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ABSTRACT
In this article the theory of indexicality and its pragmatic factors will be analyzed. For the research materials were
taken from agricultural texts form English and Uzbek languages. First the theory has been explained and its usage and
pragmatic factors in linguists, then the materials have been analyzed and discussed. The examples taken from
textbooks and conference articles dedicated to agriculture. Then they have been compared and then given the results.
The similarities and differences in implication
of indexicals in Uzbek and English were provide with the author’s
conclusion at the end of the article.
KEYWORDS
Indexicality, pragmatics, agricultural text, indexicals, discourse.
INTRODUCTION
Humans need communication while they are alive. In
order to communicate successfully, we ought to be
able to convey information about people and things
around us. That is because information gained through
communication can motivate actions that bear upon
particulars. But in order to convey information about a
particular thing, one first needs to refer to it. When the
thing is there, at hand, when it belongs to the situation
of utterance and is perceptually available to the
speaker and her audience, it is usually possible to refer
to it directly. (Stojanovic I. 2020: 5) Referring in a
narratives and scientific texts relatively differs than
Research Article
PRAGMATIC FACTORS OF INDEXICALITY IN AGRICULTURAL TEXTS IN
UZBEK AND ENGLISH
Submission Date:
November 20, 2024,
Accepted Date:
November 25,2024,
Published Date:
November 30, 2024
Crossref doi
https://doi.org/10.37547/ajps/Volume04Issue11-30
Bozorova Munisa
Researcher of Samarkand State Institute of Foreign languages, Uzbekistan
Journal
Website:
https://theusajournals.
com/index.php/ajps
Copyright:
Original
content from this work
may be used under the
terms of the creative
commons
attributes
4.0 licence.
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one another. In this article we are going to investigate
the usage of indexicals in agricultural texts in English
and in Uzbek. The analysis of the usage of indexicals in
agricultural texts will be discussed. In order to analyze
the materials first the theory of indexicality and its
pragmatic features will be presentes through the
works of other linguists and scientists. Then the
collected materials will be discussed in the dicussion
section, explaining the frequently formed that have
been applied in agricultural texts. Analysis will be done
by comparing two different languages from the points
of pragmatics. All the findings will be reported in the
results and in the conclusion section.
METHODS
For explanation of the research materials were taken
from agricultural scientific texts in English and in
Uzbek. All the materials from Uzbek language were
taken from textbook name
d “Qishloq xo’jalik
melioratsiyasi” and the texts in English were taken
from “Climate Smart agriculture”, Journal of
Agriculture and Food Research, “Essentials of plant
breeding” ,other examples were taken from the
conference articles dedicated to agricultural issues. To
analyze
the
collected
materials
comparative-
typological method was used. Besides this discourse
method was used to discuss agricultural texts.
Meanings of natural language are very context-
dependent: one syntactic unit (morpheme, word,
phrase, sentence) often takes on different values
depending on the context in which it is used. This
variability has long been recognized as "the general
state of lexical meaning, each with its own meaning
and context.(Silverstein:2009 758)
Analytic philosophers worked too much on linguistics
and they contributed many finding on this with their
scientific studies. Many philosophers that say we
usually refer something while we are speaking and this
reference is the thing that we are going to point out.
This idea the was taken by linguists and were formed
as an idea of indexicality. Indexicality comes from Latin
meaning “pointing”.
Levinson points out that the topic of deixis, or as
philosophers usually prefer, indexical expressions (or
just indexicals), may be usefully approached by
considering how truth-conditional semantics deals
with certain natural language expressions. (Levinson,
S. C 1983:55)
Indexicality was first introduced by philosophers and
their ideas then were developed by Charles Pierse as
semiotic theory and he distinguished among iconic sign
relationships (signs by resemblance or likeness to their
semiotic targets),indexical sign relationships (signs of
spatiotemporal or other contiguity, including causal
connection to another object, to which they point),
and symbolic signs (implicit sign regularities,
depending on general classificatory conventions that
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any instance of the sign invokes in use). Pierce The idea
of indexicality was then developed by Michael
Silverstein and Fransoi Recanati and other linguists.
