The Acquisition Of The Tense In English Indirect Reported Speech: From The Perspective Of The Deixis Theory

Tense differs from language to language. It is not only an everlasting topic inthe field of grammatical research, but also an important and difficult point forlanguage teaching and learning. In the past thirty years, tense acquisition gainspopularity in the field of second language acquisition. Many scholars hope tofacilitate language teaching by the way of studying the essence and rules of tenseacquisition. However, many researches focus on the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis. Andresearches on tense in reported speech are rare.Since Bühler(1934) put forward “Deixis Theory”, it has been widely employedon daily conversation, news reports and novels researches. But it has been used to dogrammatical researches rarely. Even though some studies probed it from theperspective of the grammatical research, they only gave some theoretical analysis.And there is no relevant empirical research. Thus, based on the following threeresearch questions, this thesis aims to explore the tense acquisition in Englishindirect reported speech from the perspective of the deixis theory by the ChineseEFL learners through an empirical research.(1) Do the usages of the deictic terms (deictic and non-deictic usages) affectthe tense backshift in English indirect reported speech?(2) Does the language proficiency level affect the tense backshift in Englishindirect reported speech?(3) Do the interactive effects between the usages of the deictic terms and thelanguage proficiency level affect the tense backshift in English indirect reportedspeech significantly?According to the research purpose and questions, this present study employsthe factorial design of2*2*3. Based on the two kinds of usages of the deictic terms,two language proficiency levels are involved, including120subjects, among ofwhich60subjects from Grade One, Anhua No.1middle school in Hunan province as the lower level group,60subjects from the postgraduate students who have passedTEM-8of Sichuan International Studies University as the higher level group, thisthesis mainly explores the tense backshift of three basic grammatical structures: thesimple present tense, the simple past tense, the simple future tense in declarativesentences changing from direct speech into indirect reported speech in an immediatereport way. Based on90valid answer sheets, some major findings after data analysisare as follows:(1) There is a significant difference in the tense backshift in English indirectreported speech according to the different usages of the deictic terms.(2) There is a significant difference in the tense backshift in English indirectreported speech between subjects from the lower level group and subjects from thehigher level group.(3) The interactive effects between the usages of the deictic terms and thelanguage proficiency level don’t affect the tense backshift in English indirectreported speech significantly.Finally, based on the findings, some pedagogical implications about teachingEnglish indirect reported speech are put forward. Limitations of the present study andsuggestions for further studies are also given.