Syntax Literate: Jurnal Ilmiah Indonesia p�ISSN: 2541-0849 e-ISSN: 2548-1398

Vol. 7, No. 12, December 2022

 

AN ANALYSIS OF DEIXIS IN THE SHORT STORY OF �MIE GORENG�

 

Hafni Hafsah

Amik Tri Dharma Pekanbaru

Email: [email protected]

 

Abstract

The research is about deixis used in a short story entitled 'An Analysis of Deixis in The Short Story of Mie Goreng'.� It aims to study the types and meanings of deixis used in the story. The use of deixis in writing of a fiction is important because it can provide suitability and understanding of what the author conveys based on the intended meaning. This short story was obtained online from the internet. The analysis of the data in the text uses descriptive qualitative, where it started with reading and translating the story, then finding and classifying diexis, as well as analyzing the findings by using note-taking techniques. Deixis analysis used Levinson's theory which are 5 (five) types of diction, namely person deixis, time deixis, place deixis, social and discourse deixis. The results of the analysis found all types of deixis in story texts. The highest number of occurrence is in the deixis �person� particularly pronoun �I� where the author uses the first person point of view in telling the story and simultaneously as the leading actor.

 

Keywords: Analysis, Pragmatic, Deixis, Short Story.

 

Introduction

Language has been always an interesting subject to learn.� It is due to its functional use as a tool for communication in every aspect of life.� In communicating, there is way concerning on how someone conveys something to somebody else, and it may be different related to each language where it is uttered.� One should pay attention on what other says to avoid misunderstanding as Brown and Yule (1983) states that we need to know who the speaker is, and to whom we are talking to, as well as knowing the place and the time when the utterance addressed.� This is in line with Hastuti and Neviyarni (2021) that says people express language in various ways adjusting to situation where the utterance takes place.�

Concerning the study of language, there is a branch of linguistics which is called Pragmatic, which Slotta (2018) states its purpose in investigating the ways language is tied to the context in which it is used.�� So, pragmatics studies how a contextual meaning of words or phrases related to - either in the speaking utterance or written text- on what a speaker addresses to a listener, where it requires of one�s understanding and interpreting to what context the meaning of the languages used.�

One of the categories that included in the study of pragmatic is deixis.� It indicates the relationship between language and context.� The term of deixis is taken from Greek word which means �pointing or indicating�.� It points out to something outside of the language itself and provides contextual meaning that refers to a specific thing.�

Deixis is a human language phenomenon in which particular expression referential depends on context use (Williams, 2019).�� According to Levinson (2014), deixis studies on deictic or indexical expression in a language, for instance: you, now, and today. It relates to a special kind of grammatical property instantiated in the term of person, tense, place and et cetera.� The use of deixis in speech or written text� is to explain to the readers or listeners on what the speaker really means about what he say or write in regards to time and place.��

There are five types of deixis proposed by Levinson (1983), namely; person, time, place, discourse and social deixis.� Person deixis relates to involvement of the participants in the utterance or text.� It is divided into three categories of pronouns as the first -person deixis where it refers to the speaker itself, such as I and we.�� The second-person deixis concerning the listeners such as you, yourself; while the third-person deixis neither the speaker nor the listener, but it refers to someone else. Personal deixis also is divided in to two types, they are proximal and distal which both refer to the distance of the speaker position form listeners or object position from the speaker.� The term of proximal used for a short distance while distal is for far distance.�

Time deixis uses moment of utterance point where it indicates timing of an event relatively to the time of speaking.� The category of time is at the time of the utterance, before and after of the utterance. The time mostly regard to adverb like now, yesterday and tomorrow. Meanwhile, place deixis indicates location in space relatively to the speaker.� Spatial deictic words are adverbs, here (relatively close to the speaker) and there (away from speaker). This type of deixis are also called proximal and distal which both refer to the distance of the speaker position form listeners or object position from the speaker.� The term of proximal is used for close distance while distal is for far distance.� Demonstrative like this and that is used as distance indication.� Social deixis is used to express the distinguished social status between speaker and addressee, such as sir, cousin, professor, etc.� The last one is discourse deixis refers to the use of �this�� to point out the future element and the use of �that� to point out to past occurring item,� which earlier discourse has relationship to the later discourse.

