Linguistic, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal                                         

Volume 1 Nomor 1, Desember 2017 

e-ISSN:2597-3819 

p-ISSN:2597-9248 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.31539/leea.v1i1.34  
 

82 

 

AN ANALYSIS OF DEIXIS AND SPEECH ACT USED  

IN ENGLISH TEACHING AND LEARNING PROCESS 

 
Yulfi

1 

STKIP PGRI Lubuklinggau 

 

yulfie_patmo@yahoo.com
1 

 

Submit, 08-11-2017     Accepted, 30-12-2017    Publish, 30-12-2017 

 

ABSTRACT 

This study focuses on analyzing deixis and speech acts used by the English 

teacher and eleventh grade students of language program at Islamic Integrated 

Senior High School Curup in the academic year 2013/2014. The topic was chosen 

by the researcher as the object of the research, first of all because deixis and 

speech acts are commonly analyzed in the daily conversation such as in movie 

and comic. Secondly, this school is the one that has a language program class at 

eleventh grade besides two science program classes and two social program 

classes. This study means to explain the used of deixis and speech acts in English 

teaching and learning. The design of this research is an ethnography research and 

the main instrument of this research is the researcher itself. The finding of this 

study shows that the teacher of English and students used deixis in their daily 

activity in the classroom. However, the most frequently types of deixis used by 

them is person deixis. Further, the most dominant type of speech acts on English 

teaching and learning at this class is directive utterance. Generally, the teacher 

more often used them to give command, suggestion and request.The teacher and 

students used deixis and speech acts almost in every moment. Because this class 

used teacher center, so the students used deixis and speech act only when they 

responded the teacher‟s questions. 

 

Keywords: deixis, speech acts, directive utterance, person deixis. 

INTRODUCTION 

Very often in many interactions between teachers and students in the 

classroom, students cannot understand what teacher says if they do not understand 

the context. Some utterances produced by students also cannot be understood by 

teachers if they do not know who is speaking, about whom, where and when. For 

example when a teacher explains in front of the class then she says “I was 

disappointed that you did not come yesterday afternoon. I hope you will join our 

course this afternoon”. People will not be able to identify the referents of I, you, 

us, yesterday afternoon and this afternoon though we understand how the first 

three and the last two are related to one another; because they know English, they 

know know, for example, that the referent of is a part of referent of them and they 

mailto:yulfie_patmo@yahoo.com1


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know the time sequence of yesterday afternoon and this afternoon. The meaning 

of any lexeme depends to some extent on the context in which it occurs, but 

deictic elements can only be interpreted through their context. 

According to McCarty (1991:6), without understanding the physical 

context and linguistics context of utterances, teachers or students will lose what 

the speaker means. The goal of someone produces an utterance is considered good 

and right if it is used in appropriate context. The meaning of words in utterances 

or written text can be known from its context. 

The word which can be interpreted its meaning based on the context is 

called deictic or deixis. Deixis is also a word which its referent always moves 

depending on the time and space of uttering the word. It is also stated that deixis 

is a part of pragmatics that has connection with certain word or sentence that 

changes because of the context. The change of context is a sentence often caused 

by the change of situation including personal, time and place (Levinson,1983:9). 

Deixis concerns the ways in which language encode features of the context of 

utterance or speech event, and thus also concerns ways in the interpretation of 

utterances on the analysis of that context on utterance. 

So far, applied linguists and language teachers have been familiar with the 

term function for years now. Are we not simply talking about „functions‟ when 

analyzing what a teacher and students talk in the classroom? In one sense we are 

talking about „functions‟: we are concerned as much with what teachers and 

students are doing with language as with what they are saying. A request, an 

instruction or an exemplification as a particular bit of speech or writing, we are 

concentrating on what that piece of language is doing (locutionary act), or how the 

listener or reader is supposed to react (illocutionary) or the effect got by listener or 

reader after hearing or reading an utterance, many linguists call it as speech act 

(McCarty,1991:9). 

Research on the relationship between form and function has been greatly 

influenced by speech act theory. Rankema (1993:21) states that in speech act 

theory, language is seen as a form of acting. Speech act theory has had a strong 

influence on the field of discourse studies as this theory focuses on the question of 

what people are doing when they use language. 

