9th

Grade

Stylistics &
Pragmatics
Deixis
Outline at a glance!
01 02 03
Introduction Literary vs. Non- Context
literary discourse

04 05 06
Deictic Expression Conclusion Practice
Introduction
● Meaning is the result of interpretive
processes.

• A text cannot have a single, invariant

meaning for all readers.

• The role of the reader is that of an

interpreter, not a mere passive recipient.
 02
Literary vs. Non-literary discourse
Literary vs. Non-literary discourse
There is no principled way to distinguish between literary and
non-literary discourse.

The same linguistic resources are used in both types of discourse.

The same resources may be more effective in literary than non-

literary discourse
 03
Context
 Context

• Means the immediately preceding discourse and the situation of the

participants.

• What contextualizes a literary discourse is: appearance, title, author, publisher.

• Discourse World; Text World (Werth, 1999)

• Dynamic; the mutual creation of discourse participants.

• Responsibility of the hearer, assuming the relevance of what the speaker says
(Sperber & Wilson 1986, 1995)

• Important role of encyclopedic knowledge.

Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers
herself. For Lucy had her work cut out for her.
The doors would be taken off their hinges;
Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then,
thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning –
fresh as if issued to children on a beach.

Sperber and Wilson stress that encyclopedic knowledge plays an important role.

Thus different people may interpret the same utterance differently according to the
information they possess, what they deem relevant, and their knowledge of social
conventions.

The reader forms his own inferences about the relationship between the two women
through the use of title or lack of it.

Background knowledge of early readers of the novel would lead to different encoding
of text and gives space to more inferences. The relationship between the two women is
clearer to an early reader rather than a modern one.

The social standard of the lady who can only afford to have a servant who does all the
work, rather than have a butler open the door for her, can be inferred by an early
reader of the novel rather then a modern reader.

Our understanding of the text is incremental .
 Context

Werth (1999) developed an elaborate and very precise view of context.


The context in which discourse takes place is identified as the discourse world,
while the topic is the text world. It is the text that drives the evocation of
knowledge and establishes common ground which is arrived at by negotiation
between the participants.


To this is added the background knowledge of the participants, enriching and
giving meaning to the ongoing discourse.


Context is dynamic, the mutual creation of the discourse participants. This view
stresses the incremental nature of discourse: added information clarifies what
has gone before, and/or may alter our perception of it.
 04
Deictic
expressions
 DEICTICS (pointing words)

Personal pronouns 1 2 Demonstratives

Time & place

3 4 Tensed verbs
expressions
Now – here - today Temporal deixis

These words relate our linguistic expression to the current situation. They are bridges between language and the world.
Deixis
• Significant differences between written and spoken discourse
• Pointing words
• Relate linguistic expressions to the current situation; a bridge
between language and the world
• In literature, the role of deixis is a bit different
• Establish the spatio-temporal perspective of a narrative
• Suggest whose perspective (narrator/ character) is invoke
Deixis
● Pronouns
● Articles
● Tense
● Present tense
● Imperative
● Pronominal references to the narrator
● Second-person pronoun
Pronouns
In fictional discourse, the
referents of the pronominal
system differ from that of
spoken language.
The ‘I’ of the lyric poet cannot be
identified with the author of the
text

In a text , the sender of the message is not necessarily identified

with the author. The reader who is the ultimate addressee is not
identified with the one who is directly addressed in the text.
 Articles

When the definite article occurs at the beginning of a text, the reader is
informed of what is to be taken as part of the ‘given’ of the fictional
discourse.


The occurrence of the definite article at the beginning of a narrative
derives from script theory. In other words, the role of pre-existing
knowledge structures in enabling readers to process discourse speedily.


The definite article referring to the restaurant is a typical way of
introducing entities in a fiction: it simply tells us that this restaurant is to
be taken as part of the ‘given’ elements in this world.
Articles

1. 2. 3.
The use of a definite article at The definite article and the Spatio-temporal perspective of
the beginning of a text script theory the narrative at the beginning of
a text

4. 5.
Use of proximal deixis is a
Combination of proximal and
means of involvement of the
distal deictics
reader.
 Time and Place Expressions

The role of deictics in establishing the spatio-temporal perspective of a
narrative is perhaps most obvious at the beginning of a text. In particular,
odd combinations of proximal (close) and distal (distant) deictics occur.

It was now lunch time, and they were all sitting under
the double green fly of the dining tent, pretending that
nothing had happened.