I.Stojanovic 2020:6)
In the theory of indexicality is usually considered as
semantic feature as Ch.Piere said It is not the language
alone, with its mere associations of similarity, but the
language taken in connection with the auditor’s own
experiential
associations
of
contiguity
which
determines for him what house is meant. It is requisite
then, in order to show what we are talking or writing
about, to put the hearer’s or reader’s mind into real,
active connection with the concatenation of
experience or of fiction with which we are dealing, and,
further to draw his attention to, and identify, a certain
number of particular points in such concatenation.
(Ch.Pierce 3.419)
However, while working with the text another
problem will arise as the meaning of the description is
not the same with the meaning of the reality. Recanati
explains this like indexicals use-conditional meaning is
not incompatible with descriptive content, in the sense
that one and the same expression can be endowed
with both. There are expressions which have a purely
use-conditional meaning and do not contribute to
truth-conditional content (Francois Recanati 2007: 95)
“In general [...] the social effects mediated by speech
are highly context-bound or indexical in character: they
are evaluated in relation to the context or situation at
hand, including those aspects of the situation created
by what has already been said or done. Either an
utterance is felt to be appropriate to the situation as
already understood, or it alters the context in some
recognizable way, transforming it into a situation of an
entirely different kind.” (Agha 2007: 14)
There are another names for indexicals. Jakobson
studies the indexical factor in verbal language in
‘Shifters, verbal categories and the Russian verb’ (1971
[1957]). The indexical function in verbal signs is carried
out by a special class of grammatical units he calls
‘shifters.’ As characterized by Jakobson, shifters are
‘symbol
-
indexes’ because their dominant aspect is
given in the combination of indexicality with
conventionality (Fludernik, M. 1991: 5).
B.J.Birner describer reports that the class of indexicals
includes deictics, anaphoric pronouns, and even tense
–
all of which are linguistic mechanisms for identifying
the intended meaning of the current expression
through its relationship to elements of the context of
utterance. In the case of tense, an event described in
the current utterance is “indexed” with respect to its
temporal relationship to the time of utterance, with
(for example) a simple past-tense form indicating that
the event described in the current utterance occurred
prior to that utterance. In the case of anaphoric
pronouns, discussed below, the referent of the current
pronoun is co-indexed with some previously evoked
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entity. In the case of deixis, a phrase is interpreted
relative to the time, location, or interlocutors of the
linguistic exchange in which it occurs, or relative to
other linguistic material in that same exchange.
(B.J.Birner 2012:114)
“Through indexicality
, every utterance tells something
about the person who utters it
–
man, woman, young,
old, educated, from a particular region, or belonging to
a particular group, etc.
–
and about the kind of person
we encounter
–
we make character judgements all the
time,
and labels such as ‘arrogant’, ‘serious’, ‘funny’,
‘self
-
conscious’, or ‘businesslike’ are based almost
exclusively on how people communicate with us. Every
utterance also tells us something about the utterance
itself. Is it serious or banter? Is this an anecdote, a joke,
an order, a request? Is the speaker sure/sincere/
confident of what s/he says? What kind of relationship
between the speaker and the hearer is articulated in
this utterance
–
is this a friendly or a hostile utterance?
And every utterance tells us something about the
social context in which it is being produced: is this a
formal or an informal occasion? Are things such as
social class, gender, ethnicity, or professional status
played out in the utterance? Are social roles reinforced
or put up for negotiation? Are social rules being
followed or broken? And so on. Indexical meaning is
what anchors language usage firmly into social and
cultural patterns.” (Blommaert 2005: 11–
12)
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The implication of indexicals have been found in
English and in Uzbek agricultural texts respectively.
Besides indicating the author of the action, indexicals
involve the personnel or the group of people who
worked on the research. In English it is not common to
refer the author with possessives like our and we
together, but it can be found in some articles. Pointing
the speaker with we-
“biz” is often replaced with its
possessive form “bizning” in Uzbek language.
However, implying biz should not be considered as less
important. They can substitute each other in the text.
