Deixis in English and Arabic: a semantic-pragmatic study and its pedagogical implications

Abstract

Deixis has always been at the heart of reference research as widely known literature in semantics and pragmatics demonstrates. All natural languages do have indexicals and the task of linguistic analysis is to model these directly in order to capture the ways in which these are used .So far, many scholars such as Levinson, Wales, Anderson, Pierce, Fillmore, Lyons, Keenan and others have tackled the problem under investigation with reference to English and some other languages. However, Arabic, as a Semitic Language, has not been investigated with respect to deixis of person, time, and place. The present study has examined the semantic features and pragmatic uses of personal, spatial and temporal deixis of English and Arabic with a view to pinpointing the similarities and differences that can be of pedagogical uses. As an initial work of its kind, it is of twofold uses: i) it establishes the framework of deictic system in Arabic, and ii) it brings out the similarities and differences between English and Arabic for pedagogic purposes. The objectives of the current study are outlined as under: i) To establish a framework of deictic system of person, time and place in Arabic; ii) To pinpoint the similarities and differences of the deictic systems in English and Arabic. This comparison has three advantages: a) It throws some light on language universals. b) It serves to bring out the peculiarities of the two languages. c) It gives us a better tool for establishing translation rules between English and Arabic. iii) To contribute something to the study of Arabic Linguistics in the light of modern perspectives. iv) To find out how deixis of person, time and place is marked in Arabic. v) To explore whether Arabic is two-term system of space or three-term system. The present study is limited to the discussion and investigation of deixis of person, time and place in English and Arabic in terms of their semantic features and pragmatic manifestations. Arabic examples for discussion are mainly taken from The Noble Qur'ān (the Holy Book of Muslims), the Hadīth (the Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace and Blessing Be Upon Him), and the published materials in Standard Arabic.