressing and mentioning: The system of person reference176
8.2.1‘One’: Indeterminate, non-specific, and indirect?179
8.2.2‘Someone’ (and we all know who)184
8.2.3‘Anyone who’ (but not really anyone, all things considered)186
8.2.4‘Those who’ (but more specifically ‘the one who’)191
8.3‘Call me by my name’: Proper names and reference assignation193
8.3.1‘Whoever’ (Mr. Struck indeed)194
8.3.2Naming Members of Parliament197
8.3.3Naming absent discourse participants199
8.4‘Save me from naming them by name’: The pragmatics of hints201
8.4.1Approaching the notion of salience204
8.4.2From salient referents to targets206
8.4.3From salience to the identification of the referents212
8.4.4From reference assignation to contested meaning216
Chapter 9.Acknowledging calls in-between: Doing being a Member of Parliament221
9.1The reconstruction of the referents223
9.1.1‘Someone says’224
9.1.2‘Those who are yelling’226
9.2An act of non-address: Refusing the dialogue230
9.3Jumping into a cross fire: ‘He did not say that’236
Chapter 10.Conclusion: Targeting via the third person243
10.1The challenge of parliamentary discourse244
10.2The politics of person reference246
10.3Prospects for further research249
Bibliography253
Concepts Index275
Lexical Units Index275
