Một phân tích ngữ dụng về chỉ xuất về ngôi trong bài phát biểu của John Kerry về biến đổi khí hậu

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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES
*********************

NGUYỄN KIỀU LƯƠNG

A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF PERSON DEIXIS IN JOHN KERRY’S
REMARKS ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Một phân tích ngữ dụng về chỉ xuất về ngôi trong bài phát biểu của
John Kerry về biến đổi khí hậu

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code:60220201

HANOI - 2016

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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES
*********************

NGUYỄN KIỀU LƯƠNG

A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF PERSON DEIXIS IN JOHN KERRY’S
REMARKS ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Một phân tích ngữ dụng về chỉ xuất về ngôi trong bài phát biểu của
John Kerry về biến đổi khí hậu

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code:60220201
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ngô Hữu Hoàng

HANOI - 2016

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Declaration ………………………………………………………………………..………..….....i
Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………...…………………ii
Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………………....iii
PART 1 INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale for the study ............................................................................................................ 1
2. Aim and scope of the study ..................................................................................................... 2
2.1. Aim of the study…………………………………………………………………............2
2.2. Research questions………………………………………………………………............2
2.3. Scope of the study………………………………………………………………………..2

3. Design of the study .................................................................................................................. 2
PART 2 DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I A BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY ..................................................................... 4
1. Political discourse.................................................................................................................... 4
2. Person deixis............................................................................................................................ 5
2.1. Deixis…………………………………………..…………………………………….…..5
2.2. Person deixis……………………………………………...……………………………...6
2.3. The Role of Person deixis in Political Communication………………………………....8
3. The Role of Context in Using Deixis .................................................................................... 10
3.1. The Situational Context/ Exophoric Reference .............................................................. 11
3.2. The Background Knowledge Context............................................................................. 11
3.3. Co-textual Context…….………………………………………...……………………...13
4. Political Discourse Propaganda ............................................................................................. 14
5. Related Study ........................................................................................................................ 15
CHAPTER II METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................ 16
1. Research methods and instruments ....................................................................................... 16
2. Data of the study.................................................................................................................... 16
3. Data analysis .......................................................................................................................... 17
CHAPTER III FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION .......................................................................... 18

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1. Kinds of Person deixis used in John Kerry‟s Remarks on Climate Change ......................... 18
2. Referents and Political Purposes of Person deixis used in John Kerry‟s Remarks on Climate
Change ....................................................................................................................................... 19

2.1. First Person deixis........................................................................................................... 19
2.1.1. First Person Singular .................................................................................................... 19
2.1.2. First Person Plural ........................................................................................................ 23
2.2. Second Person Deixis ..................................................................................................... 31
2.2.1. Second Person Singular ............................................................................................... 32
2.2.2. Second Person Plural ................................................................................................... 32
2.3. Third Person deixis ......................................................................................................... 33
2.3.1. Third Person Singular .................................................................................................. 33
2.3.2. Third Person Plural ...................................................................................................... 36
PART 3: CONCLUSION
1. Recapitulation ........................................................................................................................ 40
2. Implications of the study ....................................................................................................... 41
2.1. Implication for teaching pragmatics…………………………………………...……….41
2.2. Implication on learning pragmatics…………………………………………………….41
3. Limitations of the study ......................................................................................................... 42
4. Suggestions for further research ............................................................................................ 42
REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………………….43
APPENDIX……………………………………………………………………………………….I

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PART 1
INTRODUCTION

1. Rationale for the study

There is a close relationship between language and politics. According to Adetunji
(2006:1), the former is the medium which the society used for the purposes of
communication and cohabitation while the latter is considered the ideas and activities
used for gaining and exercising power in society. In addition, Wodak and de Cillia
(2006:709) claim that there is no clear-cut distinction between language and politics, and
they are two overlapping subjects. As a result, when investigating one of these subjects,
the other also needs to be concerned.
Wind et al. (1989:26) highlights that deixis is a universal element of languages. It is a
linguistic phenomenon attracting much concern from linguists. Deixis is used widely by
people from all over the world, regardless of personality, the culture and country they
come from. However, the way people employ deictic expressions in their communication
differs from one person to another owing to their distinctive characteristics, education
level, social class, communicative purposes and so forth. Among the five common types
of deixis in languages: person, time, place, discourse and social deixis, person deixisis is
perhaps the worthiest considering as it deals with the roles participating in a speech
event. This study is aimed to investigate how person deixis is employed by John Kerry as
a speaker with great power and potential influence on the audiences.
It is worth mentioning that in politics speaker normally adjust what they say to suit
the social-political reaction they anticipate from the audience (Joseph, 2006:43). The
forms of adjustment itself vary from metonymy to the use of person deixis (Beard,
2000:24-36). Person deixis, within its simplicity, contains broad interpretation since it is
interpreted based on its context, not dictionary meaning.

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The existence of significant meaning of deixis in a political speech leads to the belief
that the deictic expressions in John Kerry‟s speech also have significant interpretation
beyond their dictionary meanings. That is why this speech is chosen to be analyzed.
2. Aim and scope of the study
2.1.