Indicating second person is applied via imperatives in
English language, while the scientific style does not
permit implying the addressee in the agricultural text
in Uzbek, we have rarely found imperatives, instead
the authors use second person you-
“siz”. We need to
report that the form of “siz” in Uzbek include the
honorifics in it and together shows the respect to the
reader. Overall, in most cases the indexicals
demonstrating and indexing the main points are the
pr
onouns “this” “these” and other words such as
“consequently, therefore, due to” in English, in Uzbek
the alternatives are considered as “shu”, “ushbu”,
“quyidagi”. They put emphasis on the given part, in
other words, they show the attitude of the author to
the given theory.
Silverstein worked on the pragmatic indexing and said
that
indexicality
is
just
the
principle
of
contextualization of linguistic and other signs-in-use,
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seen as a component of the meaning of the occurring
sign-forms. Indexicality is revealed in the way that, by
degrees, linguistic and other signs point the users of
these signs to the specific enveloping conditions in
which they use them. Signs point to context in two
ways: indexical signs link users to contextual
conditions of which users have knowledge,
independent of the occurrence of the particular
indexical sign at issue; indexicals also link users to
contextual conditions that, for those users, come into
being only as a function of the occurrence of the
indexical sign at issue. (Silverstein 2009: 756)
According to the author in the text if the writer uses
the sign post which is known for both sides have idea
what is going on. In this point the usage of personal
pronouns comes to the stage. As in agricultural texts
the self reference is so rare but can be found:
1)
Relying on a statistical model allowing for
nonlinear effects of temperature on yield, I find that
maize yields would decrease by −4.2, −21.8 and −46.1%
around the trend, under uniform warming scenarios of
1 °C, 3 °C and 5 °C, respectively. I find that an increase of
6.6%/decade in maize yields is required to fully offset
the detrimental effects of a severe but still plausible 3
°C warming in the next three decades. (Climate smart
agriculture p 161).
The descriptive meaning of the indexical I in the
example provides the logical assumption of the
contexts to the reader and no more explanations are
needed to understand about the author.
But the usage of “we” is found more than “I” in the
agricultural texts:
2)
We examined the polyphenolic constituents in
twelve Chinese raspberries (B1
–
B12), out of which B1
raspberry showed high content of phenolics,
flavonoids and anthocyanins in total, compared to
other raspberry samples we collected. (Journal of
Agriculture and Food Research 12 (2023) 100603 1)
In Uzbek language indexical “I” –
men was not found
as the style does not allow as a speaker in scientific
texts, in order to reveal the author in the text the
writer involve “biz” which stands as “we” in
agricultural texts :
3)
Biz
Sama
rqand
viloyatining
sug’orish
eroziyasiga uchragan tipik bo’z tuproqlari sharoitida
yetishtirilgan kuzgi bug’doy doni tarkibidagi oqsil va
kleykovina miqdoriga tuproqqa іshlov berish usullari va
fosforli og’itlar meyorlarining tas’irini aniqladik. (5
-6-
okta
br respublika konferensiyasi to’plami TDAU_SF
564)
Indexical “we” forms as an inclusive and exlusive
forms. On the one hand “we” represents the only
speaker or the author itself. In this case the author
informs the reader that he accomplished the work
himself:
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4)
Here we have considered the food products’
shelf life as the convenience component’s attribu
te.
Journal of Agriculture and Food Research 12 (2023)
100588 8)
In some examples the authors may include more than
one person, for this reason the authors refer
themselves as we, in some cases they simply identify as
an adjective our:
5)
In our case study, although there was a higher
knowledge and preference for protein-rich and micro-
nutrient rich foods, the favorable cost, promotion by
the vendors, and accessibility drove consumers
towards the carbohydrate-rich and discretionary food
group. Journal of Agriculture and Food Research 12
(2023) 100588 8)
6)
Based on our findings we recommend the
following policy perspectives for improving the food
environment in LMICs. Journal of Agriculture and Food
Research 12 (2023) 100588 9)
In the example (5) the speaker involves himself as
representative besides that the author provides an
attention to his achievement. In the example (6) the
indexical “we” with the pronoun our indexes the
action, represent the findings emphasizing the results
of the action.
