deitic reference in written disc 2009

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DEI TI REFEREN E I N W RI TT EN DIS OURSEDaiva Verikait

Vilnius Pedagogical University, 39 Studenti} St., LT-08106,Vilnius, L ithuania, veridaivg)takas.lt

BSTR CTDeixis as a mean s ofverbal reference isreflectedin the structure of langu age through

personal pronouns demon strative pronounsordemonstrative adverbs.Thearticle presentsanalysisof theuseof time and placeindexicalexpressions i e temporalandlocative deicticsin written discourse. Two main types of deictic use - anaphoric and non-ana phoric -areanalysed inthearticle.The articleexamines theresultsof the relative frequency distributionof temporal and locative deictics in scientificresearcha rticles. The results oftheanalysisdemonstrated that temporal and locative deictic reference in written discourse is usedsimilarly to that in the spoken discourse. The temporal a nd locative deictic reference inthe analysed w ritten discourse is organised in anegocentricway: the means thatexpresscentral and proximal relations with respect to the time and place of the text productionarepreferred to the means that em body peripheral or distal relations.

Keywords deixis deicticreference temporal deictics locative deictics indexicals.INTRODU TION

The process of com m unic ation , which involves the speaker and the addressee , occu rsin a specific spatio -tem poral situa tion. The speaker wh o organizes the interaction, wishesto convey to and to obtain in form ation from the addressee . The addressee is no t only thereceiver of inform ation; th e address ee is also the giver of inform ation. In th is respect th espeaker an d the addressee enjoys a similar status: bo th are pa rtne rs in this inform ationalexchange. However, it is the speaker who organizes the process of interaction. His orher duty is to initiate the exchange. Any exchange necessarily involves the identifica-tion of entities and processes, or, to use a more precise term, the process of reference. eference is a relation between an utterance and an individual or set of individuals thatit identifies M atthews, 199 7,31 2). Referential items can be situationa l exop horic) ortextual end op hor ic). An exop horic item refers to a thing identified w ithin the context ofsituation . Items of textual reference are defined as ana ph oric a nd c ataph oric. In the caseof ana pho ric reference th e linguistic item refers to som e linguistic item in the p reced ingsegment of the text, and in the case of cataphoric reference, the linguistic item refersto some othe r linguistic item in the segm ent of the text that follows Halliday, Ha san,

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No matter whether exophoric or endophoric reference is used, the addressee mustknow w hich entity or process the speaker has in m ind. ohelp the addressee, the speakerresorts to the use of specific lingu istic forms called de ictics, or inde xicals,i e structureswh ose m ean ing is relative to a specific situa tion. These structur es help the pa rticip ant sof the com mun icative act to navigate through a spatio-tempo ral area of the process ofcommunication.

Deixis is a word bo rrowed from the Greek verb mean ing pointin g or indicating .In pragmatics,deixis is a term used to de note a word o r a phrase w hich directly refersto entities, processes, attributes and circumstances. In other words, deictic expressionsare used by the speaker to identify entities, processes, attributes and circumstances inboth linguistic and extra-linguistic situations. W hen the speaker an d the addressee arein an extra-linguistic situation, the identification of the referents iseasy. So, for ins tance ,if the speaker and the addressee are in the same room, the entities are visible to boththe speaker and the addressee, e.g. when the speaker saysI the addressee knows thatIis the perso n speaking now ; wh en the speaker says thisbook the addressee knows thatthis book means the boo k close to the speaker; when the speakers ysyesterday the ad-dressee know sthat yesterday me ans the day before th e time of the u tterance. As can beseen, debcis gets its mea nin g from the situation. Therefore, the interp retatio n of deicticreference in the spoken discourse is easy. However, in the written discourse (texts) itsinterpretation becom es mo re complex for several reasons: 1) the cod ing time a nd thereceiving time of the particular discourse can be qu ite remote, i.e. the tem poral spanbetween the moment of encoding when the writer creates the text and the moment ofdecoding when the reader perceives the text can be very large; 2) the location of thepartic ipan ts is different,i e the writer at the m om ent of text produ ction is in a differentlocation than the reader at the mom ent of text percep tion; 3) in mo st cases the pa rtici-pants of the interaction (the writer an d the reader) are unfamiliar.

