This paper aims to examine qualitatively and quantitatively the use of deixis in a political speech, guided by Halliday’s (1985/1994) Systemic Functional Grammar theory of language. The data examined here is a message delivered, on 10 February 2019, by the President of the Republic of Cameroon to the youth of his country, on the commemoration of the 53rd edition of the country’s National Youth Day. The message, in its English version, is retrieved from the official website of the Presidency of the Republic of Cameroon. Specifically, the study sets out to determine the different types of deictic resources used by Paul Biya in his message to the Cameroonian youth, and the frequencies of Paul Biya’s usage of these deictic resources in this political speech. The study reveals that Paul Biya employed different types of deictic resources including 103 personal deixis (52.2 %), 17 spatial deixis (9.4%), 21 temporal deixis (11.7%), 30 social deixis (16.7%), and 8 discourse deixis (10%). In terms of frequency of usage of these deictic resources, the study also revealed that personal deixis were the most used category of deixis in President Paul Biya’s message to the Cameroonian youth and suggested that this reflects the President’s power and dominance over his audience, but also his desire to involve this audience in his decisions, as a sign of his sensitivity towards them.
Keywords: Cameroonian youth, Deixis, Paul Biya., Stylistics, deictic resources, political speech
