Pronouns as Means of Impersonal Presentation in English Quality Press Cover Image

Pronouns as Means of Impersonal Presentation in English Quality Press
Pronouns as Means of Impersonal Presentation in English Quality Press

Author(s): Pavel Skorupa, Tatjana Dubovičienė
Subject(s): Theoretical Linguistics
Published by: Vilnius Gediminas Technical University
Keywords: pronoun; impersonal pronoun; personal pronoun; indefinite pronoun; distributive pronoun; quantitative pronoun; quality press;

Summary/Abstract: The current paper presents the analysis of pronouns as means of impersonal presentation in English quality press. The article gives the definition of the pronoun as a grammatical category and describes the use and purpose of impersonalization strategies. The data for the investigation was taken from the international English quality newspapers: The Financial Times (UK) and The Wall Street Journal (US), which are the leading daily broadsheet newspapers in the UK and the USA having millions of both print and online subscribers worldwide. The articles on political, economic, and social issues were chosen on a random basis and scrutinized for pronouns as means of impersonal presentation of fact. The body of 187 cases of impersonalization chosen for the analysis were divided into groups with focus on the grammatical category they belong to. The most and least often used classes of pronouns were identified and compared. The results of the current study may be useful for editors, journalists, writers, as well as for further study of impersonalization strategies in the English language.

  • Issue Year: 24/2016
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 82-89
  • Page Count: 8
  • Language: English