DEICTIC SPACE OF AMERICAN POETIC SPEECH

Abstract

The article is devoted to methods of analyzing poetic works through the prism of the functioning of deictic units that are related to the content of the text, subordinate to it, and directly act as indicators of the author's individual style and allow perceiving the poetic text as a certain reality. The authors emphasize that it is the poetic text that allows the most complete disclosure of the hidden meanings of language units, in particular, those that act as deictic markers. The historical evolution of the concept of "deixis" is traced; it is established that it means an indication of the meaning or function of a linguistic unit expressed by lexical and grammatical means. Special attention is focused on the potential of pronouns, as deictic signs, to act as means of reference. The opinion is expressed that, unlike the cognitive approach, which is focused on creating a model of knowledge representation embodied in the category of a pronoun in a poetic text, the semiotic approach is aimed at explaining the process of creating a sense and new meanings, taking into account the symbolic nature of the pronoun. The authors prove that the description of space in a poetic text has its own specificity: it can be narrowed or expanded according to the author's vision for the most adequate realization of their intention. The text has a graphic space characterized by reality, as well as a semantic space with subtexts and allusions. One of the most important functions of the artistic space seems to be the indication of the characters’ location. This function is implemented mainly with the help of demonstrative pronouns. Thus, indicative words, pronouns in particular, belong to the key language signs that indicate the spatial and temporal coordinates of the poetic text. In addition, deictic words perform the function of concretizers of the action’s duration in time and space dimensions.