Deictic Elements Research Articles

A Cognitive Study of Deixis in TG Klune’s the House in the Cerulean Sea

This paper investigates the cognitive and linguistic features of deixis in T.J. Klune's The House in the Cerulean Sea. It examines how personal, temporal, geographical, rhetorical, and social deixis can enhance narrative immersion and reader engagement. The study uses mixed method to categorize deictic elements in the book. It argues that deictic shifts improve the reader's experience and narrative structure. By measuring the frequency and impact of deictic expressions, the study highlights their role in adjusting narrative pace, deepening thematic resonance, and engaging readers both intellectually and emotionally. The careful use of deictic phrases, especially those tied to interpersonal and geographical aspects, creates strong human connections and vivid setting descriptions. This intentional arrangement forms deep emotional bonds between readers and characters, leading to a rich and engaging environment. The paper explains how language and cognition enhance immersive reading experiences through emotional involvement and narrative understanding. Deictic changes show how narrative techniques affect reader engagement and the quality of the story.

Pragmatic Choice of Diction and Deictic Elements in Select Covid-19 Media Discourse in Nigeria

Recent scholarly works on Covid-19 media discourse and medical discourse have only focused on the use of neologisms within the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and language use that investigates communication and exchange of shared background knowledge as important factors between doctors and their patients. This paper investigates the pragmatic choice of words and the various contexts in which deictic elements have been employed by members of Nigeria's Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 to convey meaning with the public. As a pragmatic study, attention is given to the mood aspect, using Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to elicit the potential motivations behind the pragmatic choice of words of the speakers. This paper analyses a total of 92 utterances from four speeches of the Nigeria's Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 members delivered at one of their live telecast press briefings on Tuesday, 27th April 2020, were taped and transcribed for analysis. The utterances were analysed with antconc software, which provided a frequency tally of the specific deictic elements used in the speeches. The findings of this study on the one hand, indicate that speakers at the press briefing used person deixis such as I, We, and Us in both inclusive and exclusive contexts to demonstrate pity for the public and to pragmatically connect with the public as if both the speech producers and the public are engaged in a serious battle against Covid-19. On the other hand, our grammatical analysis revealed the use of military diction, leading the researcher to conclude that the members of the Nigerian Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 assume State authority for themselves.

Deixis in Most Rev. Dr. P. K. Boafo’s Address at the 50th Annual Conference of the Methodist Church, Ghana

This study examined the use of deixis in Most Rev. P. K. Boafo's address at the 50th annual conference of the Methodist Church Ghana. Most Rev. Dr. Boafo is the Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church Ghana. It is a descriptive qualitative study which employs the textual analytical method. Hank's (2005) deictic field was employed in the analysis. The findings revealed that Boafo systematically sets up the deictic field by issuing several persons, spatial, temporal, social and discourse deictic elements in a subsequent plain field referred to as "ground zero". The Bishop's deployment of deixis in the address creates a deictic field where the congregation is thrust at the deictic centre, and the Bishop and his administration are set in binary opposition. The placing of the congregation at the deictic centre and the use of the person deixis such as "we", "our", and "us" create a closer relationship and harmonious management of the Church and, thus, bring the Bishop and the Church closer to the deictic centre where the congregation assesses his administration and himself favourably as a competent, spiritual and godly leader.

Internalized Sexism And Androcentric Ideologies: A Critical Study Of Uzma Aslam Khan’s Novels

This study attempts to explore the issue of internalized sexism in The Story of Noble Rot (2001) and Geometry of God (2009) by Uzma Aslam Khan. It identifies the linguistic tools used by certain characters in the selected discourses (novels) to endorse gender discrimination. The current study utilizes feminist critical discourse views as conceptual framework, and critical stylistics as methodical framework to provide a feminist political critique of the selected discourses. A feminist critical analysis of the selected novels highlights that linguistic tools, such as choice of nouns, choice of verbs, equating and contrasting, prioritizing, assuming, modality, negation, direct and indirect speech, deictic elements and speech acts, are used by various older female characters to reinforce androcentric ideologies on younger female characters. Language is used as a tool to devalue their work, trap them in marriages, abuse their power in relationships, deny their authority to make decisions and maintain hierarchy over them in all situations.

