Die deiktiese ruimte as struktuurmiddel in die Afrikaanse prosa

The hypothesis of this thesis is that the prose text is a means of communication, a linguistic utterance (message) produced by a person, the speaker or narrator, and addressed to another person (the reader or narratee). In such a text the utterance has meaning in a given context, this context is created by the speaker or narrator and the reader reconstructs this context by the interpretation of the speaker's reference to person, place and time the deictic elements. This thesis has tried to determine in which way the deictic context in prose is given structure in the text. By reconstructing and interpreting the deictic context in eight shorter Afrikaans prose texts and a novel we determined that this deictic context is a given structure in the text and released from the text by the reader's interpretation of the narrator's references to the speaker, persons, the spatiotemporal context and activities. The reader determines this deictic context by: a) identifying the egocentric speaker; b) identifying and localizing references to the spatiotemporal context; c) identifying all references to person and d) the interpretation of implications in the linguistic utterance. The reader's interpretation of this deictic context leads to an interpretation of the implicated message of the text, thus completing the communication process of the literary text. It has become evident that while reading prose it is of the utmost importance to make a difference be tween narrator and focalizer to determine the egocentric speaker; that references to persons and the spatiotemporal context are to be interpreted from the viewpoint of the egocentric speaker and that implications in the text can be devided into three categories: implications in the preliminary text (title, motto, etc.), deictic implications and standard linguistic implications. The defining and restructuring of this deictic context in prose texts is valuable in that it is a method for the critical reading of prose; leads to an interpretation of the text; accentuates the integration of text elements; gives lead to a metatextual reading of the text; is a method to differentiate between genres; establishes the communication process between text and reader and is of importance when evaluating the text.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Afrikaans and Netherlandic Studies

Year dc:date.issued

1987

Author dc:creator

• Anker, Johan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Snyman, Henning

Language dc:language.iso

afr

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/22488

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/22488