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Chapter 14. Pragmatic and stylistic uses of personal pronoun one

  • Elise Mignot
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The Pragmatics of Personal Pronouns
This chapter is in the book The Pragmatics of Personal Pronouns

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the uses of personal pronoun one. Our study is based on 604 occurrences of personal pronoun one; 263 of those were extracted from the British National Corpus and the rest from other sources. First of all we discuss the inclusion of one in the category of personal pronouns, and describe its characteristics, i.e. its various meanings and the theoretical issues raised by its description. We then try to identify the factors that trigger the occurrence of one rather than another pronoun. We observe that one appears in hypothetical contexts, that it regularly co-occurs with modal auxiliaries and ‘thinking’ verbs, and that generally speaking it involves a typical scenario (a ‘script’) where change is involved (most often, but not exclusively, a change in someone’s belief, or opinion). We propose that this is linked to the origin of the personal pronoun, which is related to the numeral one. We hypothesize that at some abstract level the notion of ‘unity’ is retained; the more a person undergoes change, the more we need to denote, somehow, his or her unity (the person is the same, despite the changes).1

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the uses of personal pronoun one. Our study is based on 604 occurrences of personal pronoun one; 263 of those were extracted from the British National Corpus and the rest from other sources. First of all we discuss the inclusion of one in the category of personal pronouns, and describe its characteristics, i.e. its various meanings and the theoretical issues raised by its description. We then try to identify the factors that trigger the occurrence of one rather than another pronoun. We observe that one appears in hypothetical contexts, that it regularly co-occurs with modal auxiliaries and ‘thinking’ verbs, and that generally speaking it involves a typical scenario (a ‘script’) where change is involved (most often, but not exclusively, a change in someone’s belief, or opinion). We propose that this is linked to the origin of the personal pronoun, which is related to the numeral one. We hypothesize that at some abstract level the notion of ‘unity’ is retained; the more a person undergoes change, the more we need to denote, somehow, his or her unity (the person is the same, despite the changes).1

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Chapter 1. Personal pronouns 1
  4. PART I. Personal pronouns beyond syntax: Competing forms in context
  5. Chapter 2. She said “I don’t like her and her don’t like me” 27
  6. Chapter 3. Free self-forms in discourse-pragmatic functions 45
  7. Chapter 4. Sex-indefinite references to human beings in American English 69
  8. PART II. First and second person pronouns across genres: Advertising, TV series and literature
  9. Chapter 5. ‘ Loquor, ergo sum’ 95
  10. Chapter 6. ‘You’ and ‘I’ in charity fundraising appeals 105
  11. Chapter 7. Breaking the fourth wall 125
  12. Chapter 8. How do person deictics construct roles for the reader? 147
  13. PART III. Referring to the self and the addressee in context of interaction
  14. Chapter 9. First and second person pronouns in two mother-child dyads 173
  15. chapter 10. Pronouns and sociospatial ordering in conversation and fiction 195
  16. Chapter 11. Referring to oneself in the third person 215
  17. PART IV. The pragmatics of impersonal and antecedentless pronouns
  18. Chapter 12. Interpreting antecedentless pronouns in narrative texts 241
  19. Chapter 13. The infinite present 259
  20. Chapter 14. Pragmatic and stylistic uses of personal pronoun one 275
  21. Chapter 15. Impersonal uses of the second person singular and generalized empathy 311
  22. Index 335
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.171.14mig

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Chapter 1. Personal pronouns 1
  4. PART I. Personal pronouns beyond syntax: Competing forms in context
  5. Chapter 2. She said “I don’t like her and her don’t like me” 27
  6. Chapter 3. Free self-forms in discourse-pragmatic functions 45
  7. Chapter 4. Sex-indefinite references to human beings in American English 69
  8. PART II. First and second person pronouns across genres: Advertising, TV series and literature
  9. Chapter 5. ‘ Loquor, ergo sum’ 95
  10. Chapter 6. ‘You’ and ‘I’ in charity fundraising appeals 105
  11. Chapter 7. Breaking the fourth wall 125
  12. Chapter 8. How do person deictics construct roles for the reader? 147
  13. PART III. Referring to the self and the addressee in context of interaction
  14. Chapter 9. First and second person pronouns in two mother-child dyads 173
  15. chapter 10. Pronouns and sociospatial ordering in conversation and fiction 195
  16. Chapter 11. Referring to oneself in the third person 215
  17. PART IV. The pragmatics of impersonal and antecedentless pronouns
  18. Chapter 12. Interpreting antecedentless pronouns in narrative texts 241
  19. Chapter 13. The infinite present 259
  20. Chapter 14. Pragmatic and stylistic uses of personal pronoun one 275
  21. Chapter 15. Impersonal uses of the second person singular and generalized empathy 311
  22. Index 335
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