Using i vs. you to refer to yourself in self-talk:exploring grammatical contextual variations in mandarin chinese

Abstract

Treball de fi de màster en Lingüística Teòrica i Aplicada

Directora: Dra. Martina Elisabeth Wiltschko

This study investigates how Mandarin Chinese speakers choose between first-person (“我”, wǒ) and second-person (“你”, nǐ) pronouns in self-talk across varying emotional and temporal contexts. Building on insights from both psychology and linguistics, the research explores how emotional valence (positive, neutral, negative), temporal orientation (retrospective, present-related, prospective), and the presence of a mirror (as a visual self-reflection cue) influence pronoun selection. It further examines whether pronoun choice in self-talk reflects categorical grammatical constraints or psychological tendencies. Fifty native Mandarin speakers completed a choice task involving 54 illustrated scenarios. Each scenario included a pair of self-talk utterances that were semantically equivalent but differed in pronoun use. Results revealed that first-person forms were the dominant choice overall. However, second-person usage increased significantly in negative scenarios. In addition, the presence of a mirror led to a substantial rise in second-person choices across all contexts. Statistical analyses confirmed significant main effects of emotional valence, temporal orientation, and mirror presence, as well as an interaction between valence and temporal framing. The study deepens our understanding of how contextual variables shape the choice of personal pronouns in self-talk. It also extends previous findings from Indo-European languages to Mandarin, thereby enriching cross-linguistic perspectives on self-talk. Keywords: self-talk, Mandarin Chinese, emotional valence, temporal perspective, mirror effect, first-person pronoun, second-person pronoun