Who Do They Think ‘We’ Is? Learners’ Awareness of Personality in Pedagogic Grammars

This article was downloaded by: [University of Texas Libraries]On: 19 November 2014, At: 15:37Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: MortimerHouse, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Language AwarenessPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmla20

Who Do They Think ‘We’ Is? Learners’ Awareness ofPersonality in Pedagogic GrammarsRoger Berry aa Lingnan University , Hong KongPublished online: 05 Jan 2009.

To cite this article: Roger Berry (2005) Who Do They Think ‘We’ Is? Learners’ Awareness of Personality in PedagogicGrammars, Language Awareness, 14:2-3, 84-96, DOI: 10.1080/09658410508668826

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658410508668826

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose ofthe Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be reliedupon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shallnot be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and otherliabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmla20

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/09658410508668826

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658410508668826

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Who Do They Think ‘We’ Is? Learners’Awareness of Personality in PedagogicGrammars

Roger BerryLingnan University, Hong Kong

This paper investigates L2 English learners’ reactions to mixed personality in a peda-gogic grammar. Personality refers to how authors represent themselves in a text andinteract with their readers (e.g. personally via the use of personal pronouns or imper-sonally via the use of the passive, etc.); mixed personality occurs when an authorswitches from one option to another. In an experiment, 195 students from Hong Kongand Poland were asked to read a text in which the author switched from we to you. Theexpectation that this mixing would cause we to be interpreted as exclusive was notborne out; however, some students did attach negative attributes to you as a result of itsproximity to we. Another finding was that awareness of the generic reference of we washigher than that for you. Writers of pedagogic grammars are encouraged to be moreaware of the referential complexities of personal pronouns.

Keywords: personality, awareness, personal pronouns, pedagogic grammar,specific/generic reference

IntroductionThis paper continues the investigation into the style of pedagogic grammars

of English and learner reactions to it that I have explored in earlier articles (Berry,2000b, 2004). The feature that is in focus here is personality. Personality is under-stood as how authors present themselves in a text and how they reach out to theiraudience (Berry, 2004; Coniam, 2004; Goatly, 2000). Involving as it does choicesbetween active and passive and between personal pronouns, it is an importantelement in pedagogic description.

Within personality, it is ‘mixed’ personality that is specifically targeted in thispaper, that is, cases where the writer moves from one personality option toanother, for example between the use of the passive and we. There is someevidence (Berry, 2000b) that mixed personality has a detrimental effect on learn-ers’ understanding of grammatical description. This paper seeks a deeper, morequalitative understanding of learners’ reaction to mixed personality. It examineswhat effect mixing has on learners’ (‘they’ in the title) interpretations of the refer-ence of personal pronouns, namely we and you.

To achieve this a study was carried out involving 195 learners of English inHong Kong and Poland; they were asked to read a paragraph from a pedagogicgrammar that switched from we to you in order to see if the proximity of the lattercaused we to be interpreted as exclusive, rather than inclusive. Another aim wasto see if there was much awareness of the potential generic reference of you andwe. Details of the experiment are given in the section entitled ‘The Study’.

LA 362

0965-8416/05/02 084-13 $20.00/0 © 2005 R. BerryLANGUAGE AWARENESS Vol. 14, No. 2&3, 2005

84

Personality in Pedagogic Grammars

LA 362E:\Stephen Cracknell\Mes documents\la\2005c\la2005c.vp15 August 2005 17:49:01

Color profile: DisabledComposite Default screen

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

exas

Lib

rari

es]

at 1

5:37

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

In this way it was hoped that an understanding of learners’ awareness of thenon-propositional features of grammatical description would be achieved, lead-ing to recommendations for writers in the field.

PersonalityThe most obvious exponents of personality are the personal pronouns;

however, personality is not synonymous with personal pronoun usage. For onething, it is not just a matter of which personal pronoun to use, but whether to useone at all, i.e. whether writer/speaker and reader/listener are to be present in thetext; the alternative is of course one of a range of impersonal constructions, suchas the passive. For another thing, not all so-called personal pronoun usage is rele-vant to personality. Third-person pronouns which refer endophorically, that is,within the text, may not be indicative of personality.

