Pronominal Choice in Political Interviews

Abstract

Ways of achieving interactional goals of interpersonal involvement, responsibility and trustworthiness are fundamental to the political arena. The aim of this paper was to investigate the pragmatics of the pronominal choice in two political interviews. Discourse analysis was used to determine if personal pronouns functioned exclusively pertaining to the speakers’ interactional goals and to evaluate their use in the light of what the interlocutor expected. The results revealed that the politician who created interpersonal involvement with the audience and used comprehensible and clear language established credibility, and such a strategy was more likely to receive positive evaluation. It may be concluded that the politician’s communicative success may depend on the extent to which the applied linguistic strategy meets the expectations of the interlocutor. In such a case, the interactional goals of interpersonal involvement with its sub-components of responsibility and trustworthiness may be evaluated positively. Thus, the lack of trustworthiness may be experienced due to the politician’s failure to communicate important meaning components.