Semantic and functional peculiarities of personal pronouns in biographical essays

The article deals with the semantics and functioning of personal pronouns of the 1st person singular and plural, both subjective and pseudoobjective, in biographical essays of the 19th-21st centuries. These types of biographical essays differ in tone, composition, space-time continuum and text segmentation, type of narration (personal, impersonal). Subjective biographical essays are characterized by the personal type of narration (1st person singular) whereas pseudoobjective by both personal (1st person plural) and impersonal. The article deals primarily with the personal type of narration. The research draws on the statement that from the functional stylistic point of view biographical essays possess an intermediate stylistic status at the intersection of scientific, publicistic and belles-lettres styles. The article establishes the main referents of the pronouns concerned and discovers the dominant modal character of their functions: objective or subjective. It turns out that in biographical essays only one referent which is a biographer him/herself is characteristic of the personal pronoun "I", whereas a number of referents: a biographer, a biographer and his/her readers, all people in general or all people familiar with the subject of biography, a biographer together with his/her compatriots or contemporaries are typical of the personal pronoun "we". Pronouns of the 1st person singular act as means of subjective and objective modality. When biographers intend to sound subjective, they resort to the pronoun "I" to introduce their personal evaluation of themselves, their characters or events of their life; their suppositions, opinions, reflections and undocumented dialogues. Paradoxically, the personal pronoun "I" is also employed as a means of objectivity to justify the author's judgment by inserting a citation or factual information. Like in the publicistic style, in biographical essays the personal pronoun of the 1st person singular predominantly functions subjectively (in 93 % of the analyzed examples). The pronoun "we" may also perform functions of various modal characters. It acts as a means of objectivity when biographers tend to sound modest, unbiased and when they intend to insert new information, references. What is more, the pronoun "we" is employed as a means of subjectivity to introduce the author's opinion, suppositions, evaluation, to introduce his/her reasoning, to describe his/her own actions or intentions. The plural personal pronoun of the 1st person is mostly used as a means of objectivity, which is akin to the scientific style (in 74 % of the analyzed examples). The article posits that the semantics and functional peculiarities of the pronouns in question in biographical essays reflect their intermediate stylistic status at the intersection of scientific and publicistic styles.

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