Personality is therefore seen as a series of systemic choices, among which thatbetween personal and impersonal is basic. Within the impersonal option, Goatly(2000: 96) notes two possible constructions, the passive and nominalisation; athird, extraposition, will be introduced below. Within the personal option thereis the full range of personal pronouns (with the limitation on the third personmentioned above). In the range of second-person exponents of personality wealso need to include constructions such as imperatives and rhetorical questions,which assume the presence of an interlocutor. These are called ‘contact devices’by Goatly (2000: 97) or ‘relational markers’ by Hyland (1999: 8).

There are also more genre-specific forms which, though overtly (and gram-matically) third person, refer to the first, such as ‘yours truly’ in informal speechand writing, or ‘the current writer/author’ in academic writing, not to mentionthe use of ‘the reader’ (as in ‘the reader will observe . . . ’) as a way of involving theaddressee without being so direct. Other possibilities are nouns with genericreference such as people and the generic third-person singular pronoun one. Anexhaustive list of all the possible exponents of personality would be beyond thescope of this article.

Since the study described below involves the use of we and you, a brief accountof their use is in order. For a fuller account, the reader is referred to Wales (1996),Mühlhäusler and Harré (1990), or to one of the large scholarly grammars ofEnglish such as Quirk et al. (1985). The traditional distinction for we is betweeninclusive reference (where the addressee is included) and exclusive reference(where the addressee is not); an extension of the former type is the so-calledgeneric we, where everyone is included in the reference. However, it has beennoted that interpreting the reference of we is not always straightforward and thatits reference can shift even within the same text (Flowerdew, 1996; Wales, 1996).Similarly, interpreting you is not entirely straightforward, as, apart from the factthat it neutralises the singular/plural distinction, it also has a generic use, whereit is commonly regarded as the informal equivalent of one (though as Walespoints out (1996: 78, 84) the relationship is not so simple). Teaching materials forEFL learners do not focus on this, perhaps assuming that other languages paral-lel English; this assumption is less justified for Cantonese (the mother-tongue ofthe Hong Kong learners) than it is for Polish. The latter uses second-personpronouns extensively for generic reference; the former does not.

Personality in Pedagogic Grammars 85

LA 362

E:\Stephen Cracknell\Mes documents\la\2005c\la2005c.vp15 August 2005 17:49:01


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

exas

Lib

rari

es]

at 1

5:37

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

The major uses of we and you as investigated in this paper are set out in Table 1.

Personality across genresTo some extent, the set of personality choices available to writers and speakers

is determined by the genre. As Hyland says:

All academic disciplines have conventions of rhetorical personality whichinfluence the ways writers intrude into their texts to organize their argu-ments and represent themselves, their readers and their attitudes. (Hyland1999: 5)

Thus one genre may have a very different range of exponents from another, andthis may be problematic for learners when they import the conventions of onegenre into another. A number of factors are involved in restricting the range ofchoices:

(a) the power relationship between writer and reader;(b) the status and value of factors such as objectivity and prescriptivism in the

particular discipline;(c) the participant roles (in addition to writer and reader) that can be assumed

to have a stake in the field; thus, in scientific writing, other researchers needto be considered, while, in pedagogic grammar, users of the language areimportant;

(d) the existence of organisations (e.g. the American Psychological Association)which may establish a set of fixed conventions to which members of thecommunity have to conform (see e.g. Day, 1999; Hammill, 1999).

Various genres have been investigated for personality. In a study of thelanguage of annual company reports, Berry (1997) notes the very different powerstatus denoted by the use of we (corporate) as opposed to I (individual) incompany reports. The discursive nature of we has been extensively studied inpolitical discourse (Fairclough, 1989; Flowerdew, 1996, 1997; Pennycook, 1994)and political analysis in newspapers (Berry, 1999, 2000a), as well as elsewhere.

However, by far the greatest attention has been paid to personality (thoughnot expressly under this heading) in academic writing, mostly as used in journalarticles, but also in introductory coursebooks (Hyland, 1999) and lectures(Fortanet, 2004). The focus has variously been on the use of passive versus activeverbs (Tarone et al., 1981), personal pronouns (Fortanet, 2004; Hyland, 1999, 2001;Kuo, 1998; Tang & John, 1999) or informality (Chang & Swales, 1999). Common

86 Language Awareness

LA 362

Table 1 Major uses of we and you

Use ExampleWE exclusive [excludes addressee(s)] ‘We’re leaving now; what about you?’

inclusive [includes addressee(s)] ‘We’re having fun, aren’t we?’generic [ = ‘everyone’] ‘We must love each other or die.’

