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Pronouns, publics, and power

Multilingual reframing of we, kita, and kami in Singapore’s National Day Rally speeches

ORCiD logo with link | Masaryk University
Published online: 25 September 2026
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/japc.25054.che
Abstract
This study examines how multilingual governance is enacted through first-person plural pronoun choice in Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s National Day Rally speeches (2004–2023). It analyses we, kita, and kami for how English and Malay versions address distinct linguistic publics. Malay distinguishes kita (inclusive) from kami (exclusive); English encodes inclusivity more flexibly through context. Drawing on 20 speeches, seven bilingual sets were selected for critical discourse analysis of 110 paragraphs. Kita anchors civic solidarity and its clusters mark ideological emphasis; kami signals institutional distance. Grounded in critical discourse analysis and indexicality, the study shows how these contrasts are functionally adapted across languages to differing communicative aims.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review and theoretical framework
    • 2.1Pronouns as indexical shifters
    • 2.2Strategic ambiguity in political address
    • 2.3Translation as ideological recalibration
    • 2.4The discourse-context dialectic
    • 2.5Theoretical contribution
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Corpus and sampling strategy
      • 3.1.1Rationale for selecting key years
      • 3.1.2Refining the speech pairings
    • 3.2Analytical procedure
    • 3.3Scope and limitations
    • 3.4Methodological determination of context
  • 4.Findings and discussion
    • 4.1Dataset and analytical framework
    • 4.2Aggregate pronoun patterns and ideological alignment (RQ1)
      • 4.2.1Kita and the rhetoric of inclusion
      • 4.2.2Kami: Authority and institutional voice
    • 4.3Contextual shifts in pronoun function
      • 4.3.1Framing national belonging through kita
      • 4.3.2Voice: From empathy to institutional authority
      • 4.3.3Cultural anchors and community intimacy
      • 4.3.4Clustering untranslated: The English gap
    • 4.4Cross-linguistic divergence in sensitive moments
      • 4.4.1Pronoun function and grammatical visibility
      • 4.4.2Kita clustering and the absence of Kami
      • 4.4.3Ethnic address in Malay versus English
      • 4.4.4Kami as institutional voice marker
      • 4.4.5Strategic reconfiguration across linguistic publics
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
References (47)
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