Flash fiction as a distinct literary form: some thoughts on time, space, and context

ABSTRACT This article combines a craft-focused approach with a stylistics perspective to consider the ways in which flash fiction may be said to operate as a unique literary form. In the opening section flash fiction is defined in relation to what are usually seen as its two closest literary companions: prose poetry and the short story. This is followed by an introduction to the linguistic phenomenon known as deixis, and to related concepts from the field of Narratology. These ideas are subsequently illustrated and explored through the close analysis of several short texts and used to uncover what might be considered the defining features of the form. The earlier taxonomic approach of William Nelles is also evaluated in the light of more recent creative practice. The article concludes by arguing that the mobilisation of a story world is a necessary requirement for a text to be classified as flash fiction, by highlighting the importance of deft manipulation of deictic elements, and finally by suggesting that the unique communicative context evoked by flash fiction has significant implications for its interpretation.

Article as a deictic element

Article as a deictic element

Linguistic Features of Studying The Theory of Deixis in Linguistics

The article deals with the problem of study of the theory of deixis in a literary text. Besides that it has its own linguistic characteristics due to the fact that the author uses various ways of indicating objects in the real world, which can be both concrete and abstract. The study of the theory of deixis in quotation of a literary text requires careful consideration of various contextual authorial and linguistic factors that influence the use and meaning of deictic expression in the literary text. The investigation employs a multidisciplinary approach, drawing on insights from linguistics, semiotics, and cognitive science to unravel the complexities of deixis. It investigates how deixis operates across different languages and cultures, shedding light on universal principles and language-specific variations. The study also explores the pragmatic functions of deixis in communication, elucidating how speakers utilize deictic expressions to convey reference, spatial relations, and temporal distinctions. Additionally, the research delves into the cognitive aspects of deixis, examining how individuals process and interpret deictic elements in real-time communication. It addresses the challenges posed by deixis in cross-cultural communication and explores strategies for resolving potential misunderstandings arising from contextual dependencies. The linguistic features under scrutiny include personal, spatial, and temporal deixis, as well as the distinctions between deixis in spoken and written discourse. The study incorporates both theoretical analyses and practical applications, offering valuable insights for linguists, language educators, and communication scholars.

The Poetic Discourse in the Work of J.R. Jiménez

This paper analyses the poetic discourse in the work of J.R. Jiménez. Certain extracts from the poem «Espacio» and several verses from the «Eternidades» collection are concerned. Despite the differences in form and style, both prove the Time-concept to be relevant in the author’s work and show affinity in key points. All of them pass over the every-day life concepts. Thus, the author remains Poet every second. The poetry is a sort of a shield for Jiménez in his fight against death and oblivion. His capacity to perceive the nameless things makes his poetic discourse true. In the «Eternidades» one can find rhythm, but no rhyme. In the «Espacio» which is blank verse, Jiménez feels free from formal rules and restrictions. It helps him to translate his pure stream of consciousness into text. Thus, his poetic discourse becomes entirely introspective, and the concept of Consciousness appears to be its key point. Both groups of verses and fragments use common «tricks» that influence reader’s mind in a particular way as they break the linear flow of time. These «tricks» include peculiar use of deictic elements as well as figures of style such as anaphora, paronomasia, polyptoton, etc. The metaphor of dream is of particular importance as it reflects the poetic reality. The trembling drop metaphor is no less significant as is symbolizes the elusive Inspiration. A natural combination of Neoplatonism and Pantheism, of carnivalesque and mystic elements — all that through Time and Consciousness — marks Jiménez as one of the most outstanding writers in human history.

Deictic Analysis of Cohesive Markers in Religious Discourse

This study investigates the deployment of deixis as cohesive markers in religious text drawing insight from theories of deixis and cohesion. The data for the study were generated from a religious sermon preached by Dr Daniel Kolawole Olukoya of Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries (MFM) during Manna Water programme held on Wednesday 22nd of September, 2021. With the use of quantitative and qualitative research methods, the study identifies the type of deixis used in the sermon, and their deployment as cohesive markers in the text. The findings reveal five different types of deixis that appeared as cohesive markers which include person deixis, spatial deixis, temporal deixis, discourse deixis and demonstrative deixis. The person deixis was used to designate the participants in the discourse, spatial deixis helps to focus the attention of listeners to the different locations mentioned in the sermon, temporal deixis was employed to make reference to different time periods during the sermon, discourse deixis appeared to linking linguistic elements and ideas in the text; while the demonstratives identify notional elements mentioned in the sermon. As cohesive devices, the person deixis, spatial deixis, temporal deixis and demonstratives function as references and substitution, while discourse deixis functions both as references, substitute and conjunctions to link linguistic elements and ideas in the text. The study concludes that the deictic elements used in the religious sermon function as an integral part of text creation to enhance cohesion in the text.