YOU specific [ = addressee(s)] ‘You’re not from here, are you?’generic [ = ‘one’ informally] ‘You can’t make an omelette without

breaking eggs.’



Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

exas

Lib

rari

es]

at 1

5:37

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

research questions are whether and under what circumstances active verbs arepreferable to passive and whether and under what circumstances I is used forsingle authors (according to Hyland (2001) it is becoming more acceptable).Some of these issues will reappear below in the context of pedagogic grammar.Indeed, the following quote from Kuo about academic journals could easily beapplied to pedagogic grammar:

We believe that the choice of a certain personal pronoun for a given context,or even the presence or non-presence of a personal pronoun in journal arti-cles . . . can often reveal how writers view themselves, their relationshipwith readers, and their relationship with the discourse community theybelong to. (Kuo, 1999: 123)

Personality in pedagogic grammarWhile the importance of personality in academic communication is uncon-

tested, it might be thought that pedagogic writing is rather different. In theformer, writers are aiming at peers or even superiors (in the case of dissertations),and need to pay attention to the norms of the academic community that they arepart of or are seeking to enter. In the latter, there is a clearly unequal power rela-tionship between the writer (the expert) and the reader (the learner); the aim isthe transmission of accepted, not controversial, knowledge. With pedagogicgrammar, the community, if it exists, is very different in nature; the readers arenot seeking to join the writers, or vice versa. Why should personality matter?

An answer can be found by analysing pedagogic grammars according to thefour factors in the previous section. As far as the power relationship betweenwriter and readers (factor a) is concerned, the trend nowadays is to involve read-ers more, to decrease the apparent distance between them and the writer. Interms of factors (b) and (c), prescriptivism is now less highly valued than it was,and greater weight is given to language users (especially learners) at the expenseof language authorities. In terms of factor (d), there may be guidelines set bypublishers (those for writers of the Collins Cobuild English Guides series, forexample, enjoin their writers to use you rather than one). Overall, the effect of thisis that there is a wider range of choices now available to writers. However, thereis no help from research and little evidence other than conviction that one style isbetter than another in grammatical description.

As to the choice between active or passive voice, it has long been a tenet ofwriting on readability and plain language (e.g. Fry, 1988) that the passive shouldbe avoided if possible if the text is to sound user-friendly (and this certainly char-acterises pedagogic grammars more than academic writing). Researchers havealso pointed out that this construction is harder for learners to encode anddecode than the active (see e.g. Yip, 1995: 100). However, while the passive maybe grammatically more complex, a personal style involving personal pronounsmay be referentially problematic. Learners are left to themselves to sort out thereference of we (does it include me?) and you (is it me, or me and others, orgeneric? – assuming that learners have been introduced to this last possibility).The use of the passive avoids such issues. There is also the issue of appropriate-ness (Berry, 2000b, 2004); learners may have come to expect one particular kind ofpersonality through previous exposure.


LA 362



Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

exas

Lib

rari

es]

at 1

5:37

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

The choices within the personal option basically come down to we vs. you;unlike in academic communication, I is not an option. The first-person pluralpronoun long held a dominant position, until being challenged recently by theintroduction of you. In Thomson and Martinet’s A Practical English Grammar(1969), an influential grammar from four decades ago, there is no use of you (infact the style is mostly impersonal with a sprinkling of we), but in the first editionof Murphy’s English Grammar in Use (1985) you is quite common (though it ismixed with we). Around the same time, you was introduced systematically in theCobuild dictionaries, from where it spread to their grammatical publications,e.g. as in this extract from Collins Cobuild English Usage: ‘You use most or most of toindicate that you are talking about . . . ’ (1992: 410).

Sinclair, in the introduction to the second edition of the dictionary, claims ituses a ‘direct and informal style that teachers use when explaining words or thatfriends use with each other’ (1995: xviii). It is a style that I have called‘youser-friendly’ (Berry, 2000b).

As rather marginal exponents of a personal style, we should list commonimperatives, for example ‘Note . . . ’ or ‘Compare’ (but not rhetorical questions),as well as third-person pronouns (they, someone), not to mention generic nounssuch as people.

