Knowing Is Belonging: Recognitional Deixis and Emergence of Common Ground in Religious Conversion

Abstract

This article explores the situated usage of recognitional deixis, a prominent feature of the religious register of the Catholic community of Mano, Guinea. Recognitional deixis is understood to be the marking of referents as known and recognizable by the interlocutors, typically belonging to their common ground. While deictic markers are known to reflect a specific speaker-hearer-object configuration, I suggest reversing the indexical relationship and claim that instead of indexing contextual relationships (context presupposition), deictic markers rather project them in a performative fashion (context creation). In the study in question dealing with the marking of common ground by recognitional deixis, what gets projected is a presupposition of shared knowledge. Because of the dialogic orientation of recognitional deixis, as a consequence of presupposition projection, the speaker and the addressees emerge as knowledge-sharing co-insiders. This, in turn, contributes to a performative creation of a community of co-insiders—a religious community sharing religious knowledge.