Misuzu Shimotori, University of Bergen
Referentially ambiguous usage of personal pronouns is an interesting research theme in the sense that personal pronouns are universally lexicalized in human languages, while their referential usages are pragmatically varied depending on, for instance, illocutionary force (e.g., Austin 1975, Searle 1969), the context of discourse situation (e.g., Dancygier 2008, 2017), and even the social conventions of the place where the language is spoken. For example, many scholars point out specific uses of Japanese personal pronouns not found in many Indo-European languages (e.g., Oishi 2017, Yee & Wong 2021). Japanese language has several 1SG pronouns, and native speakers of Japanese take on different 1SG pronoun depending on their personalities and the context of utterance. Interestingly, certain 1SG address forms can also refer to the second person as the occasion demands. When an adult person asks a little boy a question, s/he may use a 1SG pronoun to refer to the boy; Boku no onamae wa? ‘What is your name? (lit. What is my name?)’. The 1SG pronoun boku is used only by males and is commonly used by boys. In the example, the addresser changes his/her point of view and kneels down to the child’s level so that the boy gets a sense of intimacy with the adult person.
This study examines uses of 1SG pronouns in a specific type of discourse, i.e., Japanese advertising copy, to understand how readers identify their referents. In linguistics, advertising copy is a fascinating research area because it reveals copywriters’ thought processes, from the creativity of advertising copy to the realm of metaphor apparent both in language and in visible information like pictures. This study will focus on a subtle communication strategy between advertising copy and the readers, in other words, with potential consumers. In particular, I am interested in which pronouns elicit the greatest empathy with 1SG pronoun “I” of the advertising copy. Ultimately, based on data from recently published Japanese magazines and a survey of 307 native speakers, I argue that while the 1SG pronouns watashi, boku, and jibun are all used in advertising, jibun seems to be most readily understood as referring to the reader him-/herself. This conclusion is significant because it suggests that the pronoun jibun may be most effective in creating attractive advertisements for native Japanese readers. Based on these results, I suggest that readers’ different perceptions of the referent person of advertising copy have important implications for advertisement copywriting.