Self-presentation, face and first-person pronouns in the Analects

This paper provides insights into the use of first-person pronouns as means of self-presentation in the Confucian Classic Analects. There are four first-person pronouns in the Analects: wu (sic), wo (sic) yu (sic) and zhen (sic). While there is a relative consensus that zhen is used only by emperors, and so it has a special function, Chinese grammarians have not been able to adequately explain the reason for the coexistence of the three other first-person pronominal forms. The traditional approach differentiates them in terms of subject, object, and possessive case; however, since they overlap in all these grammatical positions, this explanation is questionable. The present paper shows that in historical discourse, first person pronoun forms were chosen according to contextual factors, most importantly, the subject matter and the relationship between the interactants. By approaching pronominal forms from an interactional perspective as a means of self-presentation, it becomes possible to describe how pronouns index different types of self in facework.