26
Inclusive and Exclusive Patterning of
the English First Person Plural:
Evidence from Conversation
JOANNE SCHEIBMAN
1
1.1
Introduction and Background*
Introduction to the Study
In a July 2002 newspaper column entitled ‘“We” is not me or a lot of us,’
Molly Ivins (2002) condemns what she calls the promiscuous uses of we
found in recent editorials pertaining to the U.S. stock market’s sluggish
performance. Specifically these commentators were reminding readers that
since we profited mightily during the financial boom of the 1990s, we must
now face up to the realities of investment risk. Ivins crisply rebuts the journalists’ inclusion of all of us as beneficiaries of financial gain with “Who
you callin’ ‘we,’ white man?” (Ivins 2002)—a famous punch line from a
well-known joke based on The Lone Ranger. In using this expression Ivins
points out the presumptuousness of assuming that all United States citizens
are at an economic level able to participate in the financial markets. The
rhetorical success of Ivins’s argument suggests that American English
speakers are cognizant when speakers and writers infelicitously include others in a referential group using we. Expression of inclusion and exclusion in
* Work on this project was supported by an Old Dominion University College of Arts and
Letters Summer Research Grant, 2002.
Language, Culture, and Mind
Michel Achard and Suzanne Kemmer (eds.).
© 2004, CSLI Publications
377
378/ JOANNE SCHEIBMAN
discourse is not solely a referential operation; it has both social and interpersonal consequences (e.g. Duszak 2002b).
Many languages lexically or morphologically distinguish inclusive uses
of the first person plural pronoun—those that refer to the speaker and the
addressee(s), from exclusive uses—those that refer to the speaker and another
individual or group who are not addressees. In English, first person plural
pronouns function both inclusively and exclusively without a change in
form. However, in the study reported on in this paper, American English
conversational utterances with we subjects exhibit variation in syntactic
patterning, contingent on the referentiality of the first person plural subject.
Distributional analyses of conversational utterances indicate that predicates
with inclusive subjects more frequently contain modal elements and less
frequently occur in the past tense, relative to exclusive tokens. Predicates
with inclusive we subjects in the database, then, tend to be propositionally
mediated in conversation in ways that predicates with exclusive we subjects
are not. In interactive discourse, the mediating properties of these utterances
soften violations of negative face that are potentially part of the act of
speakers’ referentially subsuming another discourse participant under the
first person plural pronoun—an interpersonal negotiation that is not required
when we functions exclusively.
The theoretical point of view guiding this investigation is usage based.
It assumes that in large part communicative and cognitive factors shape
grammatical and lexical patterning in language (Hopper 1987, Bybee 2001,
Thompson and Hopper 2001, Thompson 2002). In this case, analyses of
distributional and functional properties of first person plural conversational
utterances suggest that there is an inclusive/exclusive distinction in English
that is structurally apparent and pragmatically motivated. Moreover, employing a method that focuses on conversational usage demonstrates an interactional basis for linguistic categories. In the case of we, analyses of conversational utterances reveal a distinction in English that is marked morphologically in other languages.
The rest of Section 1 highlights previous work on the expression of inclusion and exclusion from both typological and discourse analytic perspectives. Section 2 provides a brief overview of the conversational database and
coding categories used in this study, and Section 3 outlines general distributions of utterances by referentiality, tense, and modality. Sections 4 and 5
present analyses and discussion of inclusive and exclusive utterances respectively. And finally, Section 6 offers summaries and conclusions based on
the analytical findings.
INCLUSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE PATTERNING / 379
1.2
The Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction as a
Typological Feature
Haas (1969) concludes that the terms inclusive and exclusive have been in
use in linguistics for at least two centuries and probably longer. Distribution of the inclusive/exclusive contrast is areally defined. The feature occurs
most frequently in language families of Australia, South America,
Mesoamerica, and North America, and least frequently in the language families of Africa and Europe (Nichols 1992). In contrast to this strong geographical correlation, Nichols (1992) finds no association between the inclusive/exclusive opposition and any other typological feature she surveyed
(e.g. word order, noun class systems, alienable-inalienable possession, voice
oppositions).
Though the inclusive/exclusive category is independent of number in
pronouns, it often combines with number distinctions such as dual and plural (Helmbrecht 2002: 36). These contrasts are illustrated below for Kuri, an
Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia.
(1)
Kuri (Austronesian)
dual
plural
incl.
Neá
Nullia
excl.
