Pragmatic functions of deixis in Nigerian newspaper editorials

Abstract

The focus of this study is on the pragmatic functions of deixis in selected Nigerian newspaper editorials. It aims at identifying and classifying the occurrence of deixis in the editorials. This includes finding the most dominant type of deixis in the text and analysing the reasons behind the use of these types of deixis according to the context and their contributions to cohesion and coherence in the text. This is qualitative research, in which the process of data analysis involved organising the editorials as raw data for categorisation, based on the three types of deixis identified by Levinson and which were employed in the 12 editorials selected for analysis. Data for the analysis hinged on Halliday and Hasan’s theory of cohesion which focuses on how linguistic items, of which a text is composed, are meaningfully connected to one another in a sequence on the basis of the grammatical rules of a language.