While the passive is the most obvious exponent of impersonal personality,active verbs are also consistent with an impersonal style. For example, it is quitecommon to use the citation form of a word or a grammatical term as the subject ofa sentence: ‘In American English, both of is usual’ (Swan, 1995: 98). Nominalisa-tion is also a possibility, particularly with ‘use of’: ‘The use of the simple presentto talk about regular activities is explained . . . ’ (Collins Cobuild English Grammar,1990).

One other way of avoiding mentioning participants which has not been notedelsewhere is extraposition: ‘It is difficult to learn to use prepositions correctly . . . ’(Swan, 1995: 444). Its use with some kind of modal or frequency adjective is alsocommon: ‘It would be unusual to say . . . ’ (Swan, 1995: 444).

Mixed personalityBy ‘mixed’ personality, I mean situations where writers move from one expo-

nent of personality to another within the same text. I am not suggesting for amoment that personality mixing is necessarily wrong or confusing. Indeed anumber of plausible justifications have been articulated. Tarone et al. (1981/1985) argue that the use of we (as opposed to the passive) in astrophysics journalsindicates unique procedural choices made by the authors (as opposed to stan-dard procedures). In a very different field, the Collins Cobuild English Dictionary(1995) consistently distinguishes in this way between actions that are likely toapply to the reader (‘If you love someone . . . ’) and those that are not (‘To murdersomeone . . . ’). In pedagogic description, there may also be less ‘scientific’ justifi-cations, such as elegant variation (in order to avoid repetition) or avoidance ofcircumlocution.

Mixing personal and impersonal forms is therefore quite common and uncon-troversial in academic writing (and pedagogic grammar, as will be seen below).Mixing within the personal option, while the same reference is retained, is


LA 362



Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

exas

Lib

rari

es]

at 1

5:37

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

another matter. Sometimes it can appear rather egregious, as in this examplefrom an exam rubric:

Candidates should realize that Tasks 2A and 2B, though related, are twoseparate tasks. Do not put the answers to the two parts together. (my under-lining)

The change from the third person noun phrase ‘candidates’ to the implicitsecond-person imperative, while still clearly referring to the same people, doesrather jar.

In other cases, a switch within personal personality seems quite natural, as inthis example of newspaper political analysis cited in Berry (1999: 214–15):

This meant that Hong Kong people would ‘rule Hong Kong with a highdegree of autonomy’, and that – except for defence and foreign policy – wewould really be masters of our own house. (my underlining)

Here the move from the third-person ‘Hong Kong people’ to first-person ‘we’appears seamless, so much so that I have proposed that it be considered an exam-ple of anaphoric ‘we’, in the same way that third-person pronouns are said to becoreferential with previous noun phrases.

Mixed personality is quite common in pedagogic grammar; the followingexamples are not atypical:

(a) impersonal to personal‘Possessive adjectives are used before nouns.We do not use an article with a possessive adjective.’ (Vince 1998: 175 – twoconsecutive bullet points)

(b) we to you‘We often use can + see/hear/smell/taste’ (example omitted)But you can use the continuous with see . . . when the meaning is ‘having ameeting with’ (Murphy, 1994: 8)

In the above case, there seems to be little rationale for the switch other thanelegant variation; we would certainly work in the second line. The author proba-bly intended to mark the second use as exceptional, but what are readers to makeof it when they suddenly find themselves being addressed?

One justification, however, for mixing the personal pronouns we and you inpedagogic grammar is that we can refer to language users/authorities/nativespeakers (exclusive or inclusive) while you refers to a model doer: ‘We use alongwhen we follow a line. You go along a path . . . ’ (my underlining) (Eastwood, 1995:293).

We might label this role ‘language referent’ (as opposed to language author-ity/user/ learner) in that some action, state or quality is attributed to a modelperson or persons. The examples mentioned above from the Cobuild Dictionaryfor love and murder also relate to this role and introduce a further distinction, thatbetween desirable and undesirable action. We can also be used in this function, aspointed out in Berry (2000b): ‘If something is available we either have it or can getit’ (Chalker, 1990: 46).

As the example shows, we is more appropriate in descriptions or definitions of


LA 362



Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

exas

Lib

rari

es]

at 1

5:37

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

a more lexical nature (or in dictionaries). The point about the Eastwood exampleis that the use of both pronouns allows the writer to show a reference switch.