Neá-wai
Nu úllia
(Schmidt 1919 cited in Mühlhäusler and Harré 1990: 171)
For languages that make such four-way distinctions, the inclusive dual refers
to the speaker and one addressee (‘I’ + ‘you’ SG ); the inclusive plural includes the speaker and more than one addressee (‘I’ + ‘you’ PLURAL); and the
exclusive forms refer to the speaker and others who are not directly addressed—one other person in the case of the dual (‘I’ + ‘s/he/it’) and more
than one for the plural (‘I’ + ‘they’).
While there is considerable variation in the morphological and lexical
expression of inclusive and exclusive elements crosslinguistically (Ingram
1978, Jacobsen 1980), in many languages the functional association between the inclusive and the second person (the addressee) is reflected formally. It is not uncommon, for example, for second person morphemes to
mark inclusive forms and for first person or third person elements to mark
exclusive forms. Benveniste (1971: 203) notes that in Fox (an Algonquian
language) the inclusive pronoun is marked with a second person prefix, and
the exclusive pronoun contains a first person prefix. In Tok Pisin, a Creole
language spoken in Papua New Guinea, the inclusive yumi is formed by
combining first person and second person morphemes (Romaine 1992:!2).
In English conversation there are distributional similarities between utter-
380/ JOANNE SCHEIBMAN
ances with second person singular and inclusive we subjects on the one
hand, and between utterances with third person singular (human) and exclusive we subjects on the other. Predicates with both second person singular
and inclusive we subjects frequently contain modal elements (e.g. can, gotta)
and rarely occur in the past tense. Clauses with third person singular (human) and exclusive we subjects hardly ever contain modal elements and often occur in the past tense (Scheibman 2002). These formal facts are compatible with Benveniste’s proposal that ‘the distinction of the inclusive and
exclusive forms is modeled in reality on the relationship we have established
between the first and second singular and between the first and third singular,
respectively’ (1971: 202).
1.3
Discourse Studies of Inclusive and Exclusive ‘We’
Studies investigating discourse functions of inclusive and exclusive pronouns come from a variety of theoretical perspectives, and they typically
highlight issues such as group membership, participant alignment, and
positive and negative face needs (e.g. Goffman 1959, Goffman 1981, Mao
1996, Valle 1996, Pyykkö 2002, Skarżyńska 2002).
In her introduction to the volume Us and Others Anna Duszak (2002a:
6) observes:
Both we and they can be skillfully managed in discourse in order t o
construct, redistribute or change the social values of ingroupness and
outgroupness. We in particular opens up a number of referential and
pragmatic options (esp. the inclusive—exclusive distinction) and enjoys a strong cultural salience across languages and contexts.
One domain in which ‘we’ is used to globally manipulate group membership is political discourse. In a study on the use of m y ‘we’ in recent
Soviet and Russian speeches, official records, and interviews, Pyykkö
(2002) shows how the referents of my change over time depending on the
historical and ideological context. During the Soviet era, for example, m y
referred to the Communist Party and the people; in contrast, the collective
my used by Putin expresses a more traditional sense of Russian community
(Pyykkö 2002: 244-46). Since by definition all deictic expressions take as
part of their meaning aspects of the discourse context, in political discourse
the indexical meaning of ‘we’ draws and reinforces ideological and national
boundaries.
In written English, authors may establish rapport with their readers by
using we inclusively. In an analytical comparison of Stephen J. Gould’s
popular and academic writings, Valle (1996) finds that Gould only uses inclusive we in his nonspecialist texts, not in his scholarly work. Valle suggests that Gould’s use of inclusive we in his nontechnical writings func-
INCLUSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE PATTERNING / 381
tions as one of several high involvement discourse strategies he uses that
contributes to the public popularity of his work. In contrast, Kuo’s (1999:
132-33) analysis of a corpus of scientific texts shows that the most common function of inclusive we in these data is to presuppose shared background knowledge and beliefs on the part of expert readers. Both Valle
(1996) and Kuo’s (1999) studies of the use of inclusive we point to its having a general rhetorical function in English academic and popular academic
writing—that of encouraging the reader to maintain interest and belief in the
integrity of the text and its arguments, and by association, in the author
herself.
Mao (1996) studied the functions of Chinese first person pronouns (wo
‘I/me’, wo-men ‘we/us’) for Chinese speakers studying at a Midwestern university in the United States. Based on these speakers’ judgments, Mao
(1996: 123) suggests that the use of wo-men in discourse ‘echoes and emulates a traditional Chinese ethos that values the communal over the individual’. For example, ‘humble wo-men’ is frequently used by speakers ‘to convey a sense of modesty and/or politeness’ as illustrated in (2) (Mao 1996:
118). In this case, the use of wo-men (as opposed to wo ‘I’) functions as a
negative politeness strategy, allowing the speaker to show humility.
