Date: 24-Oct-2005
From: Neus Nogué <nnogue ub.edu>
Subject: Dixi de persona i marcs participatius en català (Person Deixis and Participation Frameworks in Catalan)
Institution: University of Barcelona
Program: Section of General Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2005
Author: Neus Nogué
Dissertation Title: Dixi de persona i marcs participatius en català (Person
Deixis and Participation Frameworks in Catalan)
Linguistic Field(s): Pragmatics
Subject Language(s): Catalan-Valencian-Balear (cat)
Dissertation Director(s):
Lluís Payrató
Dissertation Abstract:
This work characterises person deixis in Catalan beyond the grammatical
categories of first and second person, relating it to the participation
frameworks set up by Goffman (1981) and Levinson (1988).
Chapter 1 establishes the general and specific aims and the hypothesis, and
outlines the pragmatic framework and the methodology used.
Chapter 2 offers a historical overview of deixis studies, from Apollonius
Dyscolus's "Syntax" to the first contemporary approaches (Jespersen,
Bühler, Jakobson, Lyons), semiotics (Peirce, Burks), and pragmatics
(Fillmore, Levinson, Rauh, Vanelli and Renzi, Kerbrat-Orecchioni).
In chapter 3, deixis is characterised. Where there is no agreement in the
literature, the author's position is argued (the inclusion of manner deixis
as a deictic category, together with person, time and place deixis; the
rejection of social deixis as a category; the distinction between deictic
categories and uses--discourse deixis is included here). The main
linguistic expressions that encode deixis in Catalan are classified, and
the borders with other phenomena (the expression of subjectivity,
information-status and anaphoric reference) are drawn.
In chapter 4, participation frameworks are described and exemplified.
Chapter 5 characterises grammaticalised, or unmarked, forms in Catalan for
participant reference. We establish that the first person encodes reference
to the 'principal' (in Goffman's terms), not to any kind of speaker, and
the second person to 'addressed recipient(s)', not to any kind of
addressee. We also show that the distinction between inclusive and
exclusive uses of first- and second-person plural forms is fuzzy when there
are more than two participants. As regards vocatives, two kinds of Levinson
(1983)'s calls, or summonses, are distinguished - at the speech-event level
and at the utterance-event level.
Chapter 6 characterises the alternative, or marked, forms for participant
reference: mainly, eight uses of the first-person plural, the use of the
second-person singular for speaker reference, forms such as "menda",
"servidor -a", and "un -a", "vós" and "vostè(s)" polite strategies, and
various kinds of lexical noun phrases (most of which are metapragmatic or
express footing).
Chapter 7 suggests some ways of analysing the data: the interpretation
processes followed in referent identification; the iconicity of alternative
forms; and the relationship between person deixis and Brown and Levinson
(1987)'s approach to politeness.
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