STUDIA LINGUISTICA HUNGARICA 34 (2022): 102–117. https://ojs.elte.hu/slh DOI: 10.54888/slh.2022.34.102.117 PERSONALIZATION IS IN THE DETAILS: A CASE STUDY OF POLITICAL PERSONALIZATION IN AMERICAN POLITICS LILLA PETRONELLA SZABÓ Corvinus University of Budapest lilla.szabo@uni-corvinus.hu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5509-2158 Abstract The process of political personalization (namely, politicians taking the center stage rather than political col- lectives) has been observed from many perspectives by scholars of political communication. A wide range of research measured whether politics was becoming personalized; however, these studies were largely data- driven. In this paper, I argue that in order to gain a fuller understanding of personalized politics, more nuanced analyses need to be conducted, as the detailed interpretation of political communication reveals aspects of political personalization which data-based approaches may overlook. The relevance of qualitative analysis in terms of the personalization of politics is interpreted through the use of first-person singular and plural pro- nouns in Ronald Reagan’s 1984 and Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential nomination acceptance speeches. The results show that despite a similar level of personalization in quantitative terms in the two speeches, a closer analysis of the texts reveals differences in terms of the semantic categories represented by first-per- son pronouns. Keywords: political personalization, experiential view of deixis, first-person pronouns 1. Introduction The process of political personalization means that politicians (along with their personal and pro- fessional lives) are foregrounded in political communication rather than political collectives (such as parties; Szabó 2022). While in an era when politicians can reach millions of people by setting up a profile on social media platforms it may appear straightforward that individuals are at the center of politics, research indicates different levels of personalization persisting in various countries (Karvonen 2010; Rahat–Kenig 2018), on national versus local levels (McAllister 2015), and depending on whether candidates were mandated by the party or voters (Papp–Zorigt 2016). Since political personalization is a process (cf. Karvonen 2010), several studies took a longitudinal stance. This is evident in the case of Rahat and Kenig’s (2018) work, in which indicators such as party-member- ship density, party-identification, and party continuity were generally declining in the observed 26 democracies (including Austria, Japan, and New Zealand). Karvonen’s (2010) results confirm an- other aspect of personalization: the growth of individual politicians and more precisely, the prime ministers’ power in numerous parliamentary democracies. Prime ministers’ significance was measured by formal power, funding, and staff, for example. Thus, these pieces of research confirm that personalization has been present in politics. Data-driven results about personalized political communication are also available from the perspective of politicians’ language use. For example, Szabó (2021, 2022) attributed the emerging