JultikaUniversity of Oulu repository

This study investigates the roles of personal pronouns ’I’ and ’they’ in constructing ’self’ and ’others’ in presidential announcement speeches. It also tries to identify differences in personal pronoun usage between seasoned politicians and newcomers. The analysis is conducted using Norman Fairclough’s approaches to critical discourse analysis (CDA). The findings of this thesis show that the politicians in question use variant categories to show different sides of their personality and try to enhance their own positive image by making their opponents (the others) look less attractive. The analysis also suggests that there seems to be a difference between veteran politicians and novice politicians.