The Self-Identifications Through Pronominal Choice in Turkish Political Discourse

Abstract

Political discourse studies have analyzed the context and the way that personal pronouns and possessive pronouns are used
by politicians and how they maintain their stance through their conversations in different contexts (Van Dijk, 1997, 2002). This study
attempts to examine self-identifications that Turkish political party leaders develop through their employment of pronominal choice. The
data come from the period before 2011 elections in Turkey. By comparing their first person singular and plural possessive pronoun use
in different contexts, this paper tries to find out the factors that affect the distribution of their pronominal choice in Turkish political
discourse. Within the critical discourse analysis approach, the results indicate that the location, topic, purpose and venue influence the
pronominal choice of the politicians.