A Pragmatic Analysis of Personal Deixes in Lyrical Poetry: Ezra Pound's Lyrics "Girl" and "A Virginal"

Deixes belong to the field of both semantics and pragmatics as they lie in the edge of these two fields. Pragmatically, they are concerned with the relationship between the structure of a language and the contexts. The present work aims at analyzing the use of deixes using Levinson’s (1983) and Yule's (1996) concept of deixes, where the latter maintained that the referents of the deixes cannot be realized apart from the context where they are used. He added that the contextual information of certain utterances involves information about the participants (the speaker and the addressee), the time and the place. Consequently, a qualitativedescriptive approach has been adopted to meet the objective of the study which reads, “examining the 1 and 2 person deixes in two of Pound’s lyrics ‘Girl’ and ‘A Virginal’. The study has revealed that knowledge about context affects the manifestation of the referents of deixes and uncovers the ambiguity of understanding the poetic extracts. Pragmatically speaking, the referents of the pronouns cannot be detected in isolation from the context where they are used. It has also been found that the context and the interpretation of the literary text can help in determining the referents of the deixes in terms of person, number and gender. Finally, a great relation appears when the referent of the deixis is realized in accordance with its context.


Introduction
Both semantics and pragmatics deal with the study of meaning. Semantics concentrates on studying the relation between word and sentence meanings while pragmatics deals with how contexts shape meaning. Pragmatics displays that understanding utterances does not only depend on the linguistic knowledge, but also on the shared knowledge about the context i.e., the status of the people, the intention of the speaker, the place and time involved in the context of an utterance. Pragmatic awareness is regarded as one of the most challenging aspects of language learning, and it often comes through experience. Deictic expressions are considered the key link between the people involved in the utterance, time frame and place. Deictic is a Greek word, meaning to show whereas deixis is a word used in both pragmatics and linguistics to refer to a process whereby the meaning of a word depends on the knowledge of the context of the utterance. Deictic expressions can be realized in all types of texts, including literature and particularly poetry. Such expressions need to be analyzed pragmatically to know their hidden meanings (Crystal,1987).
This paper aims at examining how knowledge about context affects the realization of their referents through identifying the occurrence of the 1 st and 2 nd person deixes in two of Pound's lyrics 'Girl' and 'A Virginal'. The study is of a significant value as it shows a sufficient survey of the concepts of deixes and pragmatics to enrich researchers' knowledge about these concepts and make them understand the importance of context in identifying the meaning of the deictic expressions and uncovering the ambiguity in understanding poetic extracts.

Pragmatics
Pragmatics is that branch of linguistics that deals with meaning in context. The main focus of pragmatics is the person's capability of deriving meanings from particular kinds of speech to realize what a speaker refers to and the relation between the new information and what happened before. It further helps to understand the speech by resorting to past knowledge about the topic and the speaker (Charles,1998). Levinson (1983, p. 6) stated that "pragmatics is the study of those relations between language and context that are grammaticalized, or encoded in the structure of a language." Pragmatics is the study of meaning that systematically relies on the use of language. The principle subjects of pragmatics are: presupposition, implicature, deixes and speech acts. Crystal (1987, p. 120) stated that "pragmatics studies the factors that govern our choices of language in social interactions and the effects of our choice on others." From this point of view, pragmatics not only deals with what is said, but also with the factors behind it and the reasons that make the speakers or the writers choose a specific expression rather than another in certain contexts.
Pragmatics, according to Yule (1996), studies what a speaker means. Speakers must have the ability to convey their meaning depending on the shared assumptions and knowledge about the things they are communicating about. In this context, pragmatics shows the contribution of language content to overcome ambiguity. He added (2010) that pragmatics deals with the implied meaning, or how to recognize the meaning of the utterance even if the intended meaning is not directly said or written. That is why; the writers or the speakers have to rely on the shared presuppositions and knowledge of the communication subject.
To sum up, the use of language in communication cannot be disconnected from pragmatics. However, pragmatics offers some expressions which help the speaker to avoid any sort of ambiguity. Deixes are one of these expressions. Understanding the intended meaning of the utterance depends on word meaning, context and the prior knowledge about the intended subject. Pragmatics deals with how context affects the listeners or readers in interpreting the meaning of the utterance.  Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams (2003) argued that context does not refer to only the place, identity of the speaker and listener, but also to thing and its surrounding world. Context refers to the circumstances which constitute the setting of the event or speech through which the utterance can be understood. Yule (2010) mentioned two types of context. The first one is the linguistic context, i.e., the co-text, and the second one is the physical context. The linguistic context refers to the set of words, phrases or sentences that surround the co-text; it has a great deal of effect on what one thinks a word probably means. The second context is the physical context. People understand what they read and hear through the physical context; especially the place and time at which the linguistic expressions are mentioned. Fundamentally, physical context indicates where and when events are happened. In short, context can express speakers' or writers' intended meanings.

Deixes
Deixis (deictic) is a term found in linguistics; it refers to the features of language that denote personal pronouns, time, and the place of the situation where the utterance takes place. It is the process of pointing through language and its denotation changes from one discourse to another. That is; its meaning can be derived from that situation itself (Crystal,1998).