Aim of the study

The aim of this study is to enrich the knowledge of deixis in use, especially to investigate
person deixis in political speech. Consequently, communication can be enhanced.
This study is expected to give significant knowledge to the students about political
communication; hence, they can be more aware of statements coming from politicians. In
terms of English teaching, this study is expected contribute to the understanding of deixis
and its use in an English utterance, especially when it is spoken by a native speaker.
2.2.

Research questions

To achieve the aim of this research, the following questions are set:
 What kinds of person deixis are used in John Kerry‟s remarks on climate change?
 What are the referents of person deixis used in John Kerry‟s remarks on climate
change?
 What are the political communication purpose(s) achieved by using the person
deixis in the speech?
2.3.

Scope of the study

This small piece of work is not expected to cover all the aspects relating to deixis. Owing
to the time constraint and knowledge of the writer, this study is limited to the use of

person deixis in only one speech. Other types of deixis namely spatial, temporal, social,
and discourse deixis are beyond the scope of the study.
3. Design of the study
The study is presented as follows.
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Part 1 – Introduction mentions some suggestions and fundamental ideas to lead in the
main part of the thesis. Chapter I includes “the rationale of the study”, “the aim of the
study”, “the research questions”, “the method of the study”, “the scope of the study”, and
“the design of the study”, respectively.
Part 2 – Development contains of three chapters.
Chapter I – A background to the study deals with the theoretical background that
inspires the thesis and the related literature review of person deixis in political
communication.
Chapter II – Methodology presents the methodology and procedure in data collection
and analysis applied in this study. The writer describes her research design and the way
she collected, classified and analyzed the data.
Chapter III - Findings and Discussion analyzes the collected data then withdraws the
final conclusions of the thesis. Further discussion on findings will be presented with
examples that emerge from the data analysis as well as the personal interpretations and
comments from the author.
Part 3 - Conclusion gives the summary of the thesis by providing answers to the
research questions presented. Implications for teaching and learning pragmatics derived
from the thesis are also revealed in this chapter. Finally, the writer will review the
limitations of this study and make suggestions for further research.

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PART 2
DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I
A BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
1. Political discourse
Discourse is such a broad term with many definitions, ranging from linguistics through
other disciplines. Teun A van Dijk generally considered discourse as text in context
(Horváth, 2009: 45). From this, it can be concluded that the term “discourse” is wider
than “text” as “discourse” refers to the whole process of social interaction of which a text
is just a part” (Fairclough, 1989: 24).
According to Schaffner (1996), political discourse, as a sub-category of discourse in
general, can be based on two criteria: functional and thematic. Political discourse is a
result of politics and it is historically and culturally determined. It fulfills different
functions due to different political activities. It is thematic because its topics are primarily
related to politics such as political activities, political ideas and political relations.
Van Dijk (2009: 1) emphasized that a discourse cannot be fully understood without
understanding its context. Therefore, in order to achieve a comprehensive analysis, the
context of the John Kerry‟s remarks on climate change was explained. The writer focused
on information about the speaker, John Kerry and the situation when the text was
delivered.
On February 1, 2013, John Forbes Kerry was sworn in as the 68th Secretary of State of
the United States, becoming the first sitting Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Chairman to become Secretary in over a century. Secretary Kerry joined the State
Department after 28 years in the United States Senate, the last four as Chairman of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As Secretary of State, all his speeches received
much attention from the public. Among those speeches, the writer chose his Remarks on
Climate Change as the data for analysis. John Kerry‟s remarks on climate change were
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delivered to a group of students and government officials at on February 16, 2014 at an
American cultural center in Jakarta, Indonesia. The speech was delivered a day after the
U.S and China issued a joint agreement saying that they had agreed on steps to carry out
commitments to cooperate closely in reducing the effects of climate change. U.S.
officials were hoping that other nations, particularly those in the developing world, will
follow suit. John Kerry chose Indonesia for the first of what is to be a series of speeches
on the topic partly because as he said in his speech, this country, as an archipelago of
more than 17,000 islands, was “on the front lines of climate change” and some of the
most vulnerable to the effects of global warming. In his speech, John Kerry highlighted
that climate change is real and call Indonesian people and authorities to step up effort to
combat it.
2. Person deixis
It is believed that language does not only possess a specific structure but also a
variety of functions. These language functions belong to the field of pragmatics which
concerns with the study of meaning as communicated by speaker (or writer) and
interpreted by listener (or reader). Pragmatics is closely related with the context or
setting of an utterance instead of the structure of the utterance itself. An utterance is
interpreted not only based on its words‟ meaning, but also based on its context or factors

