Contrastive Linguistics: Rhetorical Study of Social Deixis

by Sepideh Mirzaee

Apr 1, 2011 Other 2786 Views

This study deals with a contrastive rhetoric of differences and similarities between social deixis (one of the main subcategories of deictic expressions) in English and Persian non-academic texts. The focus in the present research is mostly on the manner of writing of different writers, (native and non-native) and translators, more specifically how their respective cultures have affected their writings regarding the use of social deixis. That is, the present research tries to find out how these writers use social deixis according to their cultures and whether this kind of deixis is used in both languages or due to some cultural differences there are some differences in using it. Since deixis is considered as a cohesive device and it is analyzed within the texts, and actually it is related to the context of situation, consequently it is a part of semantic and also pragmatic knowledge of EFL learners. Social deixis is one of the main types of deictic expressions which are excluded in the categorizations of deictic expressions by some linguists and actually it is included in some other categorizations of these expressions by other linguists. (Lyons 1968, Fillmore, 1971b, 1975, Levinson 1995).

2. Research Questions

1. Is there any significant difference between native speakers of English and Iranians in their use of social deixis in their writings?

1.2. Is there any significant difference between native speakers of English and Iranians in

their use of honorifics in their writings?

1.3. Is there any significant difference between native speakers of English and Iranians in

their use of kinship terms in their writings?

3. Background and Related literature

3.1. On Contrastive Rhetoric

Rhetoric is one of the old branches of human knowledge. According to Valero-

Garces (1996, p. 281) rhetoric refers to “the strategies the writer uses to convince readers

Of his/her claims and to increase the credibility of his/her research”. There are two major

trends of rhetoric: Generative rhetoric and contrastive rhetoric. Generative rhetoric was

under the influence of Noam Chomsky’s transformational generative grammar, which is

out of the domain of this study. Generally speaking, comparative studies in linguistics

have a long history and yet there are great concerns about using this field of study in order

to overcome many potential problems in language learning and teaching.

Robert Kaplan, one of the early founders of contrastive rhetoric believes that

language and writing are cultural phenomena and that each language has its own cultural

conventions. Kaplan (2005) believes that the focus of contrastive rhetoric is on written

discourse, since, “a major real-world problem” (p.2), lies in literacy. Kaplan and Grabe

(2002) define literacy as a kind of ability to encode and decode discourses.

One of the most important parts of any contrastive study is to consider a third term

or a common ground between two phenomena which allows them to be compared and contrasted. This common platform of reference has been named tertium comparationis (Krzeszowski, 1984).This phenomenon mainly refers to the equivalence of structural form or, at most, the equivalence of the functions of the two texts. Many scholars have emphasized the necessity for establishing this common ground before making a comparison between texts. For example, Grabe (1987) argues that contrastive studies must be limited to text types which are really comparable.

3.2. On Social Deixis

According to Levinson (1995) social deixis concerns “the encoding of social distinctions that are relative to participant roles, particularly, aspects of the social relationship holding between speaker and addressees or speaker and some referent” (p.63). In many languages , distinctions of the fine gradation between the relative ranks of speaker and addressee are systematically encoded throughout, for example, the morphological system, in which case we talk of honorifics; but such distinctions are also regularly encoded in choices between pronouns, summons forms or vocatives, and titles of address in familiar languages (p.63). Levinson restricts social deixis to those aspects of language structure that encode the social identities of participants, or the social relationship between them. Obvious examples of such grammaticalizations, as he considers, are polite “pronouns” and “titles of address” (1983, p.89).

For the sake of feasibility of any study, there should be clear limitations on its scope. So this study includes only those titles of address which covers honorifics and kinship terms. However, it may seem necessary to mention that kinship terms are considered just in kin relations, leaving aside other probable usages of them.

4. Method

4.1. Corpus

The corpus collected for this study, consisted of one Persian novel, two English novels and one Persian translation (10,000 words from beginning part of each which is equal approximately to 30 pages for each category).

4.2. Instrumentation

In order to compare and contrast the probable similarities and differences between social deixis in the beginning 30 pages (approximately 10,000 words length) of English and Persian novels, it was necessary to choose a model. So, in this study the ideas of Levinson (1995) as a most comprehensive one were utilized as the main theoretical model.

4.3. Procedure

Three different novels were selected from among realistic novels of three groups of novelists: native Iranian speaker of Persian i.e. Sadegh Choubak, native speaker of English, i.e. Mark Twain, and an Iranian translator, i.e. Mohammad Ghazi who had translated the English novel into Persian. The body of these novels from the beginning was chosen for study and was analyzed for the types and amounts of social deixis and its subcategories –honorifics and kinship terms– used. It is worth noting that, since novels are chosen as non-academic writing, in comparison with academic texts they don’t have different sections like introduction, body and conclusion. Therefore, it was believed that the beginning part of them shouldn’t be very different from other parts regarding the types and amounts of social deixis used by the writers. To begin with, the texts were carefully read word by word in order to identify and locate the first subcategory of social deixis which is honorifics. After that, they were analyzed for kinship terms. All cases were examined in the context to determine the discoursal and semantic functions. Of course, the analysis of the text was carried out twice in order to increase the reliability of the findings.