Types of Deixes
Deixes are of three types: person deixes, time deixes and place deixes. Person deixes, according to Levinson (1983), are concerned with encoding the role of participants in the speech event. In this case, the word 'participants' refers to the speaker as well as the addressee; i.e., when the speaker interacts with the addressee. According to Yule (1996), person deixes are of three categories that are exemplified by different pronouns, such as 'I' for the first person, 'you' for the second person, and 'he, she, it' for the third person. Levinson (1983) contended that the category of first person deixes is the grammatical referent of the speaker to himself. Sometimes, the first person is used not only to refer to the speaker, but also to both the speaker and the addressee or speaker and the group. For example 'we' is a 1 st person pronoun which refers to the speaker and the addressee. Yule (1996) provided what is called the inclusive and exclusive use of the pronoun 'we'. The first use denotes the speaker and others apart from the addressee while the term exclusive means the speaker and the addressee. Levinson (1983) confirmed that the first person pronouns include the following: ('I/ me' are for the singular referent and 'we/us' are for plural referents). Moreover, the second person 'you' is used to refer to one addressee or more. It is only one pronoun which is used to refer to both singular and plural referents. The third person of deixes is used to refer to neither the speaker nor to the addressee. There are particular pronouns that refer to this category, such as: 'he/him, she/her, it' are for singular referents and 'they/them' are for plural referents. The second type of deixes is place deixes or spatial deixes, which are used to describe the location of the referents mentioned in the speech. The third type of deixes is time deixes, or temporal deixes. It denotes the expressions that are used to refer to a point in time when the speaker is speaking (Gjergji, 2015).

Literature Review
There are numbers of studies concerning the pragmatic analysis of deixes in various contexts. Some of them used the political speeches as data of analysis while others used some selected novels or poems. In 2010, Al-Fikasari analyzed the use of person deixes in Obama's speech both stylistically and pragmatically, while Sari (2015)  mentioned studies used nearly the same approach while dealing with deixes; however, their data was different. They all examined the used deixes, their frequencies, their dominant types, and the reason behind this dominance.

The Adopted Model
According to Yule (1996), deixes are divided into three kinds: person deixes, temporal deixes, and spatial deixes. Person deixes are classified into three types, 1 st person, 2 nd person and 3 rd person. Levinson (1983, p.17) clarified that "deixis refers to the phenomenon wherein understanding the meaning of certain words and phrases in an utterance requires contextual information. Words or phrases that require contextual information to convey meaning are deictic."

Reference
Deixes cannot be studied apart from the words that are used to refer to persons or things. To understand the intended meaning of the speaker or writer, the listener has to know or realize the referent. The reference is the main goal of the speaker or writer; that is why, the writer has to use certain linguistic forms to identify the person or the thing communicated about to grasp the meaning of the utterance. Person deixes deal with encoding the role of persons who are involved in the utterance. Person deixes are related to the person grammatical categories. It includes the following: 1. 1 st person deixes, such as: 'I, me, myself, my, mine', which refer to the speaker as a participant. 2-1 st person deixes, such as: 'we, us, ourselves, our, ours', which refer to the speaker and referents. It is of following two sub-types: a-Inclusive 1 st person deixes, which refer to a group including the addressee. b-Exclusive 1 st person deixes, which refer to a group without the addressee.
3-2 nd person deixes, such as 'you, yourself, yourselves, your, yours', which refer to the addressee who can be one or more than one person (Yule, 1996).

Anaphora and Cataphora
Yule (1996) confirmed that anaphora is a process by which the referent of the pronoun is introduced before mentioning the pronoun. The referent is called the antecedent and the first utterance is called antecedent. Cataphora is different from anaphora as the former involves the use of personal pronouns before the first mentioning of referents.

Methodology of the Study
The research adopted a qualitative descriptive method by applying George Yule's (1996) classification of deixes in his book pragmatics and Livenson's viewpoint about deixes. The study focuses on the use of first and second personal pronouns, their referents, and the role of context in uncovering the deictic meaning in Ezra Pound's lyrics 'Girl', and 'A Verginal'.

Data of the Study
According to Hornby (1987), lyrics is a kind of poetry that is used to express the personal thoughts and feelings. It is originated in ancient Greek literature, and is composed for singing to give an inspiration for life. A lyrics is a short emotional poem having a song quality. It is written in the first person, and expresses the writer's emotions. The selected lyrics in this study is of Ezra Pound. He is the poet who is responsible for endorsing a modernist aesthetic movement in poetry. He became a fascist collaborator after travelling to Italy during the Second World War. His contributions to poetry started with his imagism promulgation. He was born in 1885. He studied for two years at the college, but left it in 1905. He taught at Wabash College, then, he travelled to Spain where he became interested in Chinese and Japanese poetry. In 1914, he married Dorothy Shakespeare and became the editor of the Little Review in London in 1917. His works are Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920, and his 800page epic poem, The Cantos .

