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Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 14:5 (2023) ► pp.667–694

From evaluative authorities to involved narrators

Variation and change in first-person singulars used in the culture sections of six European newspapers from 1960 to 2010

ORCID logo | University of Helsinki
| Tampere University

Is the use of the first-person singular becoming more prevalent in journalistic writing, like often claimed, and what is it used for? In order to tackle these questions, we analysed 11,775 articles published between 1960 and 2010 in the cultural sections of ABC and El País (Spain), Dagens Nyheter (Sweden), Helsingin Sanomat (Finland), Le Monde (France), and The Guardian (UK). Our analysis focuses on the variation and change in the frequency and functions of first-person singular pronoun and verb forms over time and between different newspapers. We provide a logistic regression analysis of the whole dataset, as well as a qualitative analysis of the 1,077 articles containing at least one first-person singular. The analyses reveal a considerable amount of variation in first-person singular usage between each newspaper. The findings, however, converge to reveal that the frequency of first-persons singulars increases over time while its narrative uses become predominant at the expense of the evaluative and epistemic ones.

Keywords: first-person singular, journalism, objectivity, pronouns, subjectivity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Journalism and the ideal of objectivity
    • 2.2First person singular, subjectivity and objectivity
  • 3.Research questions
  • 4.Data and methods
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1Quantitative analysis of the frequency of 1SG in the big dataset (N = 11,775)
    • 5.2Qualitative analysis of the functions of 1SG in the small dataset (N = 1,077)
      • 5.2.1Frequency of 1SG
      • 5.2.2Textual functions of 1SG subjects
  • 6.Discussion and concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 3 April 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.20062.pos
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