English deixis used by English native speakers and students of Widya Mandala University in their oral interaction

Pragmatics includes a broad area of language. One of the topics discussed in the pragmatics is deixis. The reason why the writer chose deixis was because it is a new thing for the writer. In addition, the writer did not find many studies concerning deixis in Indonesia. Deixis usually refers to linguistic components of a discourse that gain their specific meaning from the discourse situation. The word deixis comes from the Greek word deiktikos which means "to indicate". Deixis can be defined as reference by means of an expression whose interpretation is relative to the linguistic or extra linguistic context of the utterance, such as who is speaking, to whom, what status the interaction participants have, what relation they have, the time or place of speaking, the gestures of the speaker, or the current location in the discourse. Since deixis is closely related to utterances made by a speaker, the writer chose conversation as her data. To get the English conversation, the writer recorded a conversation spoken by two native English speakers with students at the Self-Access Conversation Club at Widya Mandala University on September 20th , 2003. The purpose of their visit was to give students opportunity to practice English with the native speakers. Therefore, there are three research questions that the writer wanted to analyze in this study. First, what deixis are used by English native speakers and students at the Self-Access Conversation Club. Second, whether those deixis are used correctly or not. And the third, why such deixis are used by English native speakers and students the way they are. To support this study, the writer uses deictic theory. This study is content analysis. The research instrument was the writer herself. She recorded the conversation by using a handy cam and a tape recorder. The writer found that English native speakers and students used the three kinds of deixis: person deixis, place deixis, and time deixis. Most of the three deixis were used correctly although there were still some deixis that were not used correctly either by the native speakers or the non-native speakers. And since deixis is a reference that refers to the surrounding situation, the writer concluded that those deixis were used as reference