Learner reactions to mixed personalityIn an earlier experiment (Berry, 2000b), I gave three texts to different groups of

learners. One text (the original) had a mixed style involving impersonalconstructions and you. The other two texts were adapted from the original tomake their personality consistent: either impersonal, or personal based on you.After reading the texts, the students completed a test on the area of grammardescribed (the same for all). The group with the original mixed text performedsignificantly worse on this than either group with the consistent personalitystyles. Thus it seems that mixed personality may affect readers’ comprehensionof grammatical description. However, there was little evidence from this experi-ment to suggest why. (Indeed, in an associated question, the group with themixed text said they found their text easier to read than the other groups.)

In a later experiment (Berry, 2004), I asked two groups of learners to read a textfrom a pedagogic grammar and another (on the same topic) from a scholarlygrammar. They then rated their text according to a number of factors, one ofwhich was friendliness (the pedagogic text used you while the scholarly one hadan impersonal style). Not surprisingly, the pedagogic text was rated significantlyhigher. The more qualitative part of the experiment involved the respondentssaying why they thought the one friendlier than the other. Several studentspointed to explicit features of the personality style in doing this. In other words,learners are partly aware of the features of personality responsible for their reac-tions to a text (and some of the comments below bear this out).

Another finding from this study was that learners tended to interpret theword can as a marker of ability rather than of possibility or usuality (which wasthe case in the text) as in ‘X can be used’. The implication is that learners tend tostick with one meaning for common words, the one that is first introduced tothem. The question then is whether this might apply to you in particular, i.e.whether they are aware of its generic interpretation.

The StudyThe aims of the study were:

(1) to see if a switch from we to you in a pedagogic grammar text would lead tothe former being interpreted as exclusive in its reference;

(2) to see if the students were generally aware of the generic potential of we andparticularly you;

(3) to see if there were any differences between the Hong Kong and Polishgroups in terms of the above aims;

(4) to investigate qualitatively how the personality switch might affect thestudents.

The subjects were 113 first-year English and Translation majors at a univer-sity in Hong Kong, and 82 first-year English majors at a university in Poland.Both groups were tested before they had any exposure to a formal course onEnglish grammar. There was no possibility of comparing them objectively


LA 362



Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

exas

Lib

rari

es]

at 1

5:37

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

according to any criterion, but it is the author’s subjective impression that thelatter (for whom admission is highly competitive) were more mature and profi-cient linguistically.

They were first given a pre-question to gauge their awareness of the two mainformal options in a personal style. This involved filling in both the gaps in a text(they were told it was from a pedagogic grammar) with the same pronoun. Fourchoices were given: I, we, you, they; Here is the text:

If _____ want to leave out the indirect object in a prepositional phrase, _____use the preposition ‘to’ with some verbs. (From the Collins Cobuild EnglishGrammar; the original text has you.)

Table 2 shows the responses.Both groups favoured the expected answers in roughly the same proportion,

we being one and a half to two times more popular than you. And while norespondent chose the highly implausible they, it is perhaps significant that six ofthe Hong Kong students chose the plausible (but inappropriate in terms ofpersonality conventions) I. This suggests that they have less experience of thisgenre. However, the answers do support the notion that there is sufficient aware-ness among the two groups in general to proceed to the second stage.

The main part of the experiment consisted of a text from a pedagogic grammarin which the writer switched from we to you within the same paragraph. Here isthe text (on phrasal verbs, taken from Cobuild, 1990: 162):

By combining a verb and an adverb or preposition in this way, we canextend the usual meaning of the verb or create a new meaning, differentfrom any that the verb has on its own. You cannot always guess the mean-ing of a phrasal verb from the usual meanings of the verb and the adverb orpreposition. (my underlining)

The students were asked to say what we and you refer to. Unlike with thepre-question there was no multiple-choice format; the respondents were invitedto give an open-ended answer.

