Putting negotiation on a ‘principal-ed’ footing: A corpus-informed discourse analysis of person deixis in diplomatic debates

This article investigates identity politics in diplomatic negotiations at the United Nations. Drawing on theories of ‘footing’, ‘positioning’ and ‘stance’ and applying corpus-informed discourse analysis, it examines how and why diplomats animate and laminate different selves and identifications within debates about multilingualism between 1995 and 2022. The paper focuses on the strategic enactment of politically recognisable identities indexed via first-person pronouns. Findings reveal that those holding the same stance (e.g., voting in favour, against, or abstaining in the 1995 Multilingualism Resolution) show clear patterns of deictic anchorage in their adoption of certain positions over others. Speakers adopt footings strategically and systematically via iterative and accretive processes of pronoun and verb selection to balance competing needs and perspectives relating to their own positionality (as members of the UN, representatives of their member states, or members within alliances) and in relation to domestic and international affairs. “We” is enacted in different ways by diplomats for the rhetorical purposes of “synthetic deixis” (when speaking as a principal of the UN as an organizational body), and/or to delineate their views from those of other member states (when speaking as a principal of their political alliance or nation). The “lamination” of multiple identifications and the use of “wandering we” reveals the speaker as multiply embedded within, and speaking on behalf of, different communities and political affiliations on a variety of issues. Shifts in footing permit diplomats to navigate sensitive issues, orient to self and collective/shared interests and minimise differences, whilst also demonstrate authority and legitimacy. • Examines the enactment of identity politics in the genre of diplomatic debate. • Identifies discursive strategies in negotiations when speakers straddle positions. • XML tags offer an innovative methodology for investigations of negotiation. • Lamination of “we” reveals speaker embeddedness in different political communities. • Shows how personal pronouns and verb phrases denote stances on political issues.