A discourse analysis on Deixis found in Jakarta Post City

ABSTRACT

Deixis provides the basic theory of how people use language in written and spoken language focused on the functions, words, especially deixis, which is always related to text, which cannot be separated from the context. Sometimes on text, there are some words, which are hidden, so we can show each function of word if we know the context. Deixis is a part of discourse analysis which is concerning to the context of utterance referring to who is speaking, the time or place of speaking, the gestures of the speaker or the current location of the discourse. (Levinson: 1983). City is one of column which contains some opinions and comments and it covers many issues. In city column also includes some opinion and comment with its various forms of someone’s opinion.

The purpose of this study is to understand clearly about the references of the text clearly and what the language points out or what it refers to. This research was conducted by using descriptive qualitative method. It is descriptive because the data take the form of words such as description of deixis used in city’s column and also it is qualitative because I choose the print media (Jakarta Post Newspaper) as object of the research and the data concern with process such as the process of collecting and analyzing the data. The data were in the forms of words or utterances in city’s column of the Jakarta Post newspaper which published from May.

From this research show that there are five kinds of deixis, namely person deixis, place deixis, time deixis, social deixis and discourse deixis. Time deixis is appeared to point the certain period of time when the utterance is produced the speaker and even occurs. Place deixis is realized to describe a location relative to location of participant in speech event, as well as have been shown in the context. Likewise, the person deixis is used when the speaker shows the inspirations to the addressee. Moreover, social deixis is shown to indicate the distinct social roles between participant. After everything else, discourse deixis is used to some portions of discourse that contain utterance as a signal its relation to surrounding text.

Based those findings, it is suggested for the next researchers to comprehend and consider the deixis types when they write the opinion. In addition, it is also recommended for the future researchers to conduct the research using deixis in other field, like debate contest, spoken language, daily conversation or any literary work.