Discourse Deixis and Social Deixis
Following N.Enkvist we consider discourse as combination of text and
context which has social component (Enkvist, 1989). There are various
discourse connectors used by a sender of text to organize discourse. The
deictics is among most frequently used devices. Further researches have
brought to understanding that discourse is a social factor (Van Dijk,
1998). The deictic elements have strong communicating weight and play
important role as a means of realization of the pragmatic intentions of a
sender in discourse. Traditionally deixis is used for words which refer
backwards or forwards in discourse (other terms are anaphora and cataphora
respectively), e.g. there, that, the following, the latter. This is
sometimes known as discourse or text deixis. It can be illustrated in the
following newspaper texts:
a.Robinho didn`t succeed in England. There he is seen as a bird who
might soar in the early season when the sun shines but whose team managers
at Manchester City used him part time (International Herald Tribune,
February 10, 2010, p.11).
b.Mr.Shuster is a refugee from Vladimir Putin`s Russia. As the
television news has been waterwashed there, some big-mouthed journalists
like Mr.Shuster have decamped for Ukraine, where the political and media
climate is far more lively and diverse and just plain interesting
(International Herald Tribune, January 25, 2010, p.3).
Mutual connections between components of text are not chosen
unambiguously because they reflect complex and diverse developments of the
social life. And lexical-grammatical connectors play the role of relevant
"conveyers" of these actually existing links.
The relationship between text or discourse deixis and social deixis
requires special attention. According to Ch.Fillmore, social deixis
refers to that aspect of sentences which reflect or establish or are
determined by certain realities of the social situation in which the speech
act occurs (Ch.Fillmore, 1975). S. Levinson further discusses this
relationship from the angle of pragmatics (Levinson, 1983). He believes
that social deixis refers to those aspects of language structure that
encode the social identities of participants (properly, incumbents of
participant-roles), or the social relationship between them, or between one
of them and person and entities referred to.
Social deixis is a metaphor of the metaphor 'spacial deixis' that
indicates the vertical distance in a virtual space, which we are used to
call 'social', between two or more persons/things, expressed in a symbolic
way, using what is grammaticalized and lexicalized in language.
(Guéorguiév, 2007)
As we see discourse deixis should be distinguished from social deixis,
the encoding of social distinctions (doctor, professor, captain, sorry,
please) that relate to the discourse participant roles (sender-receiver of
message), as encountered in such matters as pronouns, horrofics, vocatives
and forms of address. For example:
Washington has been forecasting the likely death of a climate bill
with renewed certainty since Massachusets elected a Republican senator who
promised to block pretty much anything Mr. Obama wants (International
Herald Tribune, January 25, 2010, p.6).
Sometimes people can actually use deixis to have some fun using social
context. The bar owner who puts up a big sign that reads Free Beer Tomorrow
(to get you to return to this bar) can always claim that you are one day
too early for the free drink.
So social deixis reflects social responsibility of discourse
participants.
