A cognitive analysis of the deictic expression here in oral and in multimodal data

Abstract

The aim of this research is to verify the prototypical and non-prototypical uses of the deictic “here” in oral and in multimodal data, using C-ORAL-BRASIL and TEDx talking snippets (from YouTube). This research dialogs with studies on deixis in a traditional perspective (BENVENISTE, 1977, 1988), Construcional (TEIXEIRA; OLIVEIRA, 2012) and with studies of the same phenomena in a Cognitive Linguistics perspective (MARMARIDOU, 2000). More specifically, we analyze, from a multimodal point of view, the gesture-speech integration. (MCNEILL; CASSELL; LEVY, 1993); (AVELAR e FERRARI, 2017). From a theoretical point of view, we start with the concepts of Metaphor (LAKOFF e JOHNSON, 1980) and Idealized Cognitive Models (LAKOFF, 1987). The methodology that was used in this research consisted in selecting two audio samples from C-ORAL-Brasil and three video samples from TEDx talking’s. After select the samples, qualitative analyses were carried out. The result of these analyses revealed that the prototypical use of the deictic as space locative occurs in both contexts (oral and multimodal). Additionally, the occurrence of “here” as a discursive marker also occurs in both contexts. Nevertheless, in the multimodal context, this use is not accompanied by the prototypical gestures “point down”, proposed by other studies. We also observe that the metaphorical occurrence of the deictic, more specifically of the metaphor “TIME IS SPACE” and “IDEAS ARE OBJECTS”, occurs only in the multimodal context.