台語的「我」：第一人稱指涉詞的運用及其社會意義

‘I’ in Taiwanese Southern Min: The application and social implication of the speaker identity

本文以二十段在不同場合、不同說話者的台語對話錄音為語料，來觀察台語中說話者對自己的指涉（含gua2, gun2, guan2, lan2等）、以及這些用法背後所含的不同社會意含和價值觀念。文後以早期的台文小說及當代學術文章中作者對「我」的運用做統計比較，看到第一人稱代詞用法的改變，以及在書面語中的重點功能。台語「我」的用法主要有四種：命題用法、固定語式、泛稱和焦點轉移。這四種用法的交叉運用能靈活表現出說話者的用意，話語中的言外之意，推托或負責的態度、謙虛的個性、主觀或客觀性、情感的表達、對說話時氣氛的控制、對話者彼此的社會關係、對話者對彼此的影響力等等。另外，同樣指的是自己，男性講者和作者多用“我”，而女性講者較常用li2“你”來指「我」，或者用gun2,lan2不用gua2（焦點轉移）。顯示台灣男性的自信和女性普遍的小女人主義。再者，在台語文章中，“我”的出現頻率很低，其代稱“個人”的使用頻率也不高，比英文“I”的使用率低得多，在學術文章中表現出自謙和不突顯自己的漢文化特色。語言的機動性提供了豐富的素材，讓人們來表達時空上的自我、態度、觀念和文化。

This paper studies the referent pronoun ‘I'(the speaker) in Taiwanese Southern Min, including its semantic applications and social implications, with spoken data recorded from twenty different speakers, on different topics, and in different settings. The referent ‘I' has at least the following forms in Taiwanese Southern Min: gua2, gun2, guan2, and lan2. It has four distinct usages: propositional, fixed expression, and two kinds of non-canonical deictic uses. Propositional use is the typical reference to the speaker; when using ‘I' to mean ‘I', e.g., gua2 si7 tai5 uan5 lang5 ‘I am a Taiwanese'. In a fixed expression, 'I' can be used as an interjection or to express surprise, such as gua2 piang3 a°. Non-canonical deictic use can replace gua2 ‘I' with li2 ‘you', i1 ‘he/she', lan2 ‘we', or lang5 ‘someone' to refer to the speaker him/herself by appealing to an addressee-oriented strategy. All these usages are integrated into a complete ‘speaker identity' when the speaker intends to show humility, objectivity or subjectivity, emotion, or power, or give an implication, shun responsibility, etc. In addition, male speakers are inclined to exercise more propositional use and fixed expressions, while female speakers tend to adopt more non-canonical deictic use, which shows male confidence and female subordination in Taiwan. Furthermore, academic articles written in Taiwanese use ‘I' much less frequently than do academic articles written in English. The intention to humble oneself and not stand out is a Taiwanese cultural feature.