This study deals with classroom discourse since it is relevant to various 

important phenomena of language use, text and conversational interactions or 

communication events in the classroom. It is in line with what McCarty 

(1991:105) states that the advantage of writing discourse analysis to investigate 

classroom in interaction is that it allows researchers to gain insight into what is 

being accomplished in a particular classroom interaction that takes place in a 

specific social context. 



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Finally, ethnography was used in this study because it attempts to obtain 

an emic perspective and holistic view of what a teacher and students say and do, 

in order to gain a fuller representation of what is going on in the classroom. 

Ethnographic research combines participant observation and many of the 

characteristics of nonparticipant observation studies in attempt to obtain as 

holistic a picture as possible of a particular society, group, institution, setting or 

situation. 

This research is very important to be done. By doing this research, people 

understand the meaning of deixis and speech acts produced by the English teacher 

and students in the classroom easily. 

From the description above, the writer is interested to do a research 

entitled: “An Analysis of Deixisand Speech Acts Used in English Teaching and 

Learning Process”. 

 

LITERATURE REVIEW 

Yule (1996:9) states that deixis is derived from the Greek“deicticos” 

means “to show” or “to indicate”. It means pointing via language. Deictic terms 

are used to refer to ourselves to others and object in our environment. Yule 

(1990:129-133) says 

“They are used to locate actions in a time frame relative to the present. 

Deictic terms show social relationship the social location individuals in 

relation to others. They are also used to locate parts of text in relation to 

other parts. Furthermore deixis concerns the ways in which language 

encode or grammatical features of the context of utterance or speech event. 

It is also concern with way in which interpretation of utterance depends on 

the analysis of that context of utterance.” 

 

There are some words in the language that cannot be interpreted at all 

unless the physical context, especially the physical context of the speaker, is 

known. These are words like here, there, this, that, as well as most pronouns such 

as I, he, us, it. Some sentences of English are virtually impossible to be 

understood if we do not know who is speaking, about whom, where and when. 

Deixis also deals with connections between discourse and the situation in 

which discourse is used (Rankema,1993:76). The word „deixis‟ is used to devote 

those elements in a language which refer directly to the situation. Rankema 

(1993:77) also says that deictic words are words with a reference point which is a 

speaker or writer says and is determined by the speaker‟s or writer‟s position in 

space and time. 

Yule (1996:9) also writes that deictic expressions are also sometimes 

called „indexicals‟.They are among the first forms to be spoken by very young 



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children and can be used to indicate people via person deixis (e.g. me, you), or 

location via spatial deixis (here, there), or time via temporal deixis (now, then). 

Deixis is clearly a form of referring that is tied to the speaker‟s context, 

with the most basic distinction between deictic expressions being near speaker 

versus away from the speaker.Yule (1996:9) argues 

In English, near speaker called proximal terms, are „this‟, „here‟, „now‟. 

The away from the speaker, or distal terms, are „that‟, „then‟, Proximal 

terms are typically interpreted in terms of the speaker‟s location, or the 

deictic center, so that „now‟ is generally understood as referring to some 

point or period in time that has the time of the speaker‟s utterance at its 

center. Distal terms can simply indicate „away from speaker‟, but, in some 

languages, can be used to distinguish between „near addressees‟ and „away 

from the both speaker and addressee‟ 

 

Based on  previous definitions, it can be concluded that deixis refers to a 

word in which it‟s referred or its pointing is always moving or changing depends 

on the speaker, place, and time of utterance. Morover, the meaning is still 

relevant with the context. 

The main categories of deictic form or indexical expression (Yule, 

1990:63) are (1) person deixis (a word that has functions as personal pronouns: 

you, she, he, it, etc), (2) spatial or place deixis (place or location can be deixis if 

that place or location is being seeing from the location of the people who are 

doing communication in language use in speech event: this, these, that, those, 

etc), (3) temporal deixis (grammatically temporal deixis can be called as adverbs 

of time: yesterday, today, tomorrow, etc), (4) discourse deixis(a word can be said 

as Discourse deixis if that word refers to certain part of that text or utterance: the 

following, the later, etc)and (5) social deixis (Social deixis refers to the encoding 

of social distinction is related to participant roles, as in the use of pronouns: my 

beloved friend, Mr. President, etc). 

