Analysis of deixis in the Iraqi constitution of 2005

Abstract EN

The concept of deixis is one of the most important topics in the pragmatic analysis that needs to be clarified; deixis is used to analyse the text, utterance or sentence because every utterance is a reference used to pointing about people, something, place or time.

The meaning of this utterance will be clear when the listeners or readers know about who, where and when the utterance is uttered.

The current study aims at clarifying Deixis that exist in the Iraqi Constitution of 2005 and how the constitutional makers use these elements in the selected articles.

To achieve the aims of the study, several articles have been selected from the Constitution as data to be analysed and a qualitative methodology has been employed in analyzing the collected data based on Levinson (1983).

It has been hypothesized that the ordinary readers of the Iraqi Constitution face difficulty in understanding the meaning of a lot of the articles of the constitution because there are false and misuses of the deictic expressions.

The study has come up with the results that deictic expressions are widely used in the Iraqi Constitution to convey certain aims.

The use of such linguistic and pragmatic elements is proved to have an obvious impact on ordinary peoples' understanding of the legal document.