A DEICTIC SYSTEM IN REAN DIALCET SPOKEN IN BOYOTAN SUB-VILLAGE NORTH LOMBOK

Abstract

This research is intended to find the types of deixis and describe the semantic features and the pragmatic uses of deixis in Rean dialect. It is a descriptive qualitative research. It is used to describe the data being collected either spoken or written form through observation, interview, recording and note taking. Here, several stages to analyze the date were applied; the first, categorizing the data gathered from the field. The second, selecting each data in order to find out the utterances which consist of deixis. The third, re-classifying the word or phrases containing deixis to identify their deixis category based on Fillmore’s theory (1971), and the forth, interpreting its semantic features and pragmatic functions with refer to deixis theory of Diessel (1999), Ingram (1971), Gundel (2003) and Mahyuni (2006).

Based on the analysis, it is found that, there are five types of deixis in the Rean dialect, i.e. person deixis, spatial deixis, temporal deixis, discourse deixis and social deixis. Semantically, person deixis in Rean dialect marks its semantic distinction in gender and in number. Spatial deixis in Rean dialect has three demonstrative systems used to provide three zones close to the speaker. Temporal deixis in Rean dialect is expressed in two major ways, i.e. lexical expressions of adverbial time and grammaticalized element. Discourse deixis is generally expressed in the form of pronoun demonstrative, and Social deixis in Rean dialect shows that addressing system is formed through three following aspects: (i) kinship, (ii) education and occupation, and (iii) religion. On the other hand, the result of pragmatic analysis of deixis in Rean dialect found that the function of person deixis mostly reflected social status of the speaker, and frequently reflected the relationship among the interlocutors. Spatial deixis indicates that the demonstrative served (i) exoporic and (ii) recognitional functions. For temporal deixis, pragmatic usage is found in the use of auxiliary particle that obligate meaning associated with the context of utterances. Discourse deixis in Rean dialect is commonly expressed in the form of pronoun demonstratives to refer to a previous chunk or upcoming portion of discourse. And finally, social deixis in Rean dialect is functioned to express social status of the participants, and used to indicate intimacy and politeness.

These findings suggest that the relationship between semantics and pragmatics are much closely to one another through the analysis of deixis. Therefore, deixis plays significant roles in understanding the meaning of an utterance since it needs understanding on both semantics and pragmatics knowledge to find appropriate interpretation of an utterance. 

Keywords: Deixis, Rean dialect, semantic features, pragmatic uses.