Deixis can be found in literary works such as novel, short story, poem, and others. Hudson (1958) provides the literary meaning as the expression of life through the medium of language. It can be regarded as something essential since it contains about real life, people, thought, and their feeling about life.� Short story as one of the literary work defined by Webster dictionary (1989) as a piece of prose fiction usually fewer than 10.000 words, and is much shorter than novels.� It usually has only a few characters and focused on a single incident.� While Indrasara (2021) cited from another article that short story has detail and complete utterance and deeply embedded in society. It is also an interesting story to read continuously.� It also has point of view in term of story narration.� Klarer (2004) mentions that it usually chooses one particular point of view related to the action performed through the eyes of one particular figure or narrator.� It can be delivered by first, second or third person that usually concerning pronoun.� However since it has limited characters it also limits the use of pronoun too in the sentence.�

Meanwhile deixis is widely used in speech and written text. However, sometimes this study does not have enough attention from ordinary people concerning its theory and term, where some of them only consider the term of pronoun instead of deixis as pragmatics for understanding meaning (Salamah, Octaviani and Isnaini, 2021).� We may see the examples of these two in the following sentence.� If the word her in a sentence Sarah cares for her sister has the same referent as Sarah, then it is called an anaphoric pronoun.�� It refers to a pronoun which 'refers back' to another constituent in the sentence, while deictic pronoun is a pronoun whose reference must be fixed through the context of the utterance.� Pronouns which are not anaphoric pronouns are called deictic pronouns. The purported referents of �you and me in you will get to know me better� are the speaker and the addressee(s) of this utterance (http://www.glottopedia.org/ index.php/Deictic_pronoun).�

It is said further in �Deictic Terms� Austin (2013) that stating personal pronoun �I� does not refer to any particular person, but to the person who happens to be talking at a given time. When that person stops talking, the referent for �I� shifts to the next speaker. While �Here� refers not to a specific location, but rather to a place near the speaker. What is �here� for the speaker may be �there� for the listener.�� This is also in regard to the shifting quality of the referents and spatial contrast deictic term.� It is therefore, Samosir and Zainuddin (2016) mention that deixis shows the important meaning which is expressed by the writer to help a reader� understanding the text, which means that it would be better for one to understand deixis in order to find out the meaning of words or phrase in a text.��

Hence this study is expected to be useful for the readers, students, as well as for the interesting researcher as for gaining better comprehension of deixis.� Afterward, it is also considered that this study provides contribution in the teaching learning of English language.

 

Methods

This study is intended to provide the description of the usage of deixis in a short story entitled �Mie Goreng� which in English translated as Fried Noodle.� The narrative text as an instrument was obtained from online contest writing about short story written by an Indonesian writer, Rayhan Hidayat, where he was the winner of the contest held by Reedsy Prompts.� The purpose of the study is to analyze deixis through its contextual meaning. It uses qualitative method with descriptive analysis.� Creswell (2013) mentions that a qualitative descriptive research can be implemented through facts investigation that followed by description.

� The data was collected from the story text by using a documentation method. In order to get a comprehensive meaning, the writer read the whole story and made an English-Indonesian translation for providing clearer understanding of the contex.� Afterward, was to find deixis in the story and make a list, which is called noting technique� Next step was to identify and classify them in to five types based on the Levinson (1983) theory about deixis, which are person deixis, time deixis, space deixis, social and discourse deixis. It was continued by analyzing the contextual meaning in the utterance of the text mentioned by the speaker to the addressee by using equalizing, differentiating techniques, and equalizing the main point techniques. The researcher analyzed the utterance uttered by the characters in the short story and found out the type and meaning of personal deixis used in the story.

 

Results and Discussion

After conducting an analysis on the short story of �Mie Goreng�, the writer discovered that all types of deixis existed in the text.� The result comes up with numbers and kinds of deixis found in the text as in table 1.�

 

Table 1.

