118
relates the referent to a common ground that exists between speaker and addressee
(Grundy, 2008). Hanks (1992: 51) maintains that „a single deictic word stands for
minimally two objects: the referent is the thing, individual, event, spatial or temporal
location denoted; and the indexical framework is the
origo
(„pivot‟ or zero point)
relative to which the referent is identified.‟ Since the work of Bühler (1934), deictic
reference has been organised around an origo or „ground zero‟ (Levinson, 2004).
According to Levinson (1983: 55), „deixis concerns the encoding of many different
aspects of the circumstances surrounding the utterance, within the utterance itself.
Natural language utterances are thus
anchored
[my italics] directly to aspects of the
context.‟ Levinson (
ibid
.) outlines the following anchor points that constitute the
deictic centre:
(i)
The central
person is the speaker
(ii)
The central time is the time at which the speaker produces
the utterance
(iii)
The central place is the speaker‟s
location at utterance time
(iv)
The discourse centre is the point at which the speaker is currently at in
the
production of his utterance
(v)
The social centre is the speaker‟s social status and rank, to which the
status or rank of addressees or referents is relative.
Therefore, deixis is typically organised in an egocentric manner (Lyons, 1977;
Levinson, 1983; Rauh, 1983) in which „the speaker casts himself in the role of the
ego and relates everything to his viewpoint‟ (Lyons, 1977: 638). However, more
contemporary accounts of deixis (Hanks, 1992; Jones, 1995) have challenged the
notion of an egocentric origo. According to Jones (1995), theories in favour of the
egocentricity of deixis fail to take into account that communication is a social act.
He argues that „it is rather ironic that deixis is often cited as proof of the
interdependence between language structure and communicative function and yet
communication is quite often pictured as an act of pure self-expression by a lone
individual‟ (p. 32). Hanks (1992) maintains that acts of reference are interactively
accomplished and „as interactants move through space, shift topics, exchange
information, coordinate their respective orientations, and establish common grounds
as well as non-commonalities, the indexical framework of reference changes‟ (p.
53). Both Hanks (1992) and Jones (1995) posit the notion of a sociocentric origo
119
which is based on the common ground shared between conversational participants.
This has particular relevance to the study of family discourse.
The degree of interpersonal shared knowledge is obviously extremely high within
the family setting, reflecting the history of their relationship. Bernstein (1964: 60)
claims that „…the speech of intimates…presupposes a „local cultural identity‟ which
reduces the need for the speakers to elaborate their intent verbally and to make it
explicit.‟ This notion of inexplicitness in the speech of intimates is echoed in studies
of deictic reference. Grundy (2008) maintains that the more speaker and addressee
share common ground, the more they can affect reference. Duranti and Goodwin
(1992: 45) maintain that „a key property of the indexical ground is the way in which
it encompasses and encodes the differential
access
[their emphasis] that participants
have to relative events.‟ Hanks (1992: 69) suggests that the more information
participants share, „the more precisely they can individuate references.‟ Participants
that share detailed background knowledge „can mobilise potentially any shifter in the
language. Proper and successful reference can be based on the presupposition that
the interlocutor will identify the object (even a remote one)‟ (
ibid
.). Therefore,
hypothetically, it could be claimed that in order to fully understand or „decode‟
family discourse, it is perhaps necessary to acknowledge a non-egocentric origo, and
instead acknowledge a family-centric or, as Section 5.4.1 demonstrates, child-centric
one. As De Fina
et al
., (2006: 4) state:
The idea that signs are indexical goes way beyond simple referential anchoring to
encompass the ability of linguistic expressions to evoke, and relate to, complex
systems of meaning such as socially shared conceptualisations of space and place,
ideologies, social representations about group membership, social roles and attributes,
presuppositions about all aspects of social reality, individual and collective stances
practices and organizational structures.
It the sociocentric nature of family discourse that allows them to invoke reference
like
outside
used in extract (5.1), which is impenetrable to all but those participants
with a common shared knowledge.
Deixis is traditionally sub-divided into a number of categories. The most referred to
are
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