A Study Of Person Deixis In “The State Of The Union” By President Obama From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Person deixis is one of the basic issues in pragmatics. Many studies have been carried out by domestic and foreign scholars from the perspectives of semantics, pragmatics, cross-cultural communication and the contrastive study between Chinese and English, and there are fruitful research results. However, previous researches are mainly concerned with the basic uses and functions of person deixis. There are few studies on why people choose to use certain person deixis in certain contexts. Adaptation Theory, based on Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, is a theory put forward by Jef Verschueren to explain the principles of language evolution. Language use is a process of continuously making linguistic choices. Language users change continuously to adapt to the social and mental world of the interpreters. This thesis employs Adaptation Theory to explain and analyze the choices of person deixis in “the State of the Union” in the last seven years to investigate the adaptability of English person deixis and their pragmatic functions. This thesis adopts both qualitative and quantitative methods to deal with the following research questions:(1) What are the regularities of Obama’s usages of person deixis in “the State of the Union”?(2) How are the person deixis adapted to contextual correlates in “the State of the Union”?(3) What are the functions and pragmatic effects of Obama’s usages of person deixis in “the State of the Union”?English person deixis consists of the first person pronouns, the second person pronouns and the third person pronouns. President Obama has used a large number of personal pronouns in “the State of the Union”. In “the State of the Union” of the last seven years, the first person deixis accounts for more than 70% of all personal pronouns, and the proportion of the first person plural form is around 50%. The percentage of second person is less than 10%. And the percentage of third person is less than 20%. The proportion of third person plural form is nearly 14%. Overall, President Obama uses the first person plural form quite frequently.In order to achieve his communicative goals, Obama makes appropriate choices on person deixis in “the State of the Union” to adapt to communicative context, i.e. the physical world, the social world and the mental world of the speaker and the hearer. In verbal communication, physical world, social world and mental world cannot be separated from each other. In physical world, person deixis is chosen to adapt to spatial relations, especially relative spatial relations. In social world, person deixis is used by Obama to adapt to social statuses, social relations and cultural backgrounds. In mental world, the choices of person deixis adapt to the intentions of the utterer and the expectations of the interpreter.In physical world, the choice-making on person deixis can highlight the physical space of reference, which can extend to the psychological space. In order to get more support, Obama changes the deictic center to imply that he is one of the general people and he works for people’s interests. In social world, person deixis can build close or distant relationships and indicate the utterer’s values. The application of person deixis to certain referents can connect the person talked about with corresponding duties and responsibilities. The opposite position between the first person and the third person indicates the adaptability of person deixis on relative spatial relations. “We” can shorten the distance between the utterer and the interpreter, demonstrating the authority of the speeches. In contrast, the third person refers to the outsider in the utterance, someone other than “you” and “us”, and it can lengthen the physiological distance between the two sides of communication. In mental world, choice-making on person deixis can adapt to the emotions and beliefs of the interpreter as well as the motivations and intentions of the utterer. Obama’s application of “we” to talk about inefficient political strategies can reduce pressures on himself and shake off blames.It is hoped that the thesis can widen the scope of application of Adaptation Theory and enrich the study of English person deixis in pragmatics, so that it can help such linguistic practices as speech and writing.