Indicatives assert nothing. They only serve to draw
attention to something, and if compared to verbs, they
would be considered as imperatives, such as be careful,
look there. Words like this or that ‘‘have a direct,
forceful action upon the nervous system, and compel
the hearer to look about him,’’ says Peirce, ‘‘and so
they, more than ordinary words, contribute towards
indicating what the speech is about.’’ (Ch.Pierce 3.485)
7)
Now suppose that the B locus shows no
dominance and the genotypic values are 50 for BB, 40
for Bb and 30 bb. (Essentials of plant breeding 80)
8)
Siz daraxtni shakl berish bilan kesishni bir
biridan farqlay olishingiz zarur. (5-6-oktabr respublika
konferensiyasi to’plami TDAU_SF 284)
In English the indexical you can rarely be found in
scientific texts related to agriculture, in the (7) given
extract the indexical “you” inferred implicitly, while in
Uzbek (8) the imperative sentence comes along with
indexical you -
“siz” .
Concerning the term ‘pronouns’ used for such words
as this or that, Peirce observes that nouns would be
more
appropriately
designated
as
‘‘pro
-
demonstratives’’ (3.419), as substitutes of indicators,
that is deictics. Terms like this or that are indexes with
the function of drawing attention to what one means
no differently from the expression attention or similar
cries. Terms like this or that refer to other words in
written discourse; in this case, their function is no
different from the relative pronouns who or which,
etc., nor from use of the letters of the alphabet to
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indicate the issue in question in a text (naturally on the
understanding that similar letters stand for the same
thing). These terms continue to function as indexes
that ‘‘de
-
algebrize’’ language (Silverstein 2009: 287).
9)
This book focuses on modern ways to improve
modern plants. (Essentials of plant breeding 5).
10)
Agromeliorativ tadbirlarga quyidagilar kiradi:
Yerni tekislash, ihota daraxtlar o‘tkazish, almashlab
ekishni joriy qilish, to‘g‘ri agrotexnik tadbirlar qo‘llash
va sho‘r yuvish. (Qishloq xo’jalik
melioratsiyasi 27)
11)
Vachellia trees also improve soil water
availability by reducing evapotranspiration [9].
Regarding all these properties, this species has been
considered a major tool for the restoration of
degraded ecosystems and water conservation of
bioclimates [10]. (Journal of Agriculture and Food
Research 12 (2023) 100566 1)
12)
Plantago lanceaeata.l. plantago major.l.
dorivor bo’lib ko’p ishlatiladi. Ushbu ikki tur juda ko’ p
uchrashi bilan ahamiyatlidir. ("Perspektivnыe zadachi
razrabotki i v
nedreniya innovatsionnыx texnologiy v
veterinarii i jivotnovodstve" mejdunarodnaya nauchno-
prakticheskaya
konferensiya
14-15
oktyabrya
konferensiya 726)
In the agricultural text in English this(9) focuses either
only the part that the author wants to emphasis
through the text, or can refer the idea (11) that was
adressed by him above.With the strict rule of scientific
stlye in Uzbek language pointing the part of the text is
represented with the aid of words as quyidagi,
shuningdek(10), in the example (12) the pronoun
“ushbu” –
this standing as a referense in the previously
given word combination and be the antecent of the
term assisting the reader to clarify and get easily of the
term that the author applied in the former sentence.
However, some scientists prefer to use different
references in their sentences “this”, “it” sometimes
“such”. In Uzbek scientific texts “u”, “bu” or “ushbu”
can be implied as reference for one antecedent
Furthermore, adverbs of place and time, etc., must also
be taken into consideration in relation to indexicality,
together with such expressions as the first, the last, the
seventh, the first part, etc., and prepositions and
prepositional phrases such as above, below, to the
right of, to the left of, etc. (2.289
–
2.290). Peirce also
observes that while terms that carry out an iconic
function in discourse
–
similarity, quality, etc.
–
may be
described, those, instead, with the function of index
escape description.
