Deictic Expressions and their Contribution to Create a Viewpoint in Discourse

Abstract

his paper provides an overview of the main three deictic expression categories, which are: person deictics, temporal deictics, and spatial deictics. It will explain their forms, meaning and their relationship to the speech reference. It will argue that there are a certain class of expressions in Arabic which can be considered in their linguistics usage as spatial deixis. This class of words is known as ‘‘The Vocative/ Call Elements’’ (أدوات النداء). Therefore, this paper attempts to answer these questions: What is a deictic expression? What is a deictic centre? What are The Vocative Elements in Arabic? How can they be considered as a category of linguistics deictic expression? and how can a deictic expression be applied to create a particular point of view in discourse? These main points will be considered through the discussion. A variety of different examples will be quoted or created alongside the theoretical discussion in order to clarify these mentioned points.