Deictics: Subjective Units?

The paper discusses the phenomenon of subjectivity in language through a specific linguistic item: the first person pronoun in French. Starting from the idea that deixis is related to subjectivity in a different manner than evaluative items are, it aims to show that, whenever a deictic item appears...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inEcho des etudes romanes Vol. 1; no. 2; pp. 23 - 30
Main Author Balatchi, Raluca
Format Journal Article
LanguageFrench
Published 01.01.2005
Subjects
Deixis
Discourse Structure
French
Person
Pronouns
Semantics Discourse Relationship
Subject
Syntax Discourse Relationship
Syntax Semantics Relationship
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:The paper discusses the phenomenon of subjectivity in language through a specific linguistic item: the first person pronoun in French. Starting from the idea that deixis is related to subjectivity in a different manner than evaluative items are, it aims to show that, whenever a deictic item appears in a discourse, it makes it subjective regardless of the receiver's interpretation. Each deictic item has to do with the subject responsible for the utterance; this is why any discourse built around the first person pronoun will be undoubtedly subjective. No matter the linguistic context, the essential indexical "I" never loses its subjective force. In order to illustrate this idea, the paper discusses some literary examples in which there could be the case of a 'weakening' of the deictic content in the first person, suggesting therefore a possible subjective hierarchy of occurrences of the pronoun 'I'. However, in each case, the relationship with the subject is strongly preserved. Subjectivity is therefore a problem of degree only when it comes to evaluative subjective items in language. Adapted from the source document
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
content type line 23
ObjectType-Feature-2
ISSN:1801-0865