Introduction to the Poem 'Girl'
The tree has entered my hands, The sap has ascended my arms, The tree has grown in my breast- "Girl" is the poem which has two interpretations. The first one is considered an imaginary poem where the poet was the narrator. He held the tree in his hand and made it possible for its essence to invade him. As the tree grew downward and outward, it could escapulate to the one whom he loves.
The second interpretation comes from the Greek mythology, which is about the story of Dophe and Apolla. Dophe did not love Apollo, yet the latter loved her. She asked her father to turn her into a tree so that Apollo would not recognize her. As her father accepted to turn her, her skin changed to dark, her hair turned leaves and her arms became branches. Later the branches shrank away yet Apollo promised to take care of the tree and decorate the leader's head with the leaves of that tree. Thus, through power, he rendered the tree green (Alexander,1979).

Introduction to the Poem 'A Virginal'
No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately. I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness, For my surrounding air hath a new lightness; Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly And left me cloaked as with a gauze of aether; As with sweet leaves; as with subtle clearness. Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her. No, no! Go from me. I have still the flavour, Soft as spring wind that's come from birchen bowers. Green come the shoots, aye April in the branches, As winter's wound with her sleight hand she staunches, Hath of the trees a likeness of the savour: As white their bark, so white this lady's hours.
'A Virginal' is a poem which was published in 1912. It refers to a small musical instrument used by girls in the 16 th and 17 th centuries. The poem takes the form of a Petrarchan sonnet. It contains fourteen lines and consists of two parts. It displays the story of a man who loved a young virgin and who devoted himself for her to the extent that he cannot speak to another woman. The speaker in this lyrics is a man who is screaming at a woman, because he already has his own virgin lover who has "bound [him] straitly." He mentioned that he will not love another woman, then, he described his love, the magic surrounding her, and her effects on him. He could not accept any other women because according to him, any woman would not be as good as his virgin girl (Alexander,1979).

Data Analysis
The analysis of the two poems under study will be displayed in accordance with the objectives and steps mentioned in the methodology. The first step will be figuring out the person deixes in 'Girl'. After that, the referents of these deixes and their frequencies of occurrence will be specified in separate tables followed by an elaboration about the effect of contexts on realizing these deixes.   Pound used the two kinds of personal deixes: 1 st person deixis as represented by the use of the possessive form 'my', which has the frequency of 40% while 10% is for the use of 1 st person objective case 'me'. He further used the 2 nd person deixis equally as the 1 st person deixis, i.e., the frequency of the 2 nd person deixis 'you' is also 50%.

Table 1 1 st and 2 nd Person Deixes in 'Girl'
The interpretation of the meaning and the assignment of the referents of both the 1 st and the 2 nd person deixes depends on the interpretation of the overall meaning of the lyrics as well as on one's awareness of its context. As this lyrics has two interpretations, each interpretation has a different context than the other. The referents of the two kinds of pronouns are different as shown in Table 2. Pound used cataphora in the first stanzas. He used the 1 st person deixis without mentioning who was the narrator. One can categorize the narrator or the one involved in the context according to the two interpretations of the chosen lyrics. However, in the second stanza, Pound used anaphoric reference as he used the pronouns after identifying the nouns being referred to. Besides, the 1 st person deixes according to the first interpretation have a male connotation and the 2 nd person deixes have a female connotation. However, according to the second interpretation, both the 1 st and the 2 nd person deixes have a female connotation. Me (L.4) / 5 Me (L.5) /  In 'A Virginal', Pound set his poem about a man. Thus, the poem was written from the viewpoint of that man who was a narrator and lover at the same time. The man was describing his virgin beloved. He used the 1 st person deixis as he was describing his feeling. As for the woman, who was a third person, she was not within the limit of this study. The addressee was not there in the context. From the pronouns used, one can deduce that his beloved, i.e., the addressee was not involved in the situation and she thus appeared as a 3 rd person in the description. Thus, 100% is the frequency of the use of 1 st person deixis in contrast with the 2 nd person deixis.
In the first line, Pound used the 1 st person deixes 'me' and 'I' without first mentioning the referents; therefore, the reader of the lyrics will feel confused whether the one involved in the lyrics is the poet himself or a certain figure, and whether these 'me' and 'I' have male of female referents. Later, after going through the whole poem, one can know that the 1 st person pronoun refers to a man talking about his virgin beloved and the reason behind leaving her in spite of the fact that he was connected with her supernaturally or spiritually.

4-Conclusions
It has been found that the context and the interpretation of the literary text can help determining the referents of the deixes. A great relation appears between realizing the referents of the deixes and their contexts. This outcome can be manifested while grasping the referents of the deixes in both lyrics under analysis. The personal deixes in the 'Girl' appear to have two different referents depending on how the lyrics is interpreted and on the context of each lyrics. Moreover, the gender of the referent can be manifested through the context. Pound used the 1 st person pronoun more than the 2 nd person pronouns in both lyrics. This reflects that the poet is the dominant of the context whether he is involved or not in the context. He wrote his lyrics from the viewpoint of the speaker. He intended to create characters in his lyrics relying on the 1 st person actor. In addition, personal deixes show gender distinctions and mark a number of overlapping instances in gender realization; a problem that is best solved by resorting to the shared knowledge of the context.