(2)
1.4
Xian ta zhezhong ren duo nenggan, xiang wo-men zhezhong ren
jiu buxing le.
‘How capable people like her are, whereas people like us are just
the opposite.’
(Mao 1996: 118)
‘We’: Plural or Singular?
In both spoken and written discourse it is quite common to find first person
plural pronouns having singular or ambiguous number reference, e.g. the
royal we (Mao 1996 for Chinese, Kuo 1999 for English, Pyykkö 2002 for
Russian). Benveniste (1971) observes that, referentially, ‘we’ is not a collection of individuated ‘I’s. Only one of the referents of ‘we’ has speaker status
(Margolin 1996). Benveniste (1971: 203) suggests that in languages lacking
a formal inclusive/exclusive contrast, for which referentiality of the pronouns is not grammatically assigned (e.g. Indo-European languages),
“we” is something other than a junction of definable elements, and the
predominance of ‘I’ is very strong in it, to the point that under certain
conditions, this plural can take the place of the singular.
In languages such as English that do not have a morphological or lexical inclusive/exclusive contrast, referentially ambiguous uses of ‘we’ in
discourse have important functions. Expression of group membership or
382/ JOANNE SCHEIBMAN
maintenance of positive and negative face, for example, may motivate language users to align themselves with a diffusely conceived class of referents.
For example, the speaker of the utterance in (3) is a district attorney who is
meeting with a witness in a case she is working on. The witness is also a
victim of the crime being discussed. Because of the speaker’s multiple alliances, we in this utterance is at once singular (the lawyer herself who will
prosecute the case), inclusive plural (the lawyer and the witness and the witness’s husband who is also present), and exclusive plural (the lawyer and
other members of the district attorney’s office).
(3)
if we get a conviction just on one case here,
J1074.821
The inclusive sense allows the lawyer to show support for the witness and
also to endow her (the witness) with agency in the legal process, both expressions of positive politeness. The exclusive interpretation permits the
lawyer to identify with the district attorney’s office, thus adding authority to
her position (which may reassure the witness/crime victim as well). The
attorney’s aligning herself with the district attorney’s office also provides an
implicit cushion for her own accountability in the event she is not successful in her prosecution. This example illustrates that ambiguity, or fluidity,
of expression of number and referentiality in first person plural pronouns
can be socially and discursively functional in English conversation.
The rest of this paper offers descriptions and analyses of usages of we
from a corpus of American English conversational utterances. The interactional pivot of the expression of inclusion in these analyses is the question
of ‘whether or not the speaker(s) are empowered to speak on behalf of the
reference class as a whole, thus conveying a joint/common communicative
intent’ (Margolin 1996: 118). Such interpersonal negotiations have structural consequences for linguistic patterning in English.
2
Description of the Data
Utterances with we subjects were taken from sixteen audiotaped conversations and entered into a spreadsheet application for coding. Fifteen of the
conversations are part of the UCSB Corpus of Spoken American English
(CSAE), and one conversation was taped and transcribed by me. The fifteen
conversations total five hours and sixteen minutes of audiotaped talk and
yielded 378 clauses with first person plural subjects.2 The conversations
1 Numbers locate conversational utterances in the database.
2 Let’s imperatives are not included in the corpus.
INCLUSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE PATTERNING / 383
themselves represent the language of fifty-three speakers in total, though
only thirty-nine speakers produce first person plural utterances. Brief sociolinguistic characteristics of participants in the conversations (sex, age,
years of education, primary dialect of American English) are available as part
of the CSAE but do not figure directly in the current study.
The utterances were coded for a variety of structural and functional features. Most relevant to this analysis is the coding of subject referentiality
and number (exclusive/inclusive/generic, dual/plural), referential specificity
(individuated, class), modality, and tense (present, past, modal).3 Coding
categories are briefly discussed below.
Referentiality: The values used to code referentiality of we subjects
are: inclusive dual, inclusive plural, exclusive dual, exclusive plural, and
generic.
(4)
INCLUSIVE DUAL (speaker addressing a friend in the conversation)
4
we better go up to Dillards.
(5)
INCLUSIVE PLURAL
(6)
EXCLUSIVE DUAL
(7)
EXCLUSIVE PLURAL
(8)
GENERIC
T609.7
(five family members celebrating one of their
birthdays together)
we gotta get a picture.
