The Use of Personal Pronouns: A Comparison between Iranian and Malaysian Dyads

The present paper is part of a larger study which comparatively examined the collaborative discourse of two Iranian and two Malaysian dyads. The members of the dyads were all female and of the same English language proficiency. Core findings of the study on the typology and the frequency of the pronouns used by the participants in the course of eleven sessions of collaborative writing are reported. The content analysis of their pair talk for pronouns indicated that Iranian participants tended to use “I” and “you” considerably more than their Malaysian counterparts, whereas Malaysian participants were found to have a stronger tendency to use “we” more often. The findings are discussed with regard to the macro-cultural dichotomy of world cultures (collectivist/ individualist).