Deixis in The Devil and Daniel Webster play text by Stephen Vincent Benet

People as a human being are inseparable from making errors. They can make errors in different ways, for example in making perception. This thesis is based on deixis in the Devil and Daniel Webster play text by Stephen Vincent Benet. In reading literary works, sometimes we get difficulties in comprehending the works or facing misunderstanding in interpreting the messages as like in the dialogue of the play. The theory of deixis is chosen because deixis is used to point thing in order to make clear what a writer means. The researcher chooses the Devil and Daniel Webster play text to be analyzed because the researcher assumed that in the Devil and Daniel Webster play text there are kinds of deixis which can be analyzed. And, this play text is categorized as old text, because there are some words considering difficult to be understood. The researcher chooses the supporting characters because the researcher concludes that supporting characters have an important role in the story. If there are no supporting characters the change will be drastically.

This study uses a descriptive qualitative research design in which the data are taken from the Devil and Daniel Webster play text by Stephen Vincent Benet, because the data collected are the subject’s experiences and perspective.

The findings of this study are the three types of the person deixis, namely the first person deixis, the second person deixis, and the third person deixis are mostly used in The Devil and Daniel Webster play text since the writer of play text wants to show the participants in the speech event. Moreover, the time deixis often appears in The Devil and Daniel Webster play text, because the writer of play text wants to express the time when the event occurs. Meanwhile, the place deixis also often appears in The Devil and Daniel Webster play text, because the writer of play text wants to explain the location at the points of utterance. Then, social deixis and discourse deixis rarely appears in The Devil and Daniel Webster play text.