As regards the use of you in the text, it should be noted that it does not fall intothe category of language referent outlined above. The writer probably intendedits reference to be generic (cf. one). However, given learners’ lack of familiaritywith this meaning, it could be expected that they would feel they were beingaddressed directly. As regards we, on its own it could refer inclusively to somejoint enterprise involving writer and reader, or it could be exclusive, referring tothe writers and their like alone. (Given the ‘youser-friendly’ style typical of


LA 362

Table 2 Answers to the pre-question

Hong Kong students (n = 113) Polish students (n = 82) Overall (n = 195)Frequency Percentage Frequency Percentage Frequency Percentage

they 0 0% 0 0% 0 0%we 63 56% 56 68% 119 61%I 6 5% 0 0% 6 3%you 44 39% 26 32% 70 36%



Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

exas

Lib

rari

es]

at 1

5:37

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Cobuild publications, you would also have been possible here.) The mainissue here is whether the proximity of you in the next sentence suggests thewriter is drawing a distinction between the writer(s)/authorities/nativespeakers on one side and readers/non-native speakers on the other. Itcertainly seems that some distinction is intended, for we would not work here.Being unable to guess is not an acceptable position for writers/authorities butapparently is for learners. But given the negative implications, it might havebeen preferable to use extraposition (It is not always possible to guess . . .). Inany case, such armchair analysis may be rather subjective; the results belowwill clarify this.

The answers given by respondents were classified according to the referenceindicated (see Table 1, p. 86). Thus for we the categories were inclusive, exclusiveand generic; for you specific (singular or plural) and generic. Under generic morerestricted frames of references were included (e.g. not just ‘people in general’ butalso ‘people in Hong Kong’, etc.); the crucial distinguishing factor was whetherthe response allowed reference beyond the writer and reader. Occasionally thereference indicated by the answer was not clear, or did not fall into one of theprescribed categories (for example, several students answered ‘the reader’ forwe). Table 3 shows the responses for we.

Typical answers for exclusive we were ‘the writer(s)’, for inclusive we ‘both theauthor and the people who read the text’ and for generic we ‘all users of thelanguage’ or ‘everyone’ (or paraphrases of all).

In both groups the exclusive interpretation found little favour. Indeed, for thePolish group the whole inclusive/exclusive dimension hardly seemed to be afactor. Of course, there is no way of knowing whether the interpretations ofexclusive reference would have been lower without the presence of you, but thetotals are low enough in both cases as to make this unlikely or insignificant. Forboth groups the leading category was generic, which in the Polish case amountedto four-fifths of the interpretations. Overall then, it seems safe to say there is ageneral awareness of the generic potential of we.

The lower figure for the generic interpretation among the Hong Kongstudents was largely compensated for by a higher figure for the inclusive inter-pretation (29%, as opposed to 5% for the Polish students), i.e. they felt themselvescloser to the writer than the Polish students did and perhaps saw the text asfriendlier (as the writer may have wished). Table 4 shows the correspondingresults for you.

Typical answers for specific you were ‘the readers’ and for generic ‘everyperson’ (or paraphrases of these).


LA 362

Table 3 Answers to the main question: we

Hong Kong students(n = 113)

Polish students(n = 82)

Overall(n = 195)

Frequency Percentage Frequency Percentage Frequency Percentageinclusive 33 29% 4 5% 37 19%exclusive 12 11% 4 5% 16 8%generic 49 43% 66 80% 115 59%other 19 17% 8 10% 27 14%



Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

exas

Lib

rari

es]

at 1

5:37

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

While specific was the major interpretation in both groups, the Polishstudents’ comments indicated a generic interpretation twice as often as the HongKong students (as for we, though not the same extent). This interpretation is prob-ably more in line with the writer’s intention and suggests a heightenedmetalinguistic awareness among the Polish students. Four comments fromPolish students support this:

‘Anyone. It’s a general statement. You = one’‘general rule, not to a specific person’‘Anyone (could be replaced by ‘one’)’‘anyone, one’

L1 influence could also be a contributing factor; as pointed out above,second-person pronouns are more commonly used for generic reference inPolish than in Cantonese.

When the pairs of responses are looked at together, another picture emerges.The most common pattern was generic (for we) together with specific (for you).Many such responses indicated oppositions between group (we) and individual(you) as in these two examples from Polish students:

‘the people in general’ vs. ‘a single individual’‘general users’ vs. ‘a particular user’

In the quantitative analysis above this would not have shown up since the classi-fication of responses for you did not distinguish between singular specific andplural specific.

