Personal Pronouns in ‘About Us’ Section of Online University Prospectus

Abstract

The university prospectus is supposed to be a forceful and pioneering text in promoting and marketing higher education. The present research will deal with the disparities in the frequencies of first and second person pronouns in online prospectuses in cross-cultural linguistics from marketing point of view. The research question is to which extent the frequencies of first and second person pronouns  in ‘About Us’ section of online prospectuses are contradictory in cross culture and promotional dimensions. This study is based on the data raked from the ‘About Us’ section of online university prospectuses in 463 culturally distinct institutional contexts of Australia, India, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The categories of the first person I, we, and the second person you, your  were analyzed through multidimensional analysis tagger. The analysis showed that the frequencies of first person pronouns were the highest in all the five countries. On the other hand variations in the occurrence of first and second person pronouns were eminent in 5 countries in the ‘About Us’ section. This research is expected to be useful for the universities and international educational organizations to generate better promotional texts in the marketization of higher education for cross-cultural perspective.

Keywords: Online prospectus, ‘About Us’ section, personal pronouns, promotional register, multidimensional analysis tagger, higher education marketing