162 Douglas J. Glick
APPROACHING A DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION FROM AN
INDEXICAL PERSPECTIVE
Any connection between the spoken or the written and some aspect of the interactional
context in which it occurs belongs to the realm of indexical function. In contemporary work,
it is the indexical approach to discursive constructions that has been the more common one;
consider, as but a single, if prevalent, example, the search to discover regular connections
between language and identity and their implications for relative power relations. The focal
discursive construction here has been explored above in terms of the causal propositions that
commonly appear within the verbal practice of talking (here, writing) about the problem of
school violence in Israel. The argument above, of course, was that a denotational approach
that focuses on (causal) propositions as constitutive elements in discursive constructions is a
legitimate one.^71 The question posed in this section, however, explores how these (causal)
propositions are overlappingly linked to aspects of the social contexts in which they are
produced. What then does the social indexical life of this particular discursive construction
look like?
Consider another way in which the dominant political ideology of Israel constrains the
focal discursive construction. In so doing, we can document an indexical influence and, at the
same time, show the unavoidable interdependency between a denotational and indexical
approach to discursive constructions. In theory as in practice, to make assumptions about one,
as we will see, is to dialectically create the other.
In human language, indexical and denotational functions overlap. All propositions are
unavoidably uttered or written in contexts and, as such, they are made meaningful at least in
part by being related to aspects of those surrounding contexts. With that in mind, recall the
multiple reflexive roles played by democratic ideology. This ideology brings additional
support to the focal construction, albeit now from the indexical perspective. Causal
propositions about this social problem are often grounded as ̳positions‘ (on an issue), and
thus as identity markers, with respect to this ideology. A proposition about cause, from the
indexical perspective, is not merely a