Study Of Cognitive Deixis In Light Of Cognitive Poetics

Deixis, as a universal and complicated language phenomenon, has always beena heated topic in linguistic studies. Previous studies, though successful in provisionwith a considerably detailed description of deixis, have some problems to be solved,such as vague classification of deixis and lack of deep and thorough description ofdeixis category besides the traditional three ones–person, space, and time deixis.Since the21st century, cognitive poetics has witnessed its being considerablyconcerned and booming development. Different from the previous study, the study ofdeixis in cognitive poetics is focused on the relationship of deixis with possibleworlds, context and subjectivity of cognition. In2002, Stockwell puts forward‘cognitive deixis’in Cognitive Poetics–An Introduction and classifies them intosix types–perceptual, spatial, temporal, relational, textual and compositional deixis,the first and the last three of which, hold quite a multitude of difference from theprevious ones, offering a brand-new perspective for the expansion and deepening ofdeixis study in linguistic field.The thesis explores the theoretical basis of cognitive deixis and studies thesimilarities and differences between cognitive deixis and previous ones. As cognitivepoetics lays emphasis on the interpretation of literary text, it has scarcely appliedcognitive deixis to the daily language. In this thesis, three materials–extracts fromthe famous poem Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin (translated by ValdimirNabokov), a speech–Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address in2013, an interview–theexclusive interview of Ang Lee by Chai Jing, which are representatives of literarylanguage, official language and normal language respectively, are analyzed withcognitive deixis with the aim to prove the powerful explanation of cognitive deixisnot only to literary text, but to normal linguistic phenomenon.