A number of comments were phrased in terms of other oppositions (i.e. notjust to do with singular vs. plural). Here are two particularly insightful, if jaun-diced, responses from Hong Kong students:

‘the person who do it right’ (WE) vs. ‘the person who do it wrong’ (YOU)‘the people who want to combine a verb and an adverb or preposition’ (WE)vs. ‘the one who cannot follow the rules’ (YOU)

A Polish student offered a more straightforward opposition:

‘native speakers’ (WE) vs. ‘non-native speakers’ (YOU)

Two other students similarly picked out learners as referents for you (eventhough the book could easily be relevant to teachers). In all these cases, thestudents saw themselves as members of groups with inferior status or negativecharacteristics. However, it must be said that with you the majority of the


LA 362

Table 4 Answers to the main question: you

Hong Kong students(n = 113)

Polish students(n = 82)

Overall(n = 195)

Frequency Percentage Frequency Percentage Frequency Percentagespecific 95 84% 57 70% 152 78%generic 12 11% 19 23% 31 16%other 6 5% 6 7% 12 6%



Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

exas

Lib

rari

es]

at 1

5:37

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

answers simply consisted of ‘(the) reader(s)’. Nevertheless there appears to be adanger that some learners will associate negative qualities with the referent(s) ofyou due to the personality switch. That is, rather than the presence of you influ-encing interpretations of we, as suspected, in these cases it is the other way round;the presence of we appears to have adversely affected the interpretation of you.

One Polish student offered a less divisive reason for the difference:

They both refer to a average (sic) receiver of the information carried by thesentences, but ‘you’ is more personal.

This is perhaps closer to the effect intended by the writer, but it equally emphasisesthat these pronouns cannot merely be interpreted in terms of reference.

ConclusionsTo answer the particular aims mentioned at the start of the previous section:

(1) The proximity of you to we did not significantly influence the interpretationof the latter as exclusive; only 8% of the subjects overall gave we an exclusiveinterpretation.

(2) Overall there was awareness of the generic potential of we in that a signifi-cant proportion of subjects (59%) gave such an interpretation. However, thefigure for you was much lower (16% overall), surprisingly so, since genericreference appears to be more clearly the writer’s intention than with we.

(3) Both with we and you the Polish students had a higher percentage figure forthe generic interpretation (80:43 and 23:11 respectively). It is not possible toclaim absolutely that this is the result of a heightened awareness of thispossibility, since the Hong Kong students could have been likewise awarebut attracted to another possibility. Indeed, in the case of we, the differencewas largely compensated for by the Hong Kong students’ preference for theinclusive option. In the case of you, however, the Hong Kong studentsseemed more out of touch with the writer’s intention.

(4) The qualitative part of the study suggested that, far from we being influ-enced by the proximity of you, the reverse was sometimes the case: the prox-imity of we influenced students’ interpretations of you in a negative way.

A number of more general conclusions and suggestions can also be based onthe above study:

(1) Pedagogic grammarians have a tendency to address their readers as thoughthey were native speakers aware of the subtle nuances of reference involvedin such apparently straightforward words as we and you. In particular, whiletheir assumption that learners can handle the referential imprecision of wemay be correct, their confidence that learners can handle the generic impli-cations of you appears to be misplaced. Both words are problematic andpedagogic grammarians should consider whether their use is beneficial; ifthey do decide to use them they should try to be consistent and use them torefer in ways that learners understand.

(2) By mixing we and you in close proximity, pedagogic grammarians take therisk that their readers will create some opposition between a group that thewriter belongs to which has positive characteristics and a group to which


LA 362



Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

exas

Lib

rari

es]

at 1

5:37

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

they as readers belong which has negative characteristics. Writers of peda-gogic grammars should consider avoiding personality mixing, especiallythat between we and you, unless it is clear that different reference isintended.

(3) Because of the various interpretations of reference that may be engenderedby the use of personal pronouns, the use of the passive and other impersonalconstructions should not be rejected out of hand. The increase in grammati-cal complexity may be offset by the decrease in referential complexity andimprecision.

(4) Many learners are aware of the personality of grammatical description andsome are highly sensitive to it.

Overall, it may be perhaps claimed that attempts to gauge learner reactions toand interpretations of the non-propositional features of pedagogic grammar(such as personality) are justified, although more refined tools may be needed.

CorrespondenceAny correspondence should be directed to Dr Roger Berry, Lingnan Univer-

sity, Department of English, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong ([email protected]).

ReferencesBerry, R.S. (1997) The pronouns of power in company annual reports. In V. Berry, B.

Adamson and W. Littlewood (eds) Applying Linguistics. English Centre, University ofHong Kong.