A679.36
(one member of a couple referring to herself and
her partner, speaking to a dinner guest)
we read this great book.
P557.34
(speaker referring to herself and her classmates
at the school where she is studying to be a farrier)
we have to put ointment on em and stuff.
K711.78
5
we take our air for granted.
K1360.62
The process of coding linguistic material is immensely useful when investigating linguistic structure in interactive discourse; however, in practice,
3See Scheibman (2002) for general discussion of grammatical coding of conversational
utterances.
4The following transcription symbols are used in this paper (Du Bois et al. 1993).
.
final transitional continuity
..
pause
,
continuing transitional continuity
@
laughter
?
appeal transitional continuity
(H)
inhalation
[]
speech overlap
Q
quotation
-truncated utterance
YWN
yawn
=
lengthening
X
indecipherable
5 These very global generic usages are not analyzed in this study.
384/ JOANNE SCHEIBMAN
linguistic elements do not always fall into discrete classes. For example, in
(3) above, repeated below as (9), we may be interpreted as inclusive or exclusive. The subject pronoun in this utterance was coded inclusive plural.
The rationale for privileging the inclusive sense in such cases is because one
of the main goals of this study is to look at structural properties of utterances whose first person plural subjects include addressees versus those that
do not. This example illustrates the difficulties in collapsing complex discourse usages into discrete categories.
(9)
if we get a conviction just on one case here,
J1074.82
Referential specificity: Most grammatical presentations of pronominal paradigms assume that singular and plural morphemes reliably designate singular and plural referents. However, in English usage inclusive
plural and exclusive plural subjects may refer to a class of referents as well
as to individual referents. For this reason, we subjects in the database were
assigned an additional code to indicate the referential specificity of the pronoun. The two coding values are individuated (specific individuals) and class
(nonindividuated group).
(10)
INDIVIDUATED (Three people cooking dinner together)
ROY:
Æ
(11)
@So,
we can dispense with the garlic and the butter.
PETE: <X Right X>.
P234.78
CLASS (The speaker is a bank supervisor in a meeting discussing a par-
ticular money instrument. We in this utterance refers simultaneously t o
the bank employees present in the meeting and to the institution itself.)
we've kind of hesitated in .. in offering those,
O931.48
Modality: English central modals appearing in the conversational utterances are entered in this field (can, can’t, could, couldn’t, might, might
not, must, shall, should, shouldn’t, will, ’ll, won’t, would, ’d, wouldn’t).
Other modal elements, or intermediate function verbs (e.g. gotta, ought to,
be able to), are listed in a separate category.
Tense: The coding values for this category are present, past, and modal.
Modal is used to code predicates containing modal auxiliaries, for which
time reference is usually irregular.
INCLUSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE PATTERNING / 385
3
Distributional Patterns of Referentiality, Tense, and
Modality
Table 1 displays the distribution of tense and modality of utterances in the
corpus by referentiality of we. Of the 378 first person plural utterances in
the database, 136, or 36 percent are inclusive; 212, or 56 percent, are exclusive; and 30, or 8 percent, of the tokens are coded generic.6 Most striking
about these distributions is that 88 percent of all past tense predicates have
exclusive subjects, and 68 percent of utterances containing modal auxiliaries
occur with inclusive we. Moreover, 47 percent of clauses with exclusive
subjects are past tense (99/212), compared to only 9 percent of inclusive
tokens (12/136). Additionally, the percentage of utterances containing central modals is far greater for inclusive tokens (35 percent) than for exclusive
uses (9 percent).
Referentiality
inclusive
exclusive
generic
Total
Percent
Present
76
39.18%
94
48.45%
24
12.37%
194
100.00%
Past
12
10.62%
99
87.61%
2
1.77%
113
100.00%
Modal
48
67.61%
19
26.76%
4
5.63%
71
100.00%
Total
136
35.98%
212
56.08%
30
7.94%
378
100.00%
Table 1. Utterances by referentiality and tense/modality (n=378)
4
4.1
Inclusive We in Conversation
Introduction
Table 2 summarizes the distributional properties of utterances with inclusive
subjects in the database. Only 9 percent of these predicates are marked past
tense and over a third of inclusive utterances (35 percent) contain a modal
auxiliary. Inclusive dual subjects are strikingly less frequent in this corpus
than are inclusive plurals (17 and 119, respectively). This difference in frequency between the dual and the plural may be due to the fact that twelve of
the sixteen conversations used as data for this study had more than two participants; this might reduce the number of opportunities for two people to
6Percentages in tables are rounded to whole numbers in discussion (e.g., 36 percent is used
for 35.98 percent).
