Semantic and Pragmatic Features of the “We-Forms” in the Self-Referential Discourse of First Ladies

Abstract

This article analyses the semantic features and pragmatic functions of the “we-forms” in the selfreferential discourse of first ladies. The practical material is represented by the interviews with the first ladies of Azerbaijan, France and the Republic of Buryatia (Russian Federation) in the Russian and French languages. While a significant number of works are devoted to linguistic self-reference, including the questions of why, how and with what purpose the speaker initiates a discourse about him/herself, the study of self-referential discourse has traditionally been focused on the analysis of the “I-genres”, in which “I-forms” play the key semantic and pragmatic role. This paper turns to the “we-forms”, which have considerable importance in the self-referential discourse of first ladies. In this case, the first person plural pronouns we, nous, and on are accompanied by predicates with broad meanings in the present and past tenses. Forming a discourse about herself, a first lady needs to express her belonging to a number of socially significant categories, such as spouse (the marital we); children, family (the domestic we); team of like-minded people (the collective we); country, nation, society (the national we); friendly nation (the good-neighbourly we); first ladies (the status we). Thus, within the first lady discourse the pronoun we expresses its multiple meanings.