The problems of deixis and deictic reference were extensively analysed by Lyons(1975), Levinson (1983), Hanks (1992), Nunberg (1993), Grundy and Jiang (1998),G run dy (2000), and Glover (200 0). The focus of analysis in mos t of the studies wason spoken discourse. According to Levinson (1983,85), deixis in spoken discourse isorganised in an ego centric way:

1.The central person is the speaker.2.The central time is the tim e at which the speaker produ ces th e u tterance.3.The central place is the speaker s location at the utter ance tim e.4.The discourse centre is the p oint at which the speaker is currently at in the pro -

duction of utterance.The hypothetical question arises wh ether the principles of deixis organization usedin spoken discourse apply to written discourse.

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The corpus for analysis was drawn from 216 scientific research articles written bydifferent authors, which involved 1,750 pages of the text. The mean frequency of theoccurren ce of pa rticu lar item of deictic reference was calculated; the relative frequencyof each type of items un der analysis was determ ined.

1 TYPES OF DEIC TIC REFERENCEAccording to L evinson (1983,54), deixis conce rns bo th th e ways in which language

incodes or grammaticalize the features of the context of utterance and in which theinterpretation of utterances depen ds on the analysis oftha t context of situation. Deixisconce rns the encodin g of ma ny different aspects of the circumstan ces su rrou ndin g theutterance and w ithin the utteranceitself Every langu age utte ranc e is m ad e in a specificplace,at a specifictime,and by specific per son add ressing a specific p erso n. Therefore,traditional categories of deixis are person, place and time.

ersondeixisconcern s the encod ing of the role of participants in the speech events inwh ich the uttera nce is delivered: the P ' perso n is the gramm aticalization of the speaker'sreference tohimself; the 2 '' per son is the e nco din g of the speak er's reference to oneor m ore ad dressees; the3' ''person is the encoding of reference to perso ns and entitieswhich are neither speakers nor addressees of the u tterance.

lacedeixisconcern s the enc odin g of spatial locations relative to the locations of theparticipan ts in the speech event. Most of languages, English including, gram maticalizeat least a distinction betwee n proxim al (close to speaker) and distal (non -proxim al) tospeaker (som etimes close to addressee).

Time deixisconcerns the enc oding tem poral po ints and spans relative to the time atwhich the utterance was spoken.

Levinson (1983,85) also distinguishesdiscourse or text) deixis,which concerns theuse of expressions w ithin an utterance to refer to so me p ortio n of the discourse. Dis-course deixis, according to Levinson (ibid., 67), can be of two types: 1) non-anaphoricand 2) anaphoric.

Levinson makes a distinction b etween anap hora and discourse deixis in the follow-ing way: if a pronoun or other demonstrative item refers to a linguistic expression (ora chunk of discourse itself) it is discourse-deictic; where a pronoun refers to the sameentity sa prior lingu istic expression refersto,itisan aph oric. Therefore, discourse-deicticand anaph oric items are not m utually exclusive.

Lexical me ans expressing the category of deixis are personal pro no un s, dem onstra-tive pronouns or demonstrative adverbs.

In this a rticle we will focus o n th e use of tem po ral and locative deictics, i.e. on theuse of demonstrative deictic this and demonstrative adverbshere, there, nowa nd then,which refer to the location of a process in space or time. They normally do so directly

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2 TEM PORAL DEICTIC REFERENCETemporal deictic reference is conc erned with the en coding of tem poral p oints a nd

spans relative to the time at which an utterance is spoken or a written message is pro-duced.Asthe results ofth e present study are drawn from written d iscourse, we analysethe temp oral p oints relative to the tim e th e texts are produc ed. EoUowing Eillmore (1971),the temp oral point at which the text is prod uced is called coding time and th e tem poralpo int at wh ich the text is received by a reade r is called receiving tim e. Tem poral deicticreference is grammaticalized in deictic adverbs of time and the grammatical categoryof tense.

Tim e deixis makes reference to participa ntroles;therefore,nowcan be defined as thetime at which the writer produce s the text containing now.Hanks (1992,52) suggeststhat on e of the principal meaning s ofnowis the tim e imm edia te to this utterance . Inthe act of speech the coding tim e and the receiving time can b e assumed as identical(Lyons, 1977,685). However, in written texts the span between the co ding tim e and thereceiving time can vary from several weeks to several m on ths, depen ding on the timeof prod uction , publishing and text decoding.

The limits of this process obscure, however, the span betw een the co ding time andreceiving time is not very imp orta nt in written texts since the tim e of coding is projectedto the time of receiving.