386/ JOANNE SCHEIBMAN
have separate conversations with one another. Or it may be the case that in
these multiparty exchanges the recording event itself could motivate participants to treat the conversation as a special occasion and to maintain group
interaction. Because the inclusive dual and plural tokens exhibit similar
structural features (e.g. high frequency of modal elements, low percentage of
past tense), they will be analyzed together as one group.
Referentiality
inclusive dual
inclusive plural
Total
Percent
Present
7
41.18%
69
57.50%
76
55.88%
Past
5
29.41%
7
5.83%
12
8.82%
Modal
5
29.41%
43
36.67%
48
35.29%
Total
17
100.00%
119
100.00%
136
100.00%
Table 2. Inclusive utterances by referential specificity
and tense/modality (n=136)
In an earlier study examining relationships between subjects and predicates in American English conversation, I found that clauses coocurring
with second person singular subjects (you) are informationally mediated in a
variety of ways (Scheibman 2002). Second person singular utterances exhibit a very low frequency of past tense predicates (demonstrating the infrequency of direct assertion with addressee subjects), a high percentage of modal elements (e.g. (12)), and second person singular expressions often appear
as questions or subordinate clauses following epistemic or evaluative clauses
(e.g. that’s good in (13)).
(12)
you can use this for your muffins.
(13)
that’s good you’re getting r- good rest.
(Scheibman 2002: 77-8)
These properties of second person singular utterances demonstrate that
English speakers hedge assertions directed toward addressees to maintain
addressees’ negative face. With respect to the present study, first person plural inclusive utterances in the database exhibit these same features, suggesting that when English speakers use inclusive we they are sensitive to the
interpersonal stakes involved in negotiating consensus for their assertions in
the same ways that motivate them to mediate assertions toward addressees
using you.
INCLUSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE PATTERNING / 387
4.2
Modal Elements in Inclusive Utterances
Table 2 shows that 48 of the 136 inclusive predicates in the database contain
a central modal (35 percent). The most frequently appearing modals in the
database are can, could, should, and ’ll. Predicates with modal auxiliaries in
these inclusive utterances highlight the speaker’s stance or commitment
toward a proposition, and they also soften violations of negative face that
are potentially part of the act of referentially subsuming other discourse participants under we. This situation is in contrast to predicates without modal
elements which more directly assert a subject referent’s participation in, or
compliance with, the state/activity designated by the main verb (e.g. going
vs. can go or want to go).
This polite intersubjective use of inclusive we utterances containing
modal auxiliaries is illustrated in (14). In this conversational episode,
Marilyn and Pete are discussing what they will make for dinner for themselves and their guest, Roy. In Marilyn’s utterance, We can make um, …
garlic bread or something, the modal can mediates the force of the assertion,
providing an opportunity for the other participants to negotiate the activity
proposed by the speaker. That is, can gives Pete and Roy the choice whether
or not to be referentially included in Marilyn’s we. Note, too, the presence
of other markers that mediate assertion in this utterance, such as um, the
pause between intonation units (represented by three dots), and the speaker’s
opening the other participants’ options with the phrase or something. These
features, in addition to can, mark this inclusive we utterance as a polite suggestion.
(14)
Æ MARILYN: ... We can make um,
... garlic bread or something.
ROY:
.. <FOOD Oh,
that [sounds] fun FOOD>.
PETE:
[Yeah].
MARILYN: ... Okay.
PETE:
Yeah,
we could have a little .. garlic bread.
R214.79
Many inclusive predicates contain other types of modal elements as
well. Like modal auxiliaries, these intermediate function verbs (e.g. be able
to, be gonna, have to, or (had) better) also open the proposition expressed in
the predicate to the addressee’s approval or acquiescence. Twenty-two inclusive predicates in the database contain a modal element such as those described here. Seventeen appear in present tense predicates, two with past
388/ JOANNE SCHEIBMAN
tense predicates, and three clauses contain both a central modal and an intermediate function verb (e.g. we would then have to if they had a CD pull
that in). For example, in (15), Sam suggests going to a department store
(Dillards) with Doris and uses the expression (had) better. This marker opens
the assertion to Doris’s approval. And indeed, Doris does negotiate her involvement in the activity by questioning whether or not they would have to
drive up to Phoenix.
(15) Æ SAM:
(H) We better go up to Dillards,
and see if they still have those muumuus.