4.4. Data Analysis

This research aimed to investigate whether there is any statistically significant difference in the use of social deixis by authors and translators of English and Persian novels. In addition to descriptive statistics, since the present study is mainly concerned with frequency, Chi square as the appropriate non-parametric statistical test was used to analyze the data.

4. Examples

(1) Examples of sentences used by a native speaker of English in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of “The Adventures of

Tom Sawyer,” but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain and he told

the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is

nothing . I never seen anybody but lied, one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or

the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly- Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is- and Mary, and the Widow

Douglas, is all told about in that book- which is mostly a true book; with some stretchers, as

I said before .

(2) Examples of sentences used by native speaker of English in The Prince and the Pauper

The mother and father had a sort of bedstead in the corner; but Tom, his grandmother, and his

two sisters, Bet and Nan, were not restricted- they had all the floor to themselves, and migh

sleep where they chose. There were the remains of a blanket or two, and some bundles of

ancient and dirty straw, but these could not rightly be called beds, for they were not organized;

they were kicked into a general pile mornings, and selections made from the mass at night,

for service.

6. Results and Discussion

In order to compare the type and amount of social deixisobjectively, the sample corpuses which were English and Persian novels and translation were analyzed to gather raw data for reaching the answers to the research questions. The first chi-square test was run in order to show the total frequencies of social deixis used in all of the English and Persian texts under investigation. The results are as follows:

Figure 1.The comparison of social deixis between English and Persian texts

a. the value of observed Chi-square (all English and Persian corpus): .873, p> 0.05;

b. the value of observed Chi-square (original versus translation group): 4.935, p< 0.05; and

c. the value of observed Chi-square (original versus original): 5.224, p< 0.05.

In the view of the above chi-square values and by considering that p<0.05, in count (a)

the value of observed chi-square equals a=.873 which was not significant at 0.05 level with a

degree of freedom of 1 (df=1) but in count (b), and (c) the value of observed chi-square equals

b=4.935, and c=5.224 which were significant at 0.05 level with a degree of freedom of 1 (df=1)

indicating that except for count (a), there is a significant difference between the native

speakers of English and Iranians in their use of social deixis in their writings.

So, there is a significant difference between the English and Iranian novelists in their use of social deixis, except for the comparison of all of the English and Persian texts under study.

The second chi-square test was run to compare the first subcategory of social deixis, honorifics, used by these three groups. The summary of the chi-square results is as follows:

Figure 2.The comparison of Honorifics between English and Persian texts

a. the value of observed Chi-square (all English and Persian corpus): 8.781, p< 0.05;

b. the value of observed Chi-square (original versus translation group): 7.801, p< 0.05;

and

c. the value of observed Chi-square (original versus original): 1.000, p> 0.05.

Again in these comparisons, it is observable that in count (a) and (b), p<0.05, and

therefore there is a significant difference between the native speakers and Iranians in their

use of honorifics in their writings but in count (c), by considering the fact that p> 0.05, it

can be concluded that there is not a significant difference between the native speakers and

Iranians in their use of honorifics. Here again, the native speakers of English use this

subtype of social deixis more than Iranian ones.

The last chi-square test was run in order to see the probable differences between

these three groups in their use of kinship terms. The summary of chi-square results is as

follows:

Figure 3.The comparison of Kinship terms between English and Persian texts

a. the value of observed Chi-square (all English and Persian corpus): 8.963, p< 0.05;

b. the value of observed Chi-square (original versus translation group): .265, p> 0.05;

and

c. the value of observed Chi-square (original versus original): 18.050, p< 0.05.

In these three comparisons, it can be observed that for count (a) and (c) because

the value of p<0.05, there is a significant difference between the native speakers of

English and Iranians in their use of kinship terms in their writings. But for count (b),

p>0.05 and there is not a significant difference between native speakers of English and

Iranians in this regard. Finally, we came into this conclusion that Iranians use this subtype

of social deixis more than native speakers.

7. Conclusion

Thisstudy was an attempt to investigate and analyze the rhetoric of social deixis of

the beginning part of English and Persian novels and translations. In order to achieve this

aim, the beginning part of three novels and one translation, were investigated. As

mentioned above, these novels were written by a native speaker of English, a native

speaker of Persian, and a translator who had translated from English into Persian. A total

of three novels and one translation (30 pages of each one) were analyzed to discover the

types and amounts of social deixis used by the above mentioned novelists and translator.

In the next step, Levinson’s (1995) categorization of social deixis was used to find

the different categorizations of social deixis and its subtypes. The aim of this study was to

find out whether the use of social deixs is affected by different languages and/or cultures.

The results of Chi-square tests indicated that social deixis and its two subtypes are

employed by English and Iranian novelists and translator. However, they were used

similarly or differently by these groups.