The time dimension o fthe temp oral deicticnowcan extend from a certain m om entin the process of text produ ction to several decades or even centuries. Consider:1.Thecorrespondingspecifications for energy and nutrients are nowpresented

The tempo ral deicticnow,asused in th e text above, can be identified with a particularmo me nt in the process of text prod uctio n. However, such instances are not com mo n inthe analysed texts. The majority of the instances w ith the te mp oral deictic nowimplya greater span of time:

2.The fact that oalene has been theonlycoccidiostatused in M alawi for several yearsand w hilst it has been shown b y Reid 1975) thatresistance to Zoalenedevelopsslowly, iis probablethat someresistancehas nowdeveloped

3.In many countries the use of chlorinatedhydrocarbonpesticides is nowrestrictedText dem onstrates the use of nowwhich is the closest to the coding tim e and the

expansion of time span is the n arrowest. However, in texts 2 and 3 the interpretationofnowis mo re com plicated. The reader of text 3 may interpre t nowas expanding fromseveral years to several decades; however, the info rma tion that w ould justify th e exacttime dimension is not found in the texts. In order to interpret now, the reader has touse his general knowledge for the interpretation of the specific information concern-ing the statements presented in the text. On the one hand, scientific texts are supposedto be rea d by specialists ofaparticular field; therefore, it should not be difficult for the

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1. A certain moment in the process of text creation - a particularized meaning ofnow.

2.A certain m om ent o r period in the developm ent of some process in the e xtra-linguistic world - a generalised me aning of now.All instances of noware ultimately d eictic; however, no t all instance s are co hesive.Text dem onstrates the use ofnowdirectly conn ected to the m om ent in the process oftext creation and has direct reference to the chunk of the succeeding text. Therefore, itis considered to be cohesive. Such instances of nowwith a particularized meaning areinconsiderable an d have not muc h influence on the coherence of the analysedtexts.Nowwith a generalised m eaning has even less bearing on the text cohesion.

2 1 The Temporal Meaning o f HereAlthough the main m eaningo hereis tha t ofplace,it also has an invariant m ean ing

of time, i.e. it may indicate a certain moment or a point in time in the process of textcreation hence it can express temporal relations.

4.Finally, to keep harvesting machines fully operational they m ust be adequately sup-plied with emptycontainersand ullonesneedto beremovedpromptly. ereagain problemsof manoeuvringlargecon tainers ofien causelogisticproblems that limit the developmentof harvesting equ ipment.

Here,asused in the above text, can be considered a temp oral expression rath er thanlocative since it indicates a po int in tim e rathe r tha n a poin t of place. Consequ ently,herecan be considered a cou nterp art ofnow^ erewith a temporal mean ing is not com mo nin the analysed texts. It accounts for merely 0.5 per cent of total occurrences of here,therefore, is no t subjected to a m ore d etailed analysis.

2 2 The Temporal Deictic henThe temporal deictic nowstands in opposition to the temporal deictic then,which

could be defined as expressing:1.A particular tim e in the past or future.2.Next in time , space and order, imm ediately afterward.Then,wh en used w ith the first m ean ing, can refer to som e linguistic elem ent in

the preceding text and function anaphorically. As noted by Levinson (1983,85), sincediscourse unfolds in time, it seems natural th at time-deictic w ords can be used to referto portions of the discourse. W hen used with the second meaning ,then functions con-junctively. In approximately o ne th ird of all the oc currences then functions anaphorically,whereas in two thirds of the occurrences it functions conjunctively. Consider:

5.The first reported naturaloccurrenceofOA was in a low grade sample of corn ana-lysed in a survey in the United States Shotwell et al, 1969). Since then contamination

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henin text 6 functions conjunctively and instances of conjunctive then are the mo stfrequent in the analysed texts. The conjunctive use of then accounts for 82 per cent,wh ereas the deictic use accoun ts for 12 pe r cent of the oc curre nce s. How ever, conjunc -tion is beyond the scope of our analysis.Text 5 dem onstrates th e anaph oric then, which refers to the imm ediately preced ingsentence. Although the preceding sentence does not contain an exact indication of t ime,how ever, the im plica tion is sufficient. Then refers to the time , wh ich is indica ted in th epreceding sentence. The reference of the anaphoric then to the numerical expressionof time in the prece ding text creates a cohesive link between two senten ces integra tingthem into a unified whole.