DORIS: ... You mean up to Phoenix?
SAM: ... No=,
well- they might have them here,
in town.
T609.73
4.3
Inclusive Utterances as Polite Questions
In a study of questions in English conversation, Weber (1993) finds that 41
percent of the questions in her corpus do not occur as interrogative forms;
instead questions are expressed in a variety of ways (e.g. as clauses, phrases,
or lexical items). It is also the case that in English and in other languages,
interrogatives can serve as polite requests (e.g. Why don’t you sit down?).
In the database, inclusive we often appears in utterances functioning as
polite questions or requests. Eighteen inclusive tokens are questions in the
conversations. For example, in (16) Marilyn uses an inclusive plural we to
inquire whether or not the other discourse participants want potatoes for
dinner. This we is functioning as a de facto you; however, by including herself in the food decision, the speaker makes the inquiry less direct.
(16)
MARILYN:
Æ
ROY:
... okay,
so did we decide we do or do not want potatoe=s.
... I think potatoes are excessive.
I think we have enough food here.
P202.00
The majority of inclusive first person plural pronouns that occur in polite questions—thirteen of sixteen tokens—refer to specific individuals, not
to a class of people. This is because the interpersonal consequences are
greater when addressees are individual people as opposed to an undifferentiated group. Speakers do not have to mediate referential inclusion of other
people when these others—the nonspeaker referents of we—are part of a
generally construed class of referents.
INCLUSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE PATTERNING / 389
4.4
Inclusive Utterances Following Epistemic/
Evidential Clauses
The last group of inclusive utterances discussed in this section are those that
follow clauses containing epistemic or evidential verbs (Thompson and
Hopper 2001), such as I think, I don’t know, I mean, and I guess (see also
Schiffrin 1987, Scheibman 2000, Scheibman 2002, Thompson 2002). In
these uses of we, the epistemic/evidential expressions temper speakers’ assertions about addressees (as coreferents of the subject). In (17), the
speaker’s I wonder (along with her use of you know and the rise in pitch at
the end of the intonation unit) marks the contribution as an utterance that is
open to another participant’s agreement (e.g. as a question or perhaps an
indirect request)—one that is structurally receptive to the addressee’s point of
view.
(17)
4.5
... this darn dog keeps ... breathing,
<X and like X> ... dreaming,
Æ you know I wonder if we should wake her up?
E542.77
Summary of Inclusive Utterances
The frequency of the structural properties characteristic of inclusive we utterances surveyed in the section—the presence of modal elements, the appearance of we in questions or polite requests or following epistemic/evidential
clauses, and the paucity of past tense reports—mediate direct assertion in
conversation. These same linguistic features have been found to characterize
second person expressions in conversation as well (Scheibman 2002). These
findings are compatible with typological studies that document associations
between second person elements and inclusive ‘we’ forms in languages that
mark an inclusive/exclusive contrast morphologically or lexically. What is
apparent in the structure of inclusive clauses in English conversation is a
formal mediation of assertion contingent on the addressee’s approval or consensus. This situation reveals the delicate interpersonal negotiations that are
prominent in face-to-face communication when speakers use we to speak for
another participant. In contrast, these mediating properties occur much less
frequently in exclusive clauses.
5
5.1
Exclusive We in Conversation
Introduction
Fifty-six percent of first person plural subjects in the database are exclusive
(n=212). Table 3 indicates that 47 percent of exclusive predicates are past
tense (compared to 9 percent inclusive past tense tokens), and only 9 percent
390/ JOANNE SCHEIBMAN
of exclusive clauses contain a modal auxiliary (compared to 35 percent of
inclusive utterances). This section considers the discourse functions of exclusive utterances in English conversation with respect to this frequency of
past tense predicates and infrequency of modal elements, relative to inclusive
clauses.
Exclusive we indexes the speaker and other nonaddressees. These third
person referents may be specific individuals (coded individuated) who may or
may not be present in the discourse context (see Section 5.2), or they may
be a generally conceived group (coded class) often affiliated with an institution (e.g. bank, university course or program). Table 3 presents the distribution of exclusive utterances by tense/modality and referential specificity. All
exclusive duals refer to specific people (individuated) as do 25 percent of
exclusive plurals (17/67). On the other hand, the majority of exclusive plurals (50/67, or 75 percent) refer to the speaker and to a class of referents.
