Pragmatic Analysis of Deictic Expressions in Imran Khan’s UN Speech Delivered in 2019

Abstract

This study aims to identify various types of deixis used in speech to investigate self and other deictic. It also examines the effect of person, place, and temporal deixis in spoken discourse. The qualitative descriptive method was used to interpret the deictic expressions in the speech. Imran Khan‟s UN speech was collected from United Nations YouTube channel. After that, it was transcribed to identify the deictic expressions. Levinson's (2011) theoretical framework of deixis was used to analyze the data. The results revealed that the total number of deixis was 247, in which person (189), place (26), temporal (15), social (07), and discourse (10) deixis were found. We found that “I and we” are the most frequently used deixis in the speech of Imran Khan to refer to the self and other concepts in the context in which the speech is set. Selfconcept is used for the opportunity for the nation and authority, and the others deixis (they, them, he, etc.) are used for a negative attitude. The research concluded that the deictic expressions used by Imran Khan highlighted different themes such as self and others, change in climate change, and Islamophobia.