Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 10:26:21 -0500
From: Natalie Maynor maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]RA.MSSTATE.EDU
Subject: Bounced Mail
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Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 10:53:03 -0400
From: "L-Soft list server at UGA (1.8b)" LISTSERV[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu
Subject: ADS-L: error report from GUVAX.ACC.GEORGETOWN.EDU
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Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 10:52:53 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Peter L. Patrick" PPATRICK[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]guvax.acc.georgetown.edu
Subject: Re: On those Bobdolisms
Subj: RE: On those Bobdolisms
On the use of 3rd-person self-reference by FN+LN in public speech,
esp. to the media, Chris Brooks wrote about Indonesian:
My feeling here is that--in contrast to the self-promotional or
dispassionate historical attitude toward oneself--the use of the
proper name in place of the pronoun in Indonesian is a humbling
device, at least as far as the speaker goes.
Writing from Washington, though, I suspect the norms here are very
different, at least for the usage by politicians. Unlike the sports
figures, these folks often DON'T do their own scripting; the people
who do write comments for them may be the same ones who write press
releases *about* them; and the pols are used to thinking about their
message in 3rd-p terms, too, I'd bet, from campaign and other promo
experiences. The more distance the speaker has from their public
persona, perhaps the easier it is to project a coherent, fully two-
dimensional portrait composed of only that-which-will-sell. While no
doubt these folks are egocentric, they also are pretty image-aware and
I suspect that they're really NOT referring to their "selves" when
they use the FN+LN reference.
Also, I believe I've noticed-- impressionistically, of
course-- that when politicians comment negatively on each other, they
may use either LN or FN+LN, but when they comment positively they tend
to use TLN or FN+LN predominantly. I wonder if anyone has ever done
such a study in public-affairs discourse? So much has been written
about address, but I know of less on this sort of reference (not
counting syntactic treatments, of course).
(I also found Larry's and Joan's comments very helpful.)
--peter patrick