An Empathy Study Of Person Deixis In English Lyrics

Generally speaking, there are two ways through which human beings convey affect --- nonverbal and verbal. Nonverbal includes gestures, facial expressions, body languages and the like. At the same time expressing affect in verbal is one of the major functions of language. Linguistic research on the expression of affect has been concerned by linguists, both at home and abroad.In the paper Language Has a Heart, Elinor Ochs & Bambi Schieffelin have summarized four major research orientations on the expression of affect in language. The first grows out of the Prague functionalistic perspective, represented by Jackobson (1960). The second orientation focuses on the study of intonation. The third research orientation centers on narrative and other performance genres and the fourth derives from research in child language development. The present study which focuses on the lyrics of songs belongs to the third orientation. There are many ways to achieve emotive function of language. The skill of using person deixis is among them. Through analyzing indications of person deixis in lyrics, although greater part of them do not follow the theory of person deixis and co-operative principle, those special use of person deixis reaches the function of empathy.Due to subjectivity of language, one can express affect in verbal. The author of Subjectivity and Subjectivisation: an Introduction claims that there are three main arenas which have been the focus of recent studies of subjectivity and subjectivisation: speaker?s perspective, speaker?s expression of affect and speaker?s expression of the modality. And"empathy"is one of the most deeply-researched topics in the second arenas --- speaker?s expression of affect.Through analyzing the characteristics of person deixis in lyrics from the quantity and the indications of each person deixis, we have further testified the correctness of Empathy Hierarchy and replenished its integrity. In order to better express human affect and influence readers? emotion, more person deixis could be adopted appropriately, when people write lyrics or poetry and the like.