This preliminary study, based on three hortatory
texts, examines the ways in which pronoun personage is expressed in exhortations and their supporting arguments in Sama Bangingi', a language of the southern Philippines. Main exhortations are most commonly expressed using second person imperative or first person inclusive cohortative. Second person imperative is the most direct form, and is used in all three texts examined for this paper. First person cohortative is a mitigated imperative and is used in variation with the second person direct imperative. The cohortative appears to be the most prevalent form of exhortation; with imperative forms becoming more frequent towards the end of the discourse. Arguments which support main exhortations may or may not employ the same personage as the exhortations themselves. Frequently generic personage is used in supporting arguments, and may be either second person singular, first person singular inclusive or third person. Generic third person often appears in secondary support, that is, arguments which support the arguments which immediately support the main exhortation. Bangingi' seems to like to employ a progression of pronoun personage through a series of arguments, frequently ending with an illustration.