Different Considerations About the Concept of Deixis

This article discusses different considerations about the concept of deixis. According to world linguists, the deixis category is one of the categories of pragmalinguistics. Deixis plays a particularly important role in language. Deixis is the function of a linguistic unit expressed as meaning, or expressed through lexical and grammatical means. The relation of deixis to the context and speech situation indicates its relevance to pragmatics. Deixis includes the components of the speech act, the subject, the time and space localization of the fact. Appropriate verbal means are called deictic expressions or elements. Deictic elements show themselves as a style of reference. They perform a marking function and are attached to each item depending on the choice of speech moment.

Reacting to homophobia in a French online discussion: The fuzzy boundaries between heteronormativity and homophobia

This article analyzes how participants of an online discussion thread related to a YouTube video on homophobia expressed their opposition to homophobia. Both the video and the 403 posts in the discussion thread are in French. On the surface, the data are characterized by strong antagonism between the stances that support and those that are critical of LGBTQ persons. However, a closer look at the posts expressing a pro-LGBTQ stance reveals considerable variation among them: they range from an open deconstruction of homophobia to more ambivalent positions that draw on ideologies circulating within the heteronormative order and are naturalized in the everyday discourse of spontaneous online interactions. We analyze five categories of posts expressing different forms of pro-LGBTQ stances to highlight their fuzzy boundaries with homophobic stances. The analysis draws on argumentative discourse analysis, focusing on process types used to construct arguments and topoi, as well as deictic elements through which the authors of these posts express their distance vis-à-vis homophobia and LGBTQ persons.

КОРЕЛЯЦІЯ МІЖ АНГЛОСАКСОНСЬКИМ ГОМІЛЕТИЧНИМ ДИСКУРСОМ І ГРАМАТИКОЮ

The article is devoted to the interplay of discourse and grammar in the formation of sentential units in the Anglo-Saxon homilies of the 9th-11th centuries, created by notable homilists, namely, Ælfric (955-1020 сa.), Wulfstan (death date 1023 ca.), as well as anonymous authors in the miscellany “The Blickling Homilies”. The material under consideration helped us offer two prior assumptions. Firstly, the body of homilies in the specified historical period (total number – 28 units) constitutes a distinct variety of performative texts, which share a set of specific features, and which, in aggregate, make up a homiletic type of discourse. Secondly, foregrounding of finite verb in Old English sentence is a genre-dependent phenomenon that has been attested in the preaching texts and the epic poetry. In this article, the term homily (sermon) is unfolded as a discursive phenomenon that establishes a close link between preacher and congregation, and, as such, serves as a medium of communication. This type of communication involves the dynamic interdependence of participants, the constant tension and continuity of the process, which results in the consolidation of spiritual and didactic principles of believers. Linguistically, it is represented by a number of grammatical phenomena shared by the homilies in question, which include formulaic initial addresses of the preacher to the audience, numerical tautological or parallel phrases, alliterative constructions, deictic elements, etc. Anglo-Saxon priest’s “fatherly conversation” can be described in didactic and Christian dogmatic terms, the spirit and letter of which were especially relevant in the context of the old Germanic ethnic groups’ existentia at the beginning of the second millennium.

Look at This 'Here'

Departing from the well-known ontological parallel between the pointing gesture on the one hand, and linguistic deixis on the other, in this paper we analyse the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of the deictic terms ‘here’ in English, ‘hier’ in German and ‘ovdje’ in Croatian. We systematize the different usages of these terms – both intra- and cross-linguistically – and propose a reading of the semantics of the proximal deictic element for 'linguistic spatial location', which – as our analysis shows – ranges from the pure spatial locational function, via a temporal – more generally metaphorical segment - all the way to a series of discourse functions. We observe that the universality of usage patterns that is found at the spatial, and even spatio-temporal level, can still be found – albeit to a lesser degree – at the discourse level. What seems to be maintained at all levels is the primacy of the proximal segment in terms of referential prominence. We thus conclude that what physical proximity is in the spatial sense, can largely be understood as pragmatic proximity in the linguistic sense.