13)
Based on the previous studies, it is clear that
diversification in agricultural products has received
considerable attention as a way of enhancing
employment prospects [16], boosting income [5],
mitigating climate change [27], secure food supplies
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[28], and reduce the price volatility risk [29]. (Journal
of Agriculture and Food Research 12 (2023) 100592 2)
14)
Ayniqsa, so‘ngi yillarda yer resurslaridan
foydalanishni boshqarishdagi kamchiliklar va ulardan
samarali foydalanish va takror ishlab chiqarish uchun
moliyaviy resurslarning yetishmaganligi oqibatida
ma’lum darajada yer
lardan tizimsiz foydalanish,
qishloq
xo‘jaligi
yerlarining
esa
jiddiy
degradatsiyalashuviga olib keldi. (Iqlim o‘zgarishi
sharoitida yer resurslarini barqaror boshqarish
respublika ilmiy-amaliy seminar 117)
Illocutionary markers like the imperative mood, or
discourse particles such as 'well', 'still', 'after all',
'anyway', 'therefore', 'alas', 'oh', and so forth, fall into
this category. Thus the following utterances have the
same truth-conditional content, and are distinguished
only by the pragmatic indications they respectively
convey. But there are also expressions which have a
two-layered meaning. Fransoi recanati
15)
Consequently, the irregularities in extreme
precipitation events showed an upward trend globally
from 1901 to 2000 [5]. A similar increase in irregularities
in precipitation has also been confirmed at the country
level in the US, Europe, Australia, and Japan [4] and
regional levels in the northeast US, and the southeast
US [6]. (Journal of Agriculture and Food Research 12
(2023) 100626 1)
16)
Biz bunday munosabatlar uchun, quyidagilarsiz
xulosa chiqarishimiz mumkin emas 1) har xil tipdagi
tuproq darajasi va tarqalish masshtabi bo‘yicha
ma’lumotlar bazasi 2) Tuproq degradatsiyasining yer
mahsuldorligiga ta’sirini juda aniq uchastkalar bo‘yic
ha
aniqlash. (Iqlim o‘zgarishi sharoitida yer resurslarini
barqaror boshqarish respublika ilmiy-amaliy seminar
220)
The indication of pragmatic factors by indexing with
the assisstance of words like consequently(15),
therefore and due to can be applied in agricultural
texts. These words shows the attitude of the author to
the given idea. In Uzbek some scientists argue that
expressing attitude towards the theory is not possible.
However, the implication of words ayniqsa, mumkin
emas, xolbuki, haqiqatda (16) can actually demonstrate
the purpose or the attitude of the speaker.
CONCLUSION
In the conclusion part we can say that indexicality can
be found in every sphere of life and in science where
the author are requested to explain everything in short
term is not an exception. First the theory of indexicals
was introduced by philosophers then it came to the
stage of interest with the help of semantic
investigations. Many scientists including Levinson
state that indexicals are mostly semantic feature,
however it has some pragmatic point too. The idea of
indexicality first introduced in linguistics by Charles
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Pierce then it has been developed by Silverstein and
others. In this article we used the reports of linguists
like Ch.Pierce, M.Silverstein, F.Recanati, Isidora
Stojanovich and others. They indicate that only some
words can be indexicals like I, here, now , actually, the
usage of these indexicals differs in agricultural texts.
Instead of I scientists in most cases apply “we” in both
inclusively and exclusively. In Uzbek language the
pronoun “biz” stands as an equivalent to “we”. In
some examples we found that imperatives can give not
only order but also some regulations in the text in
English. On the contrary, in Uzbek we have not found
imperatives they are represented with the help of the
pronoun you “siz” and one more interesting thing is
that it comes as honorifics too. Other points of
referring mostly takes in the discourse and it helped
the authors to enumerate and gather the ideas at the
same time it helped the reader to be involved and
prevented from misunderstanding. In the usage of
terms it is not easy for the authors to put the problem
clearly. In that case some indexicals like “this”,
“these”, “consequently”, “therefore” in English,
“ushbu”, “quyidagi”, “ayniqsa” in Uzbek assist the
scientist to clarifying and pointing exact theory in the
text. While analyzing of agricultural texts we have
found that indexicals can show some pragmatic factors
as informative, discussing, cognitive, argumentative
and explanatory.
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