PRAGMATICS Deixis

Arranged by Group 7: Citra Ayu Wardani ( 0810732056 ) Utari ( 0810732054 ) Silvia Trisnawati ( 0810732052 ) Kartika Sari ( 0810732058 )

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT FACULTY OF LETTERS ANDALAS UNIVERSITY PADANG 2011

INTRODUCTION

The term Deixis is derived from Greek word for one of the most basic things we do with utterances. It means pointing via language (Yule:1996). It is done by using deictic expression or indexicals in utterance. Deixis signals a referent and it relates the referent to a common ground shared by the speaker and the addressee. Deixis is reference by means of an expression whose interpretation is relative to the context of the utterance, such as who is speaking the time or place of speaking the gestures of the speaker the current location in the discourse The topic of the discourse

Deixis
Deixis is clearly a form of referring that is tied to the speakers context, with the most basic distinction between deictic expressions being near speaker versus away from speaker (Yule:1996). Near speaker proximal terms ( this, here, now)

Away from speaker distal terms (that, there, then) Types of Deixis Levinson (1983:61-89) devided deixis into some different categories: a. Person Deixis Person deixis concerns itself with the grammatical persons involved in an utterance, (1) those directly involved (e.g. the speaker, the addressee), (2) those not directly involved (e.g. overhearersthose who hear the utterance but who are not being directly addressed), and (3) those mentioned in the utterance.

Examples: I am going to the movies. Would you like to have dinner? They tried to hurt me, but he came to the rescue.

b. Time Deixis Time, or temporal, deixis concerns itself with the various times involved in and referred to in an utterance. This includes time adverbs like "now", "then", "soon", and so forth, and also different tenses. A good example is the word tomorrow, which denotes the consecutive next day after every day. The "tomorrow" of a day last year was a different day than the "tomorrow" of a day next week. It is important to distinguish the moment of utterance ( or inscription ) or coding time (or CT) from the moment of reception or receiving time (or RT) (Levinson:1994). For example, if one were to write: It is raining out now, but I hope when you read this it will be sunny. The CT and RT would be different, with the former deictic term concerning CT and the latter the RT. Tenses are generally separated into absolute (deictic) and relative tenses. So, for example, simple English past tense is absolute, such as in He went. while the pluperfect is relative to some other deictically specified time, as in He had gone. Another example (Oktavianus:2006) A B A : Halo, Mama. Ini Adi : Eee Adi, bagaimana kabarnya di sini? Semuanya sehat-sehat? : Alhamdulillah, sehat. Mama dan papa di sini bagaimana?

Based on the phone conversation above, the time deixis di sini spoken by B does not refer to the location where she is speaking, but to the location of A.

c. Discourse Deixis Discourse deixis, also referred to as text deixis, refers to the use of expressions within an utterance to refer to parts of the discourse that contains the utterance including the utterance itself. For example, in This is a great story. this refers to an upcoming portion of the discourse, and in That was an amazing day. that refers to a prior portion of the discourse. Distinction must be made between discourse deixis and anaphora, which is when an expression makes reference to the same referent as a prior term, as in Matthew is an incredible athlete; he came in first in the race. Lyons points out that it is possible for an expression to be both deictic and anaphoric at the same time. In his example I was born in London and I have lived here/there all my life. here or there function anaphorically in their reference to London, and deictically in that the choice between here or there indicates whether the speaker is or is not currently in London.

d. Social Deixis Social deixis concerns the social information that is encoded within various expressions, such as relative social status and familiarity.

Conclusion
Deixis is reference by means of an expression whose interpretation is relative to the context of the utterance. It is done by using deictic expression or indexicals in utterance. Deixis signals a referent and it relates the referent to a common ground shared by the speaker and the addressee.According to Levinson, the types of Deixis are person deixis, time deixis, discourse deixis and social deixis.

References
Levinson, Stephen C. 1994. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yule, George. 1996. Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press Oktavianus. 2006. Analisis Wacana Lintas Bahasa. Andalas University: Andalas University Press