Cognitive Analysis Of Spatial Deixis In Narrative Discourse

Spatial deixis is a universal phenomenon, every language has a set of deictic expressions. In narrative discourse, to cognize the location of a target object, with their reference-point ability, narrators tend to choose a certain object as the reference-point and set up a spatial frame of reference. Then they have it as a base, and go along the cognitive route within the cognitive dominion directed by the previously chosen reference-point, until they accomplish their cognition of the target object. Under the guidance of spatial frame of reference and mental space theory, we find out that in English and Chinese narrative discourse, spatial frames of reference can provide us accurate space information, help us to infer and understand spatial relations, so as to understand the whole discourse meaning. And the selection of spatial deixis is affected by the narrator’s subjective conceptualization of his or her imaginary territory, it reflects some abstract interpersonal relationship and psychological distance which alienated or close, plays a crucial role in the plot development, character creation and meaning construction. By comparing the English with Chinese in terms of spatial frame of reference and locative expressions, it is found that there are a great number of similarities of English and Chinese narrator when they cognize the location of an object, both of them have similar bodily experience and cognitive process involved in the choice of reference-points, have the similar ways to acquire spatial information and have similar metaphorical extension of locative expression, but the different structure and cultural connotation of locative expression cause some differences in using the spatial deixis.