Indexically anchored onto the deictic center of discourse: Grammar, sociocultural interaction, and ‘emancipatory pragmatics’

Abstract

This paper tries to articulate an indexical theory of pragmatics that can consistently cover not only (1) referential and (2) non-referential, social-indexical practices, but also (3) linguistic structure, or its metalinguistic (cross-linguistic) matrices, comprised of indexically anchored grammatical categories and distinctive features. Noting that all of the three domains (1)–(3), can be shown to be indexically organized and anchored onto the deictic center of communicative event, that is, on sociocultural, social-indexical interaction, I shall focus on articulating the deictically centered indexical organization of linguistic structure, or grammar. In so doing, I shall argue that not only social-indexical pragmatics, but also referential pragmatics and even grammar are anchored onto the deictic center of discursive interaction, which is, first and foremost, a sociocultural event. Consequently, theories of ‘language’, including both pragmatics and linguistics, must be ‘liberated’ from the reference- or semantics-centric perspectives; instead, they should start from ‘the bottom up’, from the deictic center of sociocultural interaction, i.e., ‘discourse’.