An Adaptation-based Study Of Personal Deictic Projection

Personal deictic projection is a common linguistic phenomenon in verbal interactions, which is understood as the process of making deictic center shift from the speaker to the addressee or other referents. This shift process is necessarily dynamic and adaptation-driven. This thesis aims to present a systematic-though by no means exhaustive-investigation of the adaptive process of personal deictic projection and the factors underlying the choice of personal deixis. The theoretical framework referenced in this paper is mainly derived from Verschueren's Theory of Linguistic Adaptability, together with some other pragmatics theories such as the Pragmatic Distance Hypothesis and Pragmatic Empathy. The notions of pragmatic distance and pragmatic empathy provide us with the starting point from which we approach the research topic, and Adaptation Theory will be exploited as a tool to understand and explain the speaker's choice making process. By following the adaptation theory and incorporating the factors influencing the choice of deixis, we will construct an adaptive model to examine in a systematic and coherent manner the adaptation process of personal deictic projection.In the adaptive process, pragmatically, communicative needs and contextual variables are identified as two key dimensions of language use. In order to realize specific communicative goal, the speaker adopts personal deictic projection to adjust pragmatic distance between interlocutors, and this negotiation process is influenced and shaped by contextual variables such as social conventions and psychological motivations. Relative power relation and social distance are two key parameters in the dimension of social conventions; in terms of psychological motivations, pragmatic empathy and de-empathy are identified as two parameters. Through detailed illustration with the data collected from the TV plays and films, we prove the act of personal deictic projection is first and foremost an adaptive use of deixis.The adaptive study of personal deictic projection facilitates a better understanding of the meaningful functioning of person deixis in particular and human language in general. Moreover, the discussion of speaker's adaptability as exhibited in the process of performing the act of personal deictic projection can promote their meta-pragmatic awareness and enhance their pragmatic competence.