Whenever one person speaks to another, the speaker has some intention in 

producing the utterance, and the addressee interprets the utterance. In spite of 

occasional misunderstandings the hearer‟s interpretation often does match the 

speaker‟s intention, even when the speaker is joking or being sarcastic.  If the 

form of an utterance does not necessarily coincide with the intended function, 

how does the hearer correctly know what the speaker‟s intention is even 

recognizing the speaker‟s humorous utterances are the sarcastic ones? Kreidler 

(2002:181-193) answers this question with the simple one that they know each 

other. They share a common background, and they are aware of sharing the 

common background. They may argue, insult each other, use profanity, so long as 

they are both used to communicating in this fashion. Speakers are less likely to 



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use sarcasm and humor with strangers than with those who know them well, their 

utterances are more likely to be straightforward and to follow the norms for 

politeness, and they are ready to rephrase their messages whenever they see that 

misunderstanding has occurred. The speaker wants to be understood and the 

addressee wants to understand. 

Richards et.al (1985:265) state that speech act is an utterance as a 

functional unit in communication. When people say that a particular bit of speech 

and writing is a request or an instruction or on aexemplification people are 

concentrating on what that piece of language is doing, or how a listener or reader 

is supposed to react, such entities are often called speech act (Austin and Searle in 

McCarthy 1991:9). Each of the stretches of language that are carrying the force of 

requesting, instructing and so on is seen as performing a particular act. So the 

approach to communicative language teaching that emphasize the functions or 

speech acts that pieces of language perform overlaps in an important sense with 

the preoccupations of discourse analysts. 

Still in line Yule (1996:47) says that actions performed via utterances are 

generally called speech acts and in English, are commonly given more are specific 

labels, such as apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise or request. 

These descriptive terms for different kinds of speech acts apply to the speaker‟s 

communicative intention in producing an utterance. The speaker orally expects 

that his or her communicative intention will be recognized by the hearer. Both the 

speaker and listener are usually helped this process by the circumstances 

surrounding the utterance. These circumstances including other utterances are 

called the speech event. In many ways it is the nature of speech event that 

determines the interpretation of an utterance as performing a particular speech 

acts. 

In every speech act, person can distinguish three kinds of speech acts, 

following Austin (in Kreidler,2002:180;181): (1) locutionary act (what is said, the 

utterance produced by a speaker can be called locution), (2) illocutionary act 

(some kind of function in mind, when the speaker produce the utterance) and (3) 

perlocutionnary act (the effect the utterance or written text has on the reader or 

listener). 

Speech acts differ in their purposes, whether they deal with real or 

potential facts, prospective or retrospective, in the role of speaker or addressee. In 

these facts, and of course in felicity conditions.Kreidler (2002:183-193) divides 

speech acts into seven kinds: (1) assertive utterance (the purpose is to inform), (2) 

performativity utterance (performative utterances are valid if spoken by someone 

whose right to make them is accepted and in circumstances which are accepted as 

appropriate), (3) vindictiveutterance (speech acts in which the speaker makes an 

assessment or judgment about the acts of another, usually the addressee), (4) 



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expressive utterance (speaker-involved), (5) directive utterance (the speaker tries 

to get the addressee to perform some act or refrain from performing an act), (6) 

commissive utterance (commit a speaker to a course of action), and (7) phatic 

utterance (greetings, farewells, piloted formulas such as “thank you”, “you‟re 

welcome”, “excuse me). 

 

RESEARCH METHOD 

This study is an ethnography research. As usual in an ethnographic 

research, observation and interviews are the primary methods of collecting data. 

These are supplemented by field notes, video-taping and check-list. 

 The data was analyzed using inductive analytical approach. It meant that 

the data analysis began while data are being gathered. Ongoing data analysis and 

interpretation were based on data mainly from observations. There were two main 

data from observation: the result of field notes and spoken language transcript. 

 The researcher analyzed data gathered from field notes and check lists at 

the end in every meeting. The data was synthesized and summarized, included any 

interpretation that come to mind, and recorded any questions that may be implied 

then find the answers. The participants (the teacher and the students) was given 

opportunity to respond to the initial analysis before a final draft of the data was 

written. 

 

FINDING  

In English teaching and learning of eleventh grade language program at 

Islamic Integrated Senior High School Curup in the academic year of 2013/2014, 

the researcher found many data in of deixis and speech acts. The examples of the 

dialogues among the teacer and the students are presented below: 

Date : February 12, 2013 

Theme: Expression of Love (Sing a song) and Narrative Text. 