Referentiality
exclusive dual
exclusive plural
individuated
class
Total
Percent
Present
72
49.66%
22
32.84%
3
17.65%
19
38.00%
94
44.34%
Past
61
42.07%
38
56.72%
13
76.47%
25
50.00%
99
46.70%
Modal
12
8.28%
7
10.45%
1
5.88%
6
12.00%
19
8.96%
Total
145
100.00%
67
100.00%
17
100.00%
50
100.00%
212
100.00%
Table 3. Exclusive utterances by referential specificity
and tense/modality (n=212)
The most frequent referential category in the corpus is exclusive dual
(145, or 68 percent of exclusives, and 38 percent of all we tokens). Exclusive plurals account for 32 percent of the exclusive group (67/212). That
exclusive predicates occur in the past tense much more frequently than do
inclusive predicates, and are less likely to include modal elements than their
inclusive counterparts, suggests that these structures participate less in interpersonal negotiations and more in direct assertion than do inclusive
clauses. The convergence of these frequent properties of exclusive utterances
in the database—past tense, absence of modals, and the presence of a specific
human nonspeech act participant subject referent—have also been found to
characterize utterances with third person singular human subjects in English
conversation (Scheibman 2002). The crosslinguistic association between
INCLUSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE PATTERNING / 391
exclusive first person plural markers and third person elements is demonstrated in the function and distribution of structural properties of exclusive
expressions in English conversation as well.
5.2
Exclusive Dual Utterances
Forty-two percent of exclusive dual predicates are past tense. All but one of
these 145 utterances refer to the speaker and to a specific person with whom
the speaker has an intimate or very familiar relationship, such as a partner/spouse, mother, brother, child, boss, or good friend. For example, in
(18) the speaker uses we to refer to herself and her partner/husband (who is
not a participant in the conversation). We used in this way to report past
experiences is a common function of exclusive dual utterances in the database.
(18)
you know,
Æ we showed up there and they were all gone.
.. That really irritated me.
Z839.14
Table 4 shows that 66 percent of the exclusive dual pronouns in the database (95/145) have nonspeaker referents who are unaddressed participants
in the conversation, and 50 exclusive dual tokens refer to people who are not
present in the discourse. Goffman (1981: 133) makes a distinction between
addressed and unaddressed recipients in multiparty encounters; he explains
that ‘the speaker will, at least during periods of his talk, address his remarks
to one listener, so that among official hearers one must distinguish the addressed recipient from “unaddressed” ones’. In a study of the effects of audience on speaker style, Bell (1984) makes a similar distinction using the
terms addressee and auditor. Auditors (unaddressed recipients) are third persons who are present and ratified hearers, but are not directly addressed by the
speaker. Bell (1984: 160) suggests that with respect to the effect of audience
role on stylistic variation, the auditor accounts for variation, though it is
less influential than effects of the speaker and addressee. Table 4 indicates
that auditors, or unaddressed recipients, do appear to influence speakers’ use
of exclusive we in conversation. That is, these utterances more frequently
show signs of mediation than those that refer to a third person who is not
present.
392/ JOANNE SCHEIBMAN
Unaddressed Recipient
Present
Past
Modal
Total
Present in conversation
54
31
10
95
56.84%
32.63% 10.53%
100.00%
Not present in conversation
18
30
2
50
36.00%
60.00%
4.00%
100.00%
Total
72
61
12
145
Percent
49.66%
42.07%
8.28%
100.00%
Table 4. Exclusive dual utterances by presence of unaddressed recipient
and tense/modality (n=145)
Though this data set is small, Table 4 shows an interesting distribution
of exclusive dual usages based on whether or not the nonspeaker referent is
also a discourse participant. Specifically, there are a greater proportion of
utterances with modal auxiliaries (11 percent) and a lower proportion of past
tense predicates (33 percent) when we refers to two discourse participants
(the speaker and an unaddressed recipient) than when the nonspeaker referent
is not present in the conversation (modal: 4 percent; past tense: 60 percent).
In (19), the speaker, Wendy, is using we to refer to herself and her husband,
Kevin. Both her use of the modal ’ll and the epistemic clause I don’t think
mediate her assertion in this utterance.
(19)
Æ
WENDY: .. Well I don't –
.. I don't think we'll be taking the end tables to Bulgaria.
KEVIN:
... I'm sure we will not.
A1010.19
5.3
Exclusive Plural Utterances
Exclusive plural usages account for slightly less than a third of all exclusive
tokens (67/212). Unlike the exclusive dual forms discussed above, none of
the exclusive plurals in the database refers to unaddressed recipients. Moreover, in contrast to the exclusive dual subjects whose nonspeaker referents
frequently refer to specific people, only 17, or 25 percent, of the exclusive
plural subjects are coded individuated (Table 3).
