Deixis of Psychology of Money Book

Abstract

This research examines the use of deixis within Morgan Housel's The Psychology of Money regarding the way language crafts narrative, produces author-reader relation, and constructs financial knowledge. Based on Levinson's (1983) personal, temporal, spatial, discourse, and social typology of deixis, this work is also informed by ten contemporary pragmatic hypotheses in researching the deictic terms' role in behavioral finance books. The study employs a qualitative descriptive design, utilizing document analysis to find and classify deixis throughout the book. Every instance of deictic action is examined not only by category but also by pragmatic function, i.e., to facilitate emotional rapport, build credibility, and facilitate cognitive accessibility. By close reading, it can be observed that temporal and personal deixis (i.e., "I," "you," "we," "now," "then") are employed to suffuse the text and narrative proximity and reflective engagement are created with them. Theoretically, deixis is not viewed as a grammatical problem anymore but as a rhetorical strategy for enabling stance-taking, alignment of the audience, and narrative engagement (Mäkinen et al., 2024; Holmes & Kim, 2022). Evidence justifies the use of deixis with the objective of organizing discourse, enhancing moral framing, and bridging psychological distance between reader and author.The research contributes to applied pragmatics and discourse analysis of finance in identifying deixis as a strategic language device in constructing public knowledge about money and behavior.