Type and Number of Deixis in the Short Story of Mie Goreng�

Deixis

Type Of Deixis

Word

Frequency

Total

Person

First Singular

I

50

 

 

 

Me

7

 

 

 

My

14

74

 

 

Myself

2

 

 

First Plural

We

1

 

 

Second Singular

You

26

 

 

 

Your

19

48

 

 

Yours

2

 

 

 

Yourself

1

 

 

Third Singular

Her

1

 

 

 

It

14

24

 

Third Plural

They

3

 

 

 

Their

4

 

 

 

Them

2

 

Time

 

in the night,

1

 

 

 

More time

1

 

 

 

Ago

2

 

 

 

Everyday

1

 

 

 

As quickly as

1

 

 

 

A few eternities

1

 

 

 

Once

1

 

 

 

Begin

2

 

 

 

Next time

1

 

 

 

there was a time

1

 

 

 

A few ink strokes away

1

25

 

 

Three pack a day

1

 

 

 

By now

1

 

 

 

Two minutes

1

 

 

 

Until

2

 

 

 

As soon as

1

 

 

 

Minutes away from

1

 

 

 

Now

1

 

 

 

Midnight

1

 

 

 

Often

1

 

 

 

Minutes after

1

 

 

 

Countless time

1

 

Place

 

Here

1

 

 

 

This

 

 

 

 

There

1

7

 

 

This isn�t

1

 

 

 

Somewhere

1

 

 

 

On

1

 

 

 

In the middle of nowhere

1

 

Discourse

 

That

5

 

 

 

While

1

 

 

 

When

1

9

 

 

But

1

 

 

 

This

1

 

 

 

Your Mother

3

 

 

 

Princess

1

6

 

 

Pickpockets

1

 

 

 

Picky eater

1

 

 

A.  Person Deixis

Person deixis involves the role of the participant where an utterance indicates someone.� The total number for person deixis is 148 dominated by word �I�.�� Subsequently followed by time deixis 25, discourse deixis 9 (nine), place deixis 7 (seven) and the last one is social deixis 6 (six).�

There are three categories of person deixis in this story text, they are:� first person (I, my, me, myself, and we), second person (you, your, yours, yourself), and the third person (her, it, they, their, and them).�� Each of the categories is divided into a singular and plural form as mentioned in the table 1.� Since so many person deixis found in the text, the writer intends only to provide three examples from the text as follows:

1. First person deixis

��������� I lean against the sink for a few indulgent heartbeats

 

The underlined �I� is first singular person deixis which refers to the speaker who tries to lean against the sink for a second or being reluctant.� This sentence describe that the speaker who works as a household assistant who is asked to cook food, in this case is mie goreng, for the little daughter of the employer.� However, since the request came in the night, where the time she supposed to have a rest after all day working made her being reluctant to cook.�

2. Second person deixis

You are a picky eater, folded arms and pouty lips

 

The word �you� in this sentence is referred to the addressee or the employer�s child.�� It is a second singular person. �The sentence points out that the employer�s child as someone whom her request has to be followed; otherwise her dislike expression would be occurred.� Tough this way of feeling (opinion) about her only conveyed inside the employee�s mind, rather than uttered directly.�� ��

3. Third person deixis

The noodles have relaxed into limp ribbons, so I pour the contents of the saucepan into a strainer.� I jostle them until they are rid of excess moisture.

 

The word �them� is deictic that refers to the contents of the saucepan (noodles), which regard as other things outside of speaker and the addressee.� It is a third person deixis.�� The speaker shows the procedure of the making a good noodle by reducing the water contained.� A listener or reader may miss the information what is �them� refers to unless he knows the situation by pointing out the previous sentence.�����

���������������������������������������������������

The occurrence of the domination of person deixis �I� is due to the use of point of view of the first person by the author in which he involves directly in the story as a narrator, and also as a main character, who tells the whole story describing her feeling about being in a situation as a household helper from beginning to the end.� This is� in line with the result of the research by Trisnanda� (2021) that shows� the use of the first� person domination, in particular �I�,� in 5 (five) different short stories.� First person usually describes by words I, me, myself, mine, we, our, us, ours, ourselves.� A short story usually chooses one particular point of view relating the action through the eyes of one particular figure or narrator (Klarer, 2004).� In this study,� person deixis dominates the kind of deixis as in the result of the research of Indriani and Santoso (2021) entitled Deixs in the Legend of Tangkuban Parahu Story.

