Deixis in Saudi Women’s Empowerment Speech

Abstract

The study aims to explore deixis in public speech on Saudi women’s empowerment, delivered by significant Saudi politicians, including Princess Reema bint Bandar Al Saud, Princess Haifa bint Mohammed Al Saud, the legal consultant Shaihana Al Azzaz, and the Minister Dr Majed Al Kasabi. A mixed-method approach was employed to obtain the findings. A qualitative method is employed to identify deixis types and subcategories, while descriptive quantitative methods are used to measure deixis frequency. The results show that all speakers employed some or all of the person, time, place, and social deixis, along with their subcategories, to highlight Saudi women’s social position in the past and present, as well as to describe the plan they carried out to develop the women’s transformation and empowerment project. The most commonly used deictic expressions are person deixis, and the least used one is place or spatial deixis.