Abstract:
This research aims 1) to study the personal pronoun using of Thai Phuan in Isan social contexts, and 2) to study the personal pronoun change from ancient documents to spoken language in the present time, and the sampling group is the Thai Phuan ethnic in three generations; 15-25 years old, 35-45 years old, and 55-65 years old. The research field works are 1) Buhom village, Chiang Khan district, Loie province, 2) Thon village, Ban Phue district, Udon Thani province, 3) Photak village, Photak district, Nong Khai province. There were 302 key informants and the 3 folktales as the anciently document data; Kham Pra Pladaek, Nang Phom Hom, and Chalong Trai Pidok. The tools for data collection were the questionnaire, record card, and tape recording. The statistics used to analyze the data are frequency, percentage, and chi-square for hypothesis testing. The research results are that: 1) The personal pronoun using was found that there are totally 134 words divided into 41 first personal pronouns, 44 second personal pronouns, and 49 third personal pronouns. The social contexts in this research are situations divided into formal and informal situations, gender divided into same gender and different gender, ages divided into the same age, older and younger the speaker, relatives divided into relatives and non-relatives, intimacy divided into intimacy and non-intimacy, politeness divided into politeness and non-politeness, and emotion divided into satisfaction and non-satisfaction. 2) It is found that there are four types of pronoun change in the spoken language of the present time from what was found in the old documents: those that remain the same forms, those that can be assumed, those that lose the some words meanings, and those that have more words meanings added later. 3) The rule of the personal pronoun using; situations, gender, age, relatives, intimacy, politeness, and emotion was found that it is positive attribute (+) because it has a statistic significance at 0.05.
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