3. Person Deixis
The category of grammatical of person is depend on the notion of participant roles and their grammaticalization in particular language. The
origin of the traditional terms are ‘first person’, ‘second person’, and ‘third pers
on’ which is illuminated in the connection. The word of Latin is
‘persona’ meaning “mask”, it used to translate the Greek word ‘dramatic
character’ or ‘role’, and using of the term by grammarians derives from their metaphorical conception of language event, such as: Drama which the
principal role played by the first person, the role subsidiary by the second person, and all other roles by the third person.
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The term person in personal pronouns and person affixes is deictic category. The personal pronoun system in English conventionally analyzed
as: 1.
two numbers: singular I, and plural we; 2.
three genders: masculine he, feminine she, and neuter it; 3.
three persons: first I, second you, and third heshe. The gender is relevant in the third person
singular ‘heshe’ and the number is not relevant for the second person form ‘you’ in current
standard English.
27
Person deixis operates in three-part division, exemplified by the pronouns of first person ‘I’, second person ‘you’, and third person ‘he’,
‘she’, or ‘it’. In many languages these deictic categories of speaker ,
26
John Lyons,Semantics vol 2, p. 638.
27
Revere D. P, loc. cit.
addressee, and other s are elaborated with markers of relative social status for example addressee with higher status versus addressee with
lower status, expression which indicate higher status is described as honorifics.
28
The first person singular pronoun is used by the speaker to designate himherself as the intended reference, and the second person pronoun is
used to designate the addressee. Plural first person pronoun refer to the group of which the speaker is a part. Other persons is refer to the using of
the third person pronoun. They depend on the concept of participant role in the utterance oriented around the speaker and on an axis that includes the
addressee. Other distinctions include a dual number and an inclusiveexclusive distinction in the first person plural.
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In English, potential ambiguity which allows in two different interpretations. They are an
exclusive ‘we’ speaker plus other s, excluding addressee and inclus
ive ‘we’ speaker and addressee. For
example: we clean up after ourselves around here. The ambiguity from the sample is provide a subtle opportunity for the hearer to decide what was
communicated. Either the hearer decides that heshe is member of the group to whom the rule does not apply i.e. an addressee, or an outsider to
whom the rule does not apply i.e. not an addressee. The hearer gets to decide the kind of
‘more’ that is being communicated. The inclusive- exclusive distinction also noted in the d
ifference between saying ‘Let’s go’
28
George Yule, Pragmatics, p. 10.
29
Revere D. P, op. cit., pp. 101-102.
to some friends, and ‘Let’s go’ to someone who has captured the speaker and friends. The inclusive in the first, and the exclusive in the second.
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Furthermore, third person pronouns is not direct participant in basic interaction I - You, and being an outsider is necessarily more distant.
Third person pronouns are consequently distal forms in person deixis. The using a third person form is one way of communicating distance and non-
familiarity. It can be done in English for an ironic humorous purpose. For example: when someone is busy in the kitchen, and addressee who is
being lazy, as in ‘would his highness like some coffee?’ The distance associated with third person form is used to make potential accusations for
example, ‘you didn’t clean up’ less direct, as in ‘somebody didn’t clean up after himself
’, or to make a potentially personal issue like an impersonal one, based on a general rule, as in ‘each person has to clean up after him
or herself ’.
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Moreover, Lyon explains in Lingustic Semantics. The distinction which
is called pure and impure deixis, the expressions whose meaning can be
accounted for fully in terms of the notion of deixis, and the expressions whose meaning is partly deictic and partly non-deictic. The first person and
second person pronouns in English, for example: ‘I’ and ‘you’ are purely deictic
. They refer to the locutionary agent and the addressee without conveying any additional information about them. But the third person
singular pronoun ‘he’, ‘she’, and ‘it’ are impure deictics. They encode the
30
George Yule, Pragmatics, pp. 11-12.
31
Ibid, p.11.
distinctions of meaning which are traditionally associated with the terms ‘masculine’, ‘feminine’, and ‘neuter’.
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4. Place Deixis
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