abstract: Gendered language has been a topic of study for centuries. The most recent efforts to promote inclusive language have been championed by parents, teachers, and social reformers over the last thirty years. Replicating in part a research study that was done over thirty years ago, this study examines what effects have taken place in children's perceptions of male and female roles in regards to specific activities and occupations and how their perceptions compare to the current work force, what role children's literature has played in these changes, and what children's natural speech in describing personified animals can tell us about their subconscious gender labeling. The results were remarkable in two ways: native language evidently exudes little emphasis on pronoun choice, and children are more readily acceptable of gender equality than that portrayed in either Caldecott winning children's books or real life as seen through current labor statistics. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Curriculum and Instruction 2011

In the modern world of politics, convincing the audience is the key to democratically gain power in society—and the amount of power politicians gain depends on how convincing they are. In this competitive domain, elites use discourse not only to persuade the audience, but also to manipulate the audience. According to van Dijk (2006), persuasion is a legitimate and ethical way to influence the audience, while manipulation is an illegitimate and unethical way of influencing the audience. The present study examines pronoun usage in the political discourse of Donald Trump; it examines the State of the Union Speech and 37 Weekly Addresses. The quantitative approach to the data was taken by incorporating corpus linguistic methods, namely frequency counts, concordances, word list tools, and downsampling. The qualitative approach was taken by using methods from rhetoric and Critical Discourse Analysis. To analyse the examined phenomenon, the Aristotelian persuasion framework, Fairclough’s theory on the pronouns we and you, van Dijk’s triangulation framework with its focus on manipulation, and Wieczorek’s taxonomy of speakers were used. The study concluded that in both the State of the Union Address and the Weekly Addresses, Donald Trump frequently and interchangeably uses the pronouns we and our to refer to two groups with unequal power relations to one another. The identified patterns placed within the societal context of the examined text persuade the recipients. Pronouns such as we, our, I, and they play a key role in the elements of ethos and pathos. Furthermore, the identified patterns placed within the societal context of the examined text also showed that Donald Trump uses discourse structure to use short term memory and long term memory properties to manipulate the audience.