Autobiographical texts written by learners of Catalan as an Additional Language: From formative needs to reflection in the teaching of narrative genres

In this article we analyse autobiographical narrative texts written by university students studying Catalan as an Additional Language at a CEFR (2020) B1 level. The goal is to analyse the formative needs related to the writing of this genre in order to foster metadiscursive reflection in the classroom that will allow students to improve their written output. To this end, we analyzed a corpus of 39 autobiographies at both the macrotextual level (i.e., rhetorical moves) and the microtextual level (i.e., deictic elements which channel the narrative’s organization). Our results show that the problems that these texts present for students are related to awareness of the elements that define the genre (i.e., the sociocultural dimension) as well as the text’s narrative-temporal anchoring and the narrator’s deictic positioning (i.e., the pragmatic and textual dimensions). Thus, we propose a kind of competence-oriented teaching of genres in which the discursive and grammatical features that have a bearing on a text’s discursive coherence and cohesion are integrated at the same level.

Demonstrative Systems Are Not Affected by Contact: Evidence from Heritage Southern Italo-Romance

Deictic information is present in every language; yet, there are significant differences as to how exactly such information is encoded, yielding different indexical systems across languages. The availability of cross-linguistic variation in indexical systems provides a window into the role of contact in shaping grammars: this work contributes to the discussion by investigating whether contact plays any role in determining the grammar of indexicality in heritage varieties. This study has a two-fold aim. Empirically, it investigates ternary demonstrative systems in heritage southern Italo-Romance varieties: on the basis of comprehension and production data, these systems are shown to be in the process of undergoing change. Theoretically, it underscores the insights that the combined microcontact and diachronic perspective provides for the understanding of variation and change in heritage languages: while, at face value, the elicited heritage data seem to indicate that demonstratives are affected by contact, pairwise comparisons across heritage varieties and diachronic observations lead to rejecting a plain contact-induced explanation and to conclude, instead, that deictic elements are largely unaffected by contact and that their change in heritage varieties is, rather, endogenous.

Дейктические элементы со значением времени в языке и тексте

Время – абстрактная категория, тесно связанная с человеком. Восприятие времени может варьироваться в зависимости от языковой, социальной и культурной среды. Вот почему так важно уделять особое внимание разнообразию представлений времени при изучении иностранного языка. В статье мы исследуем дейктические элементы со значением времени в дискурсе российских художественно- -публицистических журналов. Материалом исследования послужили тексты, опубликованные в журналах «Новый мир» на рубеже XX–XXI веков. В рамках когнитивного подхода текст рассматривается как дискурс, а время как один из ключевых концептов, организующих этот дискурс. По мере развертывания дискурса образуется несколько дейксисных центров, а в качестве вторичных дейктических элементов начинают выступать слова, не имеющие темпоральной семы в значении. Результаты настоящего исследования могут быть использованы в практике преподавания русского языка как иностранного, в частности, при обучении чтению на продвинутом этапе изучения русского языка как иностранного, а такжев курсах по переводу или исторической интерпретации текста.

Le discours médiatique parlé et la norme en français

The system of French accentuation is a relevant case of a language change, observable in a relatively short period of time in a stable synchrony. Since the mid-twentieth century, the formation of linguistic norms has largely depended on a specific type of utterance, media discourse, continually available in spoken audio-visual media. The impact of spoken media on the development of linguistic expression in the last few decades is unprecedented in language history. It is based on a communicational model in which speech is produced by a single speaker and instantly perceived by a multitude of receivers who have no possibility of intervening in the communicational process. Thus the receivers are passively exposed to an exclusive speaker and to language strategies conceived by the media and its linguistic authority. The analysis of two professional spoken interventions, uttered on French television, shows an important modification of the traditional accentual system: conserving the final accent (FA), the speakers systematically introduce an initial accent (IA), a landmark in the evolution of the French language and its normative features. The IA affects the first syllable of a stressed lexeme or the first syllable of an extended accentual unit, regardless of the syntactic function of the stressed morpheme. The FA is operated by the intonational action, while the IA seems to be realized by an accentual augmentation of vocal intensity. The automatism of lexical stressing is generating a systematic accentuation of the first syllable of the accentual unit. The IA mostly affects lexemes that speakers insist on because of their informative value (numerals, adverbs, proper names), but an important part of IA concerns different proclytics, such as deictic elements, articles and determinants. Accentual limitation of the unit on both sides is a specific feature of the speech in French audio-visual media. In recent decades it has found its echo in the normative speech of French linguistic communities.

