Influence of contextual factors on reference interpreting od first person plural forms

The paper focuses on the construal of WE in a specific virtual usage, reflecting the physical and social worlds of the intersubjective context (cf. Verschueren 1999). From the adopted social cognitive point of view (Croft 2009), interpersonal relations are formed and re-negotiated dynamically. The utterances do not express a priori existing interpersonal relations, but rather construe them as discourse unfolds. In this context, WE has remarkable semantic potential and its use is strongly context-dependent (Björten 2010, Marmaridou 2000), often expressing the social attitude of the speaker. The presented empirical research on the referential processes of WE in a specific virtual usage reveals its capacity to express social attitude deixis and its dependence on basic contextual components. The paper is based on experimental data gathered between 2012 and 2016 from Polish and Hungarian native speakers (86 responders in total), who were asked to mark on three different schemas the reference of WE in the following utterance: It’s cold in here. Why don’t we close the window? The schemas showed different spatial and interpersonal information (position of the participants, their age and sex, basic information about their relationship). After the test part the participants were asked to justify their choices. Based on the answers it was possible to identify if the responder interpreted the utterance as a directive or commissive speech act, which also had an influence on the interpretation of WE. The findings show that virtual usage is influenced not only by interpersonal but also by spatial relations. The processing of spatial position plays a major role in the referential interpretation of WE when the participants come from similar socio-cultural backgrounds. By contrast, in cases where sex and age differences are pronounced, information pertaining to the social world of the discourse has a higher impact on referential interpretation, nevertheless some significant differences can be observed regarding which – spatial relations or social relations had a major impact.