In contrast to exclusive dual utterances, then, the majority of exclusive
plural subjects in the corpus (50/67, or 75 percent) refer to undifferentiated
groups (Table 3). Using these class tokens, speakers typically make reference to an institutional group such as a university class or a place of employment that the speaker is affiliated with. For example, in (20), we refers
to the speaker and the people she works with at a medical laboratory and
also to the institution as a whole.
INCLUSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE PATTERNING / 393
(20)
Æ
we do like ... o=h,
about,
four hundred samples a day,
G19.9
Though the numbers are small, the distribution of tense in individuated
vs. class uses of exclusive we in Table 3 suggests that there is proportionally more past tense for exclusive first person plural subjects that point to
individuals (coded individuated) than for exclusive utterances that index a
group or an institutional function (coded class) which points to their different functions in discourse. While utterances with exclusive we referring to
individuals tend to be used by speakers to narrate specific past tense events,
the most common use of exclusive plural expressions is to make general
predications (often with habitual meaning) about the speaker’s activities as a
member of a group.
5.4
Summary of Exclusive Utterances
Utterances with exclusive first person plural subjects are more frequently
marked past tense and less frequently contain modal elements than utterances
with inclusive subjects. Predicates occurring with exclusive we subjects,
then, are less mediated than those with inclusive subjects. Exclusive duals
in the database are used by speakers to report on activities accomplished by
speakers and people close to them (partners, spouses, family members, and
friends). Distribution of tense for these exclusive dual forms also indicates
that when exclusive we refers to another person in the conversation—an
unaddressed recipient—there is proportionally less past tense and a greater
percentage of modal elements than when the exclusive dual subject refers to
an individual who is not a participant in the conversation. This suggests
that when there is a third person referent of we present in the conversation,
English speakers tend to mediate their assertions as they do when using inclusive we subjects.
On the other hand, the majority of exclusive plural subjects index
groups or institutional functions instead of specific individuals, and these
utterances show proportionally less past tense usage than their referentially
specific counterparts. Speakers tend to use exclusive plural we subjects with
more generalizing predicates to discuss activities and beliefs relevant to their
membership in a group. Analyses of these data, then, suggest that exclusive
individuated referents and exclusive class referents have different functions in
English conversation.
394/ JOANNE SCHEIBMAN
6
Conclusions
Investigations of inclusive and exclusive first person plural markers tend to
cluster in two broad areas of language study: (1) typological examinations of
personal pronoun systems, and (2) analyses of the social and rhetorical uses
of ‘we’ in various spoken and written discourse genres. The present study
combines the spirit of these two approaches by attending to the formal and
functional contexts in which American English speakers use we inclusively
and exclusively in conversation. By using a method that focuses on usage—in particular, conversational interaction—an inclusive/exclusive contrast becomes apparent in English. This analysis shows that in English interactive discourse pragmatic and structural distinctions are made by speakers
even when there are no morphological contrasts of the type found in other
languages.
The distribution of tense and modality of we utterances in the conversational database are in line with typological studies that document formal
associations between second person elements and inclusive markers on the
one hand, and third person morphemes and exclusive markers on the other.
In English conversation, mediated assertions overwhelmingly occur with
second person singular subjects and also with inclusive we subjects (frequent
modal elements, few past tense reports). In the same way that the presence
of a second person singular subject softens the force of an utterance in English conversation, the implicit ‘you’ indexed by inclusive we also motivates
speakers to mediate their predications. In contrast, clauses with third person
singular human subjects and those with exclusive we subjects less frequently contain modal elements and are often past tense. Assertions with
these subjects are more direct.
Exclusive we utterances in English conversation also demonstrate social
and interpersonal functions. While exclusive dual forms are overwhelmingly
used by speakers to narrate specific activities that they and a close or intimate person participated in, the majority of exclusive plural pronouns in the
database do not function as true plurals. Instead, these uses of we tend to
express generic reference, indexing the speaker as a member of a group or
aligned with an institutional point of view. These expressions can be as
mundane as discussing rote procedures in one’s place of employment or as
ideologically consequential as showing solidarity with a political position.
Both of these situations, however, are referentially expansive activities. In
general, then, analyses of the formal properties of inclusive and exclusive
usages in English conversation demonstrate the interpersonal functions of
these utterances and also offer a view of the interactional underpinnings of
grammatical categories as they appear in conversational contexts.
INCLUSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE PATTERNING / 395
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