Translating deictic motion verbs among Bulgarian, Croatian, and Serbian: A corpus-based study

This article deals with translating South Slavic deictic verbs. Specifically, we consider translations among Bulgarian, Croatian, and Serbian. Deictic verbs are verbs whose interpretation is dependent on the location of speech-act participants (Fillmore 1997), such as come and go. In research on Slavic, certain motion verbs prefixes have been discussed as deictic prefixes (see Grenoble 1991, Filipović 2009, Łozińska 2018). Particular emphasis in this analysis is on the prefixed motion verbs dojda/doći, idvam/dolaziti, otida/otići, and otivam/odlaziti found in Bulgarian, Croatian, and Serbian literary texts and their translations. We present a brief quantitative overview and conduct a qualitative study of deixis-related meanings, paying necessary attention to other non-deictic meanings. Special attention is given to the constructional interplay of various deictic elements that co-occur with deictic verbs. Since we deal with literary texts and not everyday interaction, we consider the genre and context and apply the notion of viewpoint, which also covers the mental viewpoint adopted by the narrator, in addition to the deictic viewpoint of one of the speech participants. In the study, we observed shifts in point-of-view from deictic to non-deictic construal and vice versa, and from dynamic to static construal. These phenomena relate to the fact that in a text with a third person narrator, there is no innate deictic centre, while in casual conversation, the interlocutors create the deictic centre. The results show a preference for using come when motion towards a protagonist is described in a neutral context.

СВОЄРІДНІСТЬ ВИРАЖЕННЯ ДЕЙКСИСУ У НАУКОВО-ТЕХНІЧНОМУ ТЕКСТІ

The article is devoted to defining deictic elements, the translation of which remains insufficiently systematized, especially on the example of scientific and technical texts. The aim of the work is to study deixis in English texts, to determine its linguistic and extralinguistic features and to translate it into Ukrainian. The latest view of deixis is to understand it as a universal category that functions at all linguistic levels. This phenomenon helps to understand the author, to isolate the most important information and to navigate in space and time. The specifics of personal deixis in the scientific and technical literature are based on the relationship of transmission-reception of information between the author (addresser) and the reader (addressee) at the extralinguistic level. As follows from the analysis of examples, the text of a scientific article expresses not only the intellectual content – information about the facts and their theoretical justification, but also the author’s will to attract the reader’s attention, to bring them to accepting the author’s point of view. The use of 2nd person as a deictic element is subject to the task of implementing the author’s pragmatic guidelines. In expressing his/her opinion, s/he aims to make the statement less categorical, leaving it open to the reader’s judgment. Deictic words help to establish contact with the reader, which is directly related to embodying the main communicative function of a scientific text – the function of communication.

Los condicionamientos pragmáticos del uso de los deícticos de tiempo en español

The objective of this study is to reflect on the Spanish time expressions that function as deictic elements. Deixis is a phenomenon strictly related to aspects of a pragmatic nature since it depends on the situational context in which the participants of the communicative act are. We want to search, discover and describe the pragmatic conditioning that determines the appearance and operation of this type of element in Spanish. Our idea is to demonstrate that in time deictic expressions the semantic content is not enough for speakers to use these expressions properly. It is necessary to resort to information that exceeds the level of meaning and find guidelines for the good interpretation of the expression in the situational and personal context. The group of time deictics is not heterogeneous from the formal point of view. It includes simple elements (for example, adverbs) and more or less complex elements (noun and prepositional phrases). We will focus on this second group and, above all, on the nominal constructions that include determinants and temporal adjectives since in this type of structure each constituent element performs a different semantic-pragmatic function and only the combination of these allows us to discover the definitive value of the set.