Perspectivization in fiction: a deictic study of Wole Soyinka´s "Ake"

Résumé

The study of linguistics of literary discourse is a recent development in the global spread. Until 1982, efforts made in the seventies in this direction were by literary critics such as Chatman (1978), Ehrlich (1990), Fludernik (1993) and Mey (2000). No work that we are aware of has specifically studied how characters in fiction have been focalized through deictics alone. The common trend is that deictic features are taken along with other linguistic elements. Given the high place deictics occupy in human communication, it is essential to isolate them for study to explore the degree at which they influence character projection in fiction. This work will therefore not only add to the material on this area, it will also facilitate character appreciation in fictive works. The text, Ake, is extensively studied, and only the deictics that occur in conversations between characters are sampled. Examples of deictic usage are picked randomly to exemplify deictics of time, place and time as they occur in the text.