Deixis and Existential Expression in Emily Dickinson’s Poems: A Cognitive Pragmatics Analysis to Reveal Existential Meaning
Keywords:
Deixis, Existential, Subject, Object, Being-in-itself, Being-for-itselfAbstract
This article aims to reveal how deixis is applied to express the existential expression in Emily Dickinson’s poems. The poems taken for this analysis are “That is solemn we have ended” and ‘I could suffice for Him, I knew.” The study was focused on deixis and existential expression. The deixis was based on discourse analysis, and existential expression was studied based on existentialism as proposed by Jean-Paul Sartre. Deixis studied is personal deixis. The analysis shows three words categorized as personal deixis, i.e., certain words that contextually refer to persons such as I, we, and Him The research found that deixis plays a role in existential expression. I and we experience the existential relationship with him, in this sense, as the subject and him as the object. The method was a content analysis conducted in qualitative research. This results in the state of being-in-itself and being for itself
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