Chapter 3. Self-reference as an argumentative tool

Abstract

In this chapter, we analyse how politicians and experts from Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain involved in the Covid-19 crisis construct self-reference on Twitter (currently X), combining linguistic approaches to person reference and argumentation theory. On the one hand, we show that uses are fairly similar across the three countries, in spite of the considerable differences as to government measures concerning the pandemic. On the other hand, differences can be found between the different professional categories. Whereas politicians mainly use self-reference to build their ethos, the experts rather support the ethos of others. In showing how these uses contribute to building or employing ethos, we also demonstrate that these uses can ultimately be understood as having argumentative functions on Twitter.