An Analysis Of Deixis Within The Framework Of Ground Theory And Mental Space Theory

Deixis refers to the function of personal and demonstrative pronouns, of tense and of avariety of other grammatical and lexical features which relate utterances to thespatio-temporal coordinates of the act of utterance (Lyons, 1977). It refers to words which areused to reflect the relationship between discourse and the corresponding context. The word“deixis”originates from old Greek and it means“pointing”or“indicating”. Pointing is acommon and universal language phenomenon in daily communication and it reflects therelationship between discourse and the corresponding context. Deixis plays a very prominentpart in real life communication. As an essential and dispensable language phenomenon, deixisis one of those topics discussed by philosophers, linguists and psychologists. Up to now, manyscholars have done researches and explorations on deixis from different perspectives. Forexample, in the 1930s, the Austrian psycholinguist Bühler put forward deictic field theory inhis classic work Deictic Field and Deixis, which lays a theoretical basis for the research ondeixis. Furthermore, Fillmore (1971, 1975), Lyons (1977), Levinson (1983) made a morecomprehensive and deeper research on the specific functions and classification of deixis.Levinson divided deixis into five basic categories according to the pointing functions andcontext parameters of words: person deixis, social deixis, time deixis, place deixis anddiscourse deixis.The vigorous development of cognitive linguistics provides learners with a newperspective to look at language phenomena, which is better for language learners tounderstand the nature of deixis. The present research will take a cognitive perspective toanalyze deixis under the theoretical framework of Ground Theory and Mental Space Theory.Langacker (1978: 858) first put forward Ground Theory and he holds that“Ground”isthe platform or perspective of observing utterance context. He argues that“Ground”refers to speech acts with its setting and participants (Langacker, 1985:113). In the theory, settingrefers to the time and place in speech acts; the participants include the speaker (S) and thehearer (H).In 1994, Fauconnier put forward the famous Mental Space Theory.“Mental space”refers to the conceptual pocket which is built by people in the process of communication. Theprocess of handling and processing the discourse is a process where a mental space network isbuilt. In this process, making use of various space-builders, the language user builds a seriesof mental spaces relative to the reality space to accomplish the meaning construction ofdeixis.The data for the research is from a famous film Frost/Nixon. This research will adoptthe qualitative method to analyze how deictic meaning construction is accomplished based onGround Theory and Mental Space Theory in cognitive linguistics.By analyzing the deictic phenomena in this film, it is found that firstly, the groundtheory not only can explain the regular usage of deixis, but also can illustrate the conversionrules of person deixis between the direct speech and the indirect speech. Suppose a boxrepresents the setting (the time and place); S represents the speaker; H represents the hearer.On the basis of the characteristic of“egocentricity”of deixis, S which belongs to one elementof the ground is the reference point. Thus it is certain that S is the first person; H is the secondperson; the outsider (O for short) is the third person. In a conversation, if the speaker could beself-centered, the ground which is constructed by each person deixis could be called“basicground”; if the speaker shifts the deictic center to the hearer or the outsider, then the groundwhich is constructed by each person deixis would be“surrogate ground”. The surrogateground is the new perspective and the ground of observing the new utterance context adoptedby the speaker. The speaker and the hearer will modify and choose between the basic groundand the surrogate ground. In the end, they will reach an agreement concerning the surrogateground to achieve the meaning construction of deixis.Secondly, the mental space theory can explain: (1) The conversion rule of persondeixis. According to the mental space theory, the current actual ground is the reality space (R);the surrogate ground is the mental space (M). In the process of communication, the deicticmeaning construction is realized through the shift from the reality space to the mental space.(2) The non-deictic use of deixis. The mental space theory holds that the semantic elements inthe reality space have no fixed projection in the mental space. In different contexts, they havedifferent semantic values. (3) The phenomenon of deictic projection. The semantic element in the reality space is“one room”. And it is recognized as“the other room”in the mental space.The speaker projects his position in the reality space into that in the mental space, whichaccomplishes the meaning construction of deictic projection.