Time : 2x45‟ (10.45-12.15) 

 

T : The whiteboard is so dirty. 

S : (Someone come, stand and clean the whiteboard) 

T : For others, keep silent please! Dian, please bring your narrative text! 

S8 : (He comes and stands beside her). 

T : Are you sick? (while she is looking at his coat). 

S8 : (He walks to his desk and loose his coat). 

T : Ok, how many generic structures of narrative text? 

S8 : Three Mam. They are orientation, complication and resolution. 

T : Ok, identify them in this story! 



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S8 : (He identifies the generic structures). 

T : Ok, sit down please. Next, MeiliaJayanti  

S15 : Yes Mam. 

 

DISCUSSION 

From this dialogue, there are 2 speech acts and 7 deixis. The speech acts 

are the utterances produced by the teacher: “the whiteboard is so dirty” and “are 

you sick?”. Furthermore, the deixis are Dian, you, Mam, they, them, Meilia 

Jayanti and Mam. 

The researcher found 290 data in deixis and 42 data in speect acts. The 

data is shown in the following table. 

Table 1. Deixis Found in English Teaching and Learning 

 

Table 1 shows the data of deixis that found in English teaching and 

learning. From the table, the number of deixis used by the English teacher and 

students are included person deixis (168), place deixis (32), temporal deixis (11), 

discourse deixis (8), and social deixis (71). 

For the first part, the writer found that the most frequently part of deixis 

used by the teacher and students is person deixis (168 data). Generally, they used 

person deixis for plural second person (you, your). They refer to the students.  

Table 2. The data of Speech Acts 

 

No Kinds of Speech Acts ∑ 

1 Assertive Utterance 6 

2 Performative Utterance 3 

3 Verdictive Utterance 0 

4 Expressive Utterance 2 

5 Directive Utterance 25 

6 Commissive Utterance 0 

7 Phatic Utterance 6 

 Total Number 42 

 

Further, for the data of speech act, the researcher found that the most 

frequently type of speech acts is directive utterance. The total number of utterance 

No Kinds of Deixis ∑ 

1 Person deixis 168 

2 Place deixis 8 

3 Temporal deixis 32 

4 Discourse deixis 11 

5 Social deixis 71 

∑ 290 data 



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in directive utterances is 25 data. Generally, the teacher more often used them to 

give command, suggestion and request. In their daily activity in the classroom, the 

teacher more often speaks in front of the class than the students (teacher center), 

that is why the data more gathered from the utterance produced by the teacher. 

After doing the study, the writer got that in teaching and learning process 

of English in the classroom, the teacher and the students always use deixis and 

speech acts in their communication. 

By using speech act, the teacher or the students have some intention in 

producing the utterance, and the addressee interprets the utterance. In spite of 

occasional misunderstandings the hearer‟s interpretation often does match the 

speaker‟s intention, even when the speaker is joking or being sarcastic. 

The teacher or the students orally expects that his or her communicative 

intention will be recognized by the hearer. Both the speaker and listener are 

usually helped this process by the circumstances surrounding the utterance. These 

circumstances including other utterances are called the speech event. In many 

ways it is the nature of speech event that determines the interpretation of an 

utterance as performing a particular speech acts. 

 

CONCLUSION 

The writer can conclude that the teacher of English and eleventh grade 

students of language program at Islamic Integrated Senior High School Curup in 

the academic year of 2013/2014 used deixis in their daily activity at the 

classroom. However, the most frequently types of deixis used by them is person 

deixis. Therefore, The most dominant type of speech acts on English teaching and 

learning at Islamic Integrated Senior High School Curup in the academic year of 

2013/2014 is directive utterance. Generally, the teacher more often used them to 

give command, suggestion and request.They used deixis and speech acts almost in 

every moment. Because this class used teacher center, so the students used deixis 

and speech act only when they responded the teacher‟s question. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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Levinson, Stephen C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University 

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Marzulina, Leni. (2010). Lecturer’s Roles and Communicative Functions in 

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McCarty, M. (1991). Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers. Cambridge: 

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Nunan, David. (1992). Research Method in Language Learning: A textbook for 

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Renkema, J. (1993). Discourse Studies: An Introduction Textbook. Amsterdam: 

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Yule, George. (1996). Pragmatics: Oxford Introductions to Language Studies.  

Fourth Impressions. New York: Oxford University Press.