Berry, R.S. (1999) The use of generic we in written political commentary in Hong Kong.Studia Anglica Posnaniensis 34, 211–25.

Berry, R.S. (2000a) ‘We in Hong Kong’: Claiming to speak for the community. AsianEnglishes 2 (2), 5–24.

Berry, R.S. (2000b) ‘Youser-friendly’ metalanguage: What effect does it have on learners ofEnglish? International Review of Applied Linguistics 38 (3&4).

Berry, R.S. (2004) Awareness of Metalanguage. Language Awareness 13 (1).Chalker, S. (1990) English Grammar Word by Word. Walton-on-Thames: Nelson.Chang, Y-Y. and Swales, J.M. (1999) Informal elements in English academic writing:

Threats or opportunities for advanced non-native speakers? In C.N. Candlin and K.Hyland (eds) Writing: Texts, Processes and Practices. Harlow: Addison WesleyLongman.

Collins Cobuild English Dictionary (1995) (2nd edn). London: HarperCollins.Collins Cobuild English Grammar (1990). London: Collins.Collins Cobuild English Usage (1992). London: Collins.Coniam, D. (2004) Concordancing yourself: A personal exploration of academic writing.

Language Awareness 13, 49–55.Day, R. (1994) How to Write and Publish a Research Paper. Phoenix: Oryx.Eastwood, R. (1995) The Oxford Guide to English Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.Fairclough, N. (1989) Language and Power. Harlow: Longman.Flowerdew, J. (1996) Discourse and social change in contemporary Hong Kong. Language

in Society 25, 557–86.Flowerdew, J. (1997) The discourse of colonial withdrawal: A case study in the creation of

mythic discourse. Discourse and Society 8, 453–77.Fortanet, I. (2004) The use of ‘we’ in university lectures: Reference and function. English for

Special Purposes 23, 45–66.Fry, E.B. (1988) Writeability: The principle of writing for increased comprehension. In B.L


LA 362



Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

exas

Lib

rari

es]

at 1

5:37

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Zakaluk and S.J. Samuels (eds) Readability: Its Past, Present and Future (chap. 5).Newark: International Reading Association.

Goatly, A. (2000) Critical Reading and Writing. London: Routledge.Hammill, C. (1999) Academic essay writing in the first person: A guide for undergradu-

ates. Nursing Standard 13 (44).Hyland, K (1999) Talking to students: Metadiscourse in introductory coursebooks. English

for Specific Purposes 18, 3–26.Hyland, K. (2001) Humble servants of the discipline? Self-mention in research articles.

English for Specific Purposes 20, 207–26.Kuo, C-H. (1999) The use of personal pronouns: Role relationships in scientific journal

articles. English for Specific Purposes 18, 121–38.Mühlhäusler, P. and Harré, R. (1990) Pronouns and People: The Linguistic Construction of

Social and Personal Identity. Oxford: Blackwell.Murphy, R. (1985) English Grammar in Use (1st edn). Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.Murphy, R (1994) English Grammar in Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Pennycook, A. (1994) The politics of pronouns. ELT Journal 48, 173–8.Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. and Svartvik, J. (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the

English Language. Harlow: Longman.Sinclair, J. (1995) Introduction. In Collins Cobuild English Dictionary (2nd edn). London:

HarperCollins.Swan, M. (1995) Practical English Usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Tang, R. and John, S. (1999) The ‘I’ in identity: Exploring writer identity in student aca-

demic writing through the first person pronoun. English for Special Purposes 18 (specialissue), S23–S39.

Tarone, E., Dwyer, S., Gillette, S. and Icke, V. (1981) On the use of the passive in two astro-physics journal papers. ESP Journal 1, 123–40. Reprinted in J. Swales (1985) (ed.) Epi-sodes in ESP (pp. 191–205). Oxford: Pergamon.

Thomson, A. and Martinet, A. (1969) A Practical English Grammar (2nd edn). London:Oxford University Press.

Vince, M. (1998) Intermediate Language Practice. Hong Kong: MacMillan/Heinemann.Wales, K. (1996) Personal Pronouns in Present-day English. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press.Yip, V. (1995) Interlanguage and Learnability. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.


LA 362



Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

exas

Lib

rari

es]

at 1

5:37

19

Nov

embe

r 20

14

arre

Documents

Who Do They Think ‘We’ Is? Learners’ Awareness of Personality in Pedagogic Grammars