Deixis in the miracle worker play text by William Gibson

ABSTRACT

his study focuses on analyzing deixis in “The Miracle Worker” play text using deixis theory of Stephen c. Levinson. Deixis concerned with meaning inferred from an utterance or sentence. In reading literary works, the readers can be use the theory of deixis to help them in interpreting the message like in dialogue of the play, because deixis is a technical term for one of the most basic things we do with utterance which is reference by means of an expression whose interpretation is relative to the (usually) extra linguistic context of the utterance, such as who is speaking, the time or place of speaking, the gesture of the speaker, or the current location in the discourse. Based on that background, the research on deixis in “The Miracle Worker” play text was conducted with the problem ،،How is deixis in “The Miracle Worker” play text?”

This research was conducted using descriptive qualitative method to get descriptive knowledge on how the deixis of “The Miracle Worker” play text based on Levinson theory. The data were in the forms of dialogues which are not statistically analyzed in ،،The Miracle Worker” play text.

The result of the study shows five types of deixis, namely person, place, time, discourse, and social deixis. The first person deixis are used when the researcher wants to show the speakers who produce the utterance in “The Miracle Worker” play text, while the second person deixis are expressed when the researcher wants to show the addresses who is the utterance’s address to, furthermore, the third person deixis is used when the researcher wants to show the referent not identified as the speaker or the addressee appears in the discourse. Place deixis are used to describe a location relative to the location of participant in speech event, as well as have been shown in the context. Time deixis is used to point the certain period of time when the researcher shows the utterances used by the speaker and also the time of event. In addition, discourse deixis is used to refer to some portion of discourse that contains the utterance as a signal and its relation to surrounding text. Furthermore, social deixis is used to indicate the distinct social roles between participants. From those findings, the three types of the person deixis, namely the first person, the second, the third person deixis are mostly used in ،،The Miracle Worker” play text since the writer of play text want to show the participants in the speech event. Moreover, the time deixis also often appears in “The Miracle Worker” play text, because the writer of play text wants to express the time when the event occurs. Meanwhile, the social deixis rarely appears in ،،The Miracle Worker” play text.

Based on the findings, the researcher hopes that this study will be able to help the next researchers to conduct researches on other elements of plot or to use these findings as an additional reference and as a comparative pragmatic research and discourse study in conversation or speech event.