Human communication is intentional. Speakers seek to achieve desired intentions through language. Presidents use deixis to perform specified roles to achieve desired effects during inaugural delivery. Deixis is a notion in pragmatics that explains the significance of context in interpreting meaning. Based on Hanks 2005 Deictic Field Theory this study sought to establish the role and effect of deixis in selected inaugurals from East Africa. The study adopted a descriptive analytic research design. The inaugural texts were downloaded from the internet. AntiConc 3.5.8 textual analysis software was used to facilitate data mining. The software facilitated the identification of various extracts in which deixis was used. Each extract was examined to establish the role and effect of the deixis used. The findings were presented in comparative tables and descriptive write-ups. The findings show that presidents in East Africa used deixis in their inaugurals to perform specific roles and achieve desired effects. They used person deixis to identify communicative agents, to establish inclusive and exclusive groups, to signal solidarity or detach, and personal or social responsibility. They used spatial deixis to state the physical location the speaker, addressee or objects referred to in the speech setting. Temporal deixis expressed the time involved or referred to in the inaugurals. They used social deixis to express social status and ranking of the communicative agents and express realities such as togetherness and inclusivity. The presidents used deixis to achieve emotional, politeness, rapport, inclusive, cohesive, attentional and emphasizing effects.
Adetunji, A. (2006). Inclusion and exclusion in political discourse: Deixis in Olusegun Obasanjo’s speeches. Journalof Language and Linguistics, 5(2), 177-191.
Anthony, L. (2019). Anticon (version 3.5.8) [computer software]. Retrieved from www.laurennanthony.net/software.html
Ayeomoni, O. M., & Akinkuolere, O. S. (2012). A pragmatic analysis of victory and inaugural speeches of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua. Theory & Practice in Language Studies, 2(3).
Babbie, E. (2010). The practiceof social research (10th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth.
Chovanec, J. (2014). Pragmaticsof Tense and Time in News: From canonical headlines to online news texts (Vol. 253). Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Cramer, J. (2010). ‘Do we reallywant to be like them?’: Indexing Europeanness through pronominal use. Discourse& Society, 21(6), 619-637.
Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. New York: Sage publications.
Dylgjeri, A., & Kazazi, L. (2013). Deixis in modern linguistics and outside. Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2(4), 87-87.
Eragbe, C., & Yakubu, S. (2015). The use of deixis and deictic expressions in Boko Haram insurgency reports: A study of selected Boko Haram insurgency reports by the media. Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL), 3(3), 94-101.
Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical discourse analysis (R. Wodak ed.). London: SAGE.
Hart, C. (2015). Viewpoint in linguistic discourse: Space and evaluation in news reports of political protests. Critical Discourse Studies, 12(3), 238-260.
Hennink, M. M., Kaiser, B. N., & Marconi, V. C. (2017). Code saturation versus meaning saturation: How many interviews are enough? Qualitative health research, 27(4),591-608.
Hromádková, V. (2014). Pragmatics of legal language: Deixis(Master’s Thesis). Czech Republic: Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts.
Kepsa. (2017) Analysis of H.E President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Inauguration Speech. Nairobi. KEPSA
Marmaridou, S. S. (2000). Pragmaticmeaning and cognition (Vol. 72). Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing.
Mutune, F. N. (2018). An Evaluation of the Inauguration Speech Made by His Excellency the President of Kenya on 28th November, 2017. Machakos University. Kenya
Prasch, A. M. (2016). Toward a rhetorical theory of deixis. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 102(2),166-193.
Rivera, F. J. R. (2017). A generic perspective on Trump's inaugural address. Arminda.whitman.edu
Senft, G. (2014). Understanding pragmatics. Routledge.
Sirbu, A. (2015). The significanceof language as a tool of communication. Scientific Bulletin" Mircea celBatran" Naval Academy, 18(2), 405.
West, V. (2014). A style of his own: A rhetorical analysis of President Barack Obama's inaugural addresses.digitalcommons.hollins.edu.
Yang, Y. (2011). A cognitive interpretation of discourse deixis. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 1(2),128-135.
In-Text Citation: (Omwoyo et al., 2021)
To Cite this Article: Omwoyo, H. K., Emily, O., & Owino, F. R. (2021). Significance of Deixis in Presidential Inaugural Speeches from East Africa. Multilingual Academic Journal of Education and Social Sciences, 9(1), 159–175.
Copyright: © The Authors 2021
Published by Knowledge Words Publications (www.kwpublications.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
