Personal Pronouns, Mirrors of Beliefs? : The Usage of Personal Pronouns in the Speech of a Religious Leader

Sammanfattning: This essay analyses the speech of the Dalai Lama and suggests possible effects that core aspects of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, such as the theory of selflessness, might have when a believer uses the personal pronouns I, you, he, she, we and they. Collected utterances of the Dalai Lama during the Charlie Rose Show has been used in order to conduct a threefold investigation, using pragmatic, discourse analytical and sociolinguistic backgrounds, aiming to understand these effects more thoroughly. Qualitative and quantitative approaches were used for this report based on previous studies with a data-based method. These approaches enabled the researcher to find, for instance, a consistent use of the first-person personal pronoun by the Dalai Lama in the material. Other findings include an acknowledgment of philosophical influence concerning the field of intentionality, when related to religious discourse, as Buddhism establishes religious discourse as being based on the speaker’s motivation alone. The status of the Dalai Lama notwithstanding, his use of personal pronouns was also not found to match the findings of previous research on status and the use of self-mention.