outside of the denotative meaning itself. Such scope of Pragmatics would include the
study of deixis.
2.1. Deixis
According to Yule (1996: 9), deixis is the technical term for one of the most basic
things we do with utterances. The term deixis is gained from the Greek word meaning
pointing or indicating (Levinson 1983: 54). It signifies different things to different people
(Cruse 2000: 319).
“Deixis introduces subjective, attentional, intentional and of course contextdependent properties into natural languages” (Levinson in Horn/Ward 2006: 97). In
addition, Levinson makes up his mind that “the single most obvious way in which the
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relationship between language and context is reflected in the structures of language
themselves, is through the phenomenon of deixis” (1983: 54). The importance of deictic
information in interpreting utterances is best demonstrated by what happens when such
information is missing (Fillmore 1975: 38-39 in Levinson 1983: 54).
Deixis is traditionally divided into three categories: person, time, and place deixis.
In Yule (1996) and Cruse (2000), the term „temporal deixis‟ is used instead of „time
deixis‟ and the term „place deixis‟ is replaced by „spatial deixis‟. Following Lyons (1986,
1977a) and Fillmore (1972b, 1975), Levinson adds to the traditional categories two more
deixis types: discourse (or text) deixis and social deixis (1983: 62). As the purpose of this
study is analyzing person deixis, the writer only reviews theoretical background about
person deixis.
2.2. Person deixis
The different roles that individuals play in the speech event (speaker, addressee,
and other) are directly reflected by the grammatical category of person (Levinson in

Horn/Ward 2006: 112). The two semantic features of speaker inclusion (S) and addressee
inclusion (A) capture the traditional person paradigm: first person (+S), second person
(+A, -S), and third person (-S, -A). Additionally, Levinson emphasizes that “although
person deixis is reflected directly in the grammatical categories of person, it may be
argued that we need to develop an independent pragmatic framework of possible
participant roles, so that we can see how and to what extent these roles are applied in
different languages” (1983: 68).
Yule (1996: 11) suggests that in deictic terms, third person is not a direct
participant in basic (I-you) interaction (outsider) which results distant. Thus, third person
pronouns are consequently distal forms in the term of person deixis. She also mentioned
that for pronoun “we” there is potential ambiguity which is possibly cause
misinterpretation. There is exclusive” we” (speaker plus other(s), excluding addressee)
and an inclusive “we” (speaker and addressee include). Furthermore, Levinson (1983: 69)
mentions that “we” does not always mean plural: the inclusive-exclusive distinction also

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REFERENCES
Books and Articles
1. Adetunji, A. 2006. Inclusion and Exclusion in Political Discourse: Deixis in Olusegun
Obasanjo's Speeches. Journal of Language and Linguistics, 5, 2.
2. Beard, A. 2000. The Language of Politics. New York: Routledge.
3. Brown, G./Yule, G. 1983. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
4. Cruse, A. 2002. Meaning in Language: An introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.
5. Cutting, J. 2002. Pragmatics and Discourse. London and New York: Routledge.
6. Fairclough, N. 1989. Language and Power. London: Longman.
7. Horn, L.R./Ward, G. (eds). 2006. The Handbook of Pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell.
8. Horváth, J. 2009. Critical discourse analysis of Obama‟s political discourse. In: Milan
Ferencík and Juraj Horváth (eds.). Language, literature and culture in a changing
transatlantic world, International Conference Proceedings, Prešovská University of
Prešov, 45-56.
9. Joseph, J. E. 2006. Language and Politics. Scotland: Edinburg University Press.
10. Kuo, S. 2002. From solidarity to antagonism: The uses of the second-person singular
pronoun in Chinese political discourse. Text 22 (1), 29-55.
11. Lasswell, H. D. 1927. The American Political Science Review.21, 627-631. Retrieved
from

the

World

Wide

Web,

http://ics-

www.leeds.ac.uk/papers/pmt/exhibits/2941/Lasswell.pdf
12. Levinson, S. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
13. Lichtman, M. 2009. Qualitative Research in Education: A User’s Guide. 2nd ed.
14. Merriam, S. B. 2009. Qualitative Research: A guide to Design and Implementation.
CA: Jossey-Bass.
15. Pinkerton, M. K. 2006. U.S. Public Image: A Study of the Perceptions of

International Students from Predominantly Muslim Nations. Unpublished MA thesis,
University of Texas.
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16. Puschmann, C. 2009. Thank you for thinking we could: Use and function of
interpersonal pronouns in corporate web logs [12/28/09]. Retrieved from the World
Wide Web, .
17. Schaffner, C. 1996. Editorial: political speeches and discourse analysis: Current
Issues in Language & Society, 3, (3), 201-204.
18. Sproule, J. M. 2001. Authorship and Origins of the Seven Propaganda Devices: A
Research Note. Rhetoric & Public Affairs 4, 1, 135-143.
19. Van Dijk, T. A. 2009. Society and Discourse, How Social Contexts Influence Text and
Talk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
20. Wilson, J. M. 2000. Group Identity and Political Participation in the American
Public. Retrived from the World Wide Web, .
21. Wind, J./Pulleyblank, E. G./.de Grolier, E./Bichakjian, B. H. (eds.) 1989. Studies in
Language Origins: Origin, language and languages. Volume 1. John Benjamins
Publishing Company.
22. Wodak, R./ de Cillia, R. (2006). Politics and Language: Overview. In: Keith Brown,
(Editor-in-Chief) Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, Second Edition, 9, 707719. Oxford: Elsevier.
23. Yule, G. 1996. Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Websites
Remarks on Climate Change. Retrieved from the World Wide Web,

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