Naslov
Discourse function of personal pronouns in a Slavic pro-drop language: Evidence from Croatian L1 argumentative writing

Autori
Cvikić, Lidija ; Ordulj, Antonia

Izvornik
Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics (1897-7499) 58 (2022), 4; 751-773

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Radovi u časopisima, članak, znanstveni

Ključne riječi
writing ; writer/reader visibility ; pronouns ; Croatian as L1

Sažetak
At the discourse level, personal pronouns have been acknowledged as one of the most important features used to express writer visibility – involvement of the author in the text. Studies have shown that writer visibility depends on discourse type, cultural conventions, writer’s L1, etc. (Petch-Tyson 1998 ; Ädel 2001 ; Rodríguez, Vázquez and Guzmán 2011 ; Zolotova 2014). This paper investigates the discourse function of personal pronouns in argumentative writing in the Croatian language, a Slavic pro-drop language. For the purpose of this paper argumentative essays written by Croatian native speakers (N=100) are analysed for the frequencies of 1st and 2nd person personal pronouns and their discourse functions. The results confirmed low frequency of 1st and 2nd person personal pronouns in the corpus, with the dominance of the 1st person singular personal pronoun I. The qualitative analysis shows that the pronoun I is most frequently used to express discourse functions of writer’s stance and writer’s experience, whereas all of the other pronouns were used mostly to express more general claims. The obtained results gave more insight into the use of personal pronouns in a pro-drop language and confirm cultural and linguistic influences on argumentative writing in the first language.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

POVEZANOST RADA