Deixis on the headlines of business section in Newsweek

ABSTRACT

This study is focused on the headlines of business section published by Newsweek using deixis theory of Stephent c. Levinson. Deixis is a part of discourse analysis study and concerned with meaning inferred from an utterance or sentence. Deixis makes discourse easier and more effective in giving a means to pass more information in less time. The Business section is a part of sections which is available in Newsweek covering economical changes in this world and often conveyed implicitly. Based on the background, the research on deixis used in the headlines of business section in Newsweek was conducted.

The data was conducted using descriptive qualitative method because it analyzes the data descriptively based on deixis theory and design to obtain information concerning the current status of phenomena. In addition, the data were in the form of utterances or words in the headlines of business section published by Newsweek from February 6* to March 27th 2006. The data were selected from the headlines of business section published by Newsweek.

The result of the study shows that there are five kinds of deixis, namely person, time, place, discourse and social deixis. The third person deixis is written when the journalist wants to show the people who do not refer to the speaker or addressee. Furthermore, time deixis is appeared to point the certain period of time when the utterance is produced by the speaker and even occurs. Place deixis is realized to describe a location relative to location of a participant in speech event, as well as have been shown in the context. Meanwhile, social deixis is showed to indicate the distinction between participants related to the certain social context in which the utterance is employed. Discourse deixis is used to refer to some portion of discourse that contains the utterance or as signal and its relation to surrounding text.

Based on the findings that are explained above, it is recommended that the journalists are able to comprehend and consider the deixis particularly.the deixis types when they write the headlines. Furthermore, it also recommended for the future researchers who interested in the same data that is headline of Newsweek, to analyze other aspects of language analysis such as implicature, presupposition, exphcature, etc. because in this part still many interesting data that can be analyzed viewed from language aspects.