Pragmatic analysis of deictic expressions in Arthur Miller's play "death of a salesman"

Abstract EN

This paper is about deixis as one aspect of pragmatic field.

Dialogues in plays always show properties such as person, place and time.The use of such words can be explicit or implicit .Hence understanding such words as intended by the speaker/writer helps the listener / reader to interpret what the speaker/writer wants to convey, whereas misunderstanding their scope leads to confusion or misinterpretation .Thus, the focus of this research is to find the kinds of deixis and their references in the play as they are an act in which a writer uses linguistic forms to enable the reader to identify something.

The aim of the study is to investigate and explain what kind of deixis used in the play with their references and to what extent the writer uses these expressions and how this use of such expressions affects the writer style.In the study of literature ,it is necessary to analysis the deictic items and understand their role in the text as they can give us a significant insight in a literature and therefore they should not be ignored.

Sometimes the deictic items leads to ambiguity ,abscurity,vagueness and a reader is supposed to analysis the work and arrive to some kind of meaning .

The play "Death of a salesman" by Arthur Miller is used as data analyzed and deixis is classified according to Mey (2001) .The present study consists of two sections, the first deals with an introduction and definitions of deixis and its categories.

The second is concerned with the play analysis ,results and discussions, some recommendations , the conclusion and bibliography.