B.  Time Deixis

Time deixis referred to temporal point. It may occur in the present, past and future at the particular time when the utterance in the text applied. The number of time deixis in the text is also quite a lot, so the writer decided to limit to two examples as follow:

1.    By now the water froths and frolics.

�� The phrase �by now� refers to the period when the speaker explains about the water which at the time froths and frolics.� The word �by now� is only understandable when one particular period of time or situation was mentioned in the conversation or text or referred to the situation.

2.    I take a mental note of our supplies so I know what needs replenishing the next time your ��� mother sends me to the grocers.

�Next time� in the text indicates time in the future when the speaker goes to buy supplies again for them.�� So, it is an adverb and a deictic word.� Surely, it is unknown when the speaker will be asked to go to the grocery store because there is no explanation.� However, as a household assistant, it is a routine task for her to do.��

C.  Place Deixis

Place deixis refers to a place in the text.� It is also concerning proximal and distal or the distance between the speaker and the addressee, or the third party.� Examples are provided as follow:

1. �Yet, here I am, groping for a light switch in a kitchen that I spend more time�.

The word �here� is referred to the location of the speaker which is in a kitchen.� The existence is exactly inside of the kitchen (or proximal).� �Here I am� is a less strong statement when someone maybe looking for somebody by asking �where are you?� ; or it refers to current physical location of the speaker.

2. �I could have fled to my village in the middle of nowhere and taken the money with me, but I didn�t.

�� The speaker mentions the going back to her village which is in the middle of nowhere, which is understood the location is far (distal) from the speaker and it may be a small and located in a remote area.

D.  Discourse deixis

Discourse deixis related to the use of expressions within an utterance in the text.� In this text, there are 9 (nine) deictic words in term of discourse.�� The examples and explanation is given as follows:

1. While the noodles soften and unwind, I introduce a wok to a second hungry flame.

The word �while� point out a discourse deixis where one activity is taking place at the same time�� with the other.�� It describes about the current condition of noodle �soften and unwind� when it is being cooked, while on the other hand the speaker is doing another activity by putting a wok on the other flaring stove.

2. It is your request, not the consequences ignoring them, that persuades my finger to� curl round saucepan��..

The word �that� is a demonstrative for it refers to the previous alludes as �your request �which is resulting in my finger to curl around the saucepan.�� The context explains that the child asked the helper or speaker to cook noodle as an implication of her way of request.

E.  Social deixis

This deixis has two types according Levinson which are relational social status and absolute social status.� In the text of the short story, there are four different words found concerning the deixis. The use of the deictic word explained as follows:

1. Your mother, who does not pay me enough, loves to sort your fragile world into locker -sized compartment �..

�� The speaker mentions about the relationship between the daughter and the mother which she refers to �your mother�.�� This kind of relation is called a relational social status or a mother-daughter relation by blood.

2. I know you actually want to be a princess.

The speaker says about the addressee on being a princess, which actually concerning an absolute social status.�� Being a princess means that should be obeyed for her request or order made for her higher status, which in this context the child is the employer�s daughter while the speaker is only the household assistant.� This kind of call as mentioned by Kusumaningrum (2016) in her research entitled Deixis Analysis on Shakespear�s Comics Strip of Julius Caeser, shows the respect of lower level people to higher level people like noble or royal family and their apparatus.�� However, in this finding, the call of princess has nothing to do with a royal status, but merely a labor-boss relationship status, but still considered as similar situation.

 

 

 

Conclusion

Learning deixis in English language is not as simple and easy as ones thought.� It requires deeper understanding and careful study to prevent misinterpret on utterance or written text conveyed.�� Deixis consists of person, time, place, discourse and social deixis.� All type of deixis found in the text except for some person deixis in term of second plural like you and second singular person such as he, she, his, him, himself, herself, hers, its, and itself.� In general, person deixis� reveals a lot in the text, which is understandable in the short story where the speaker describing the path of the story from the beginning to the end both as a narrator and a main character of the story that is acknowledged as first person point of view.

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Copyright holder:

Hafni Hafsah (2022)

 

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Syntax Literate: Jurnal Ilmiah Indonesia

 

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