In fact, then can function cataphorically, howev er such cases are not frequent in theanalysed texts. Such being the case, the ana pho ric function of then is the only functioncontributing to the integrity of the text. However, its infrequent use can be accountedfor by the fact tha t tem por al relations are not of crucial im po rtan ce to science texts; onthe other hand,acategory of tense is sufficient me ans of tem por al ind ication . Moreover,some other lexical means used to express temporal relations are often observed in thetexts. It is interesting to note that the most frequently used lexical means of temporalexpression in th e analysed texts are today, at present and atthispoint.

3 LOCATIVE DEICTIC REFERENCEPlace deixis conce rns the en cod ing of spatial locations relative to the locations oft he

partic ipan ts in the speech events (Levinson, 1983,62). The pure locative deictic adve rbsin English arehere and there. In English they encode two degrees of proximity to thespeaker - prox imal and distal (G rundy, 200 0,28 ). In the majority of cases the locativedeictic items in a science text do not concern the location of the participants literally:they indicate that the referent is identifiable som ew here in the text.

3 1 Locative DeicticThisScientific texts are highly abstract in ch aracter; they are deta che d from the specific

situation of their pr od uc tion . Therefore, the u se ofdeixis, namely, the ex oph oric deicticelement this with the modified no un designates specific bo und aries of the p erceptua lcognition of the reader.

The use of deixis of the type in this paper occu rs frequently, especially at the beg in-ning and at the end of scientific texts, in summaries and abstracts.

As noted by Ehlich (19 94,213), this paper is a new entity in the world of writer an dreader. The writer co nstructs this reality and the reader h as it in his/her ha nd s. The textis accessible to the sense perception for both of them.

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The position of the no un phrase w ith the deictic thisis mo stly restricted to:1 the first para grap h of the text:7. Some of the possibilities that have been proposed are considered in this pa-

per .2) the last paragraph of the text:8.Severalstudiesonpathological immunological and behaviouralaspectso fstress are

inaccordwith th is thesis. Thus, the obviousquestion iswhetherstressm aypossess desirablequalities. In this reviewweprovide some elucidation of this question anddiscussthe linesof evidence supporting the notion.

5%-,50/ \ 5

Iah1 ^ - T O ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ B H H | ^ H

2 0 %

^ 4 8 %n Paper Reviewa Studya Research Discussion Thesis ContexQ Other nouns

igure1.Therelative frequency ofthenouns m odified by thedeictic this3 2 The Locative Deictics ereandThereThe main m eaning ofhereis that ofplace.The results of the data analysis de mo n-

strated that in 99.5 per cent of the occurrenc es here indicates place and in 0.5 percentof the occurrences it expresses temporal relation.Here also implies proximity to thespeaker or the participants in the act of speech and it stands in opposition to there,which expresses locative relations indicating a particular place in some aspect remotefrom the speaker or participan ts in the comm unicative act. Co nsider:

9.That the variation in this ratio may be responsible for the variation in theobservedfatness issuggestedby the data inFig. 1.Here the ratioisplotted against CPI ME for allnine of the feeds used byKirchgessneret al 1978).

10. Recentarchaeological evidence reported by W est and Zhou 1988) indicates thatby 6000 B C chickens had already become established in C hina. From here theyreachedJapan via Korea between about 300 BC and 300 AD.

Both texts demonstrate the locative meaning of here functioning anaphorically. Inboth texts here refers to the noun phrase identifiable in the preceding text. The onlydifference between the two uses ofherelies in the o rigin of the referent. In text 9hererefers to the n oun phras e ^ r e 1 used in the preceding sentence and it also refers to

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The cataphoric function ofhereis observed onlyin afew cases:11.In the foregoing section the ma in methods of demonstratingstress wereenunciated

Heretheliteratureon theactualresponses measured willbeconsidered.In accordancwith thecriteria m entioned above, either singly orseverally, depending on the workersconcerned Stressoractivity can be ascribedtoheat Ben Nathan etal,1976;Edens anSiegel 1975; Benvingand Vonder 1978;SiegelandGould 1982); cold Garren andShner, 1 956) etc .

The locativehererefers forward to arather large stretchofthe text. Its referenceiscohesive sinceit is notstructurally pred eterm ined.

The cataphorichereis closely relatedto thereference item this.Asaresult, they canbe interchangeable. Consequently,herecan refer to the exten dedtext but often with theme aning that isnot ofplacebut ofrespect Halliday, Ha san, 1976,74 ).The locative hereisopposedto thelocative there. The data analysis demonstratedthat locativetherewas extrem ely rarely used in the analysed tex ts. O nly a very few casesof the anaphorictherewere found. C onsider:

12.Thepredicted effectsoftheseassumptionsareshown inTable3a.Ontheassumptiomade there,asubstantialincrease in fatness ispredicted as feed protein content falls.

