Pragmatization of spatial deixis in multimodal spoken discourse

Adopting the framework of multimodal discourse analysis, the study explores the pragmatization of spatial deixis in first-person perspective utterances in monologues. It aims to reveal the possible discourse construal patterns, which contribute to enhancing the pragmatic potential of spatial deixis. Following the postulates of cognitive, linguistic, and gestural approaches to spatial deixis, the study develops a multi-dimensional framework encompassing ontological, functional, and multimodal dimensions of spatial deixis pragmatization. It further identifies their pragmatic effects in the collected corpus (111 minutes long comprising 725 clauses in the first-person perspective and 1959 cases of co-speech gesture) featuring 147 clauses with spatial deixis and 259 cases of co-speech gesture use. In ontological dimension, the deictic markers expressing the coordinate «here' display high potential for pragmatization since they more frequently construe farther space. In functional dimension, pragmatization in less common with a quarter of deictic markers being pragmatized. Meanwhile, in multimodal dimension, pragmatic gestures are used far more frequently than deictic or representational gestures with spatial deixis markers, which evidences of high pragmatic potential of multimodal spatial construal. The results show that pragmatization is both multi-dimensional and scaled; additionally, each of the three dimensions contributes differently to enhancing spatial deixis pragmaticity in multimodal discourse. The study paves the way for an integrated cognitive, linguistic, and multimodal view of pragmaticity in discourse, which helps scale the pragmaticity effects in different discourse types.