The semiotics of the deictic field: Reckoning language and experience in East Los Angeles

Abstract

AbstractThis analysis examines the ways in which a single speaker, Ana, born in mid-century East Los Angeles, organizes and reflects upon her experiences of the city through language. Ana’s story is one that sheds light on the experiences of many Mexican Americans who came of age at a critical time in a transitioning L.A., and the slow move of people who had been up until mid-century relegated largely in and around racially and socioeconomically segregated parts of L.A. These formative experiences are demonstrated to have informed the ways that speakers parse the social and geographical landscape along several dimensions, and this analysis interrogates the symbolic value of a special category of everyday language, deixis, to reveal the intersection between language and social experience in the cityscape of L.A. In this way, it is analytically possible to not only approach the habituation and reproduction of specific deictic fields as indexical of the ways that speakers parse the city, but also to demonstrate the ways in which key moments in the history of the city have shaped the emergence and meaning of those fields.