The locativetherepoints back to the referent linguistically encoded as the nounphraseTable 3a;therefore the extra-linguistic referent iswithin the limits ofthesametext. Consequently therehasadual function: anaphoric - it points back to the linguisticreferent in the preceding text and exophoric - it points to thetable.Thedual functionoftherecould be effective for the integrity of the text. However due to the infrequentuse it hardly affects the cohesion of the analysed texts.

Summing up the analysis of the data displayed the following tendency: deicticsthat express central or proximate position with respect to the time and place of textproduction were used far more frequently than those embodying peripheral or distalrelation. Consequently 89 per cent of the adverbial occurrences were constructed inan egocentric way with respect to the time and place of text production. The relativefrequency of each temporal and locative item is presented in Eigure 2.

Here129

Then9There2

^ ^ ^ 60%

Now HereDThenD There

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C O N C L U S I O NThe results of the analysis de m on strate d that tem pora l and locative deictic referencein written discourse is used similarly to that in the spoken discourse. The tempo ral and

locative deictic reference in the an alysed tex ts of scientific research articles is orga nisedin an egoce ntric way: 1) the cen tral pers on is the w riter; 2) the ce ntral tim e is the tim eat which th e writer pro duc es th e text; 3) the central place is the writer s location at thetime of text produc tion. Therefore, the linguistic m eans that express central and proxim alrelations with respect to the time an d place of the text prod uction are preferred to th emeans that embody peripheral or distal relations.REFERENCES

1. Ehlich, K 1994.Scientific texts and deictic stru cture s. In: Baakes, K. (ed.)KeyIssuesof Syntax in theSpecial Languageso fSciencea nd Technology.English - German.Heidelberg: G roos, 201-229.2. Fillmore, C. 1971. Towards a theory of deixis. In:The PCCLLU Papers(Departmentof Linguistics, University of Hawaii), 3-4,219-241.3. Glover, K D.2000. The sequen tial analysis of proximal and distal deixis in negotia-tion talk.In :Journalo fPragmatics32/7.4. Grundy, P. 2000.DoingPragmatics.London : Arnold.

5. Grundy, P. and Jiang, Y. 1998. Deictic reference and cognitive semantics. In: HKPUWorking Papers inChineseand ilingualStudiesi, 85-103.6. Halliday,M. A. K and Hasan, R. 1976.Cohesion in English.London: Longman.7. Hanks,W F.1992. The indexical ground ofdei ti reference, in Duranti, A. and Go od-win,C (eds.).In:RethinkingContext.Cam bridge: Cambridge University Press, 43-76.8. Levinson,S C.1983. Pragmatics. Cam bridge: Cam bridge U niversity Press.9. Lyons,J 1975.Deixis as the source of reference. In: Keenan, E. L. (ed.)FormalSe-mantics of NaturalLanguage.Cam bridge: Cam bridge U niversity Press, 61-83.10. Lyons,}.1977. Deixis and a nap hora. In: Meyers, T (ed.)TheDevelopm ent ofConversation andD iscourse. Edinbu rgh: Edinbu rgh University Press.11. Matthews, P. H. 1997.ConciseDictionary of Linguistics.Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.12. Nunberg, G. 1993. Indexicality and deixis. In:LinguisticsandPhilosophy68 1-43.

S NTR UKD E I K T I N E R E F ER E N C IJ R S Y T I N I M E D I S K U R S EDaiva Verikait

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prieveiksmius ir kitas leksines-gramatines priemones. Straipsnyje analizuojami dudeiktins referencijos tipai: laiko deiktin referencija ir vietos deiktin referencija. At-likus leksiniij priem on iij, ireikianciij m intu s du referencijos tipu s, varto jimo tekstesantykinio daz nu m o skaiciavimus,buvo nustatyta, kad deiktins referencijos vartojima srasytiniame diskurse nesiskiria nuo jos vartojimo sakytiniame diskurse: tiek rayti-niam e, tiek sakytiniam e diskursuo se deiktin referencija k ons truojam a egocentriSkai:1 pagrind inis asm uo yra teksto krjas, 2 pagrin dinis laikas yra teksto krim o laikas,3 pag rind in vieta yra vieta, kurioje yra teksto krjas, ku rda m as tekst^. Todl anali-zuotuose tekstuose dominuoja leksins priemones, kurios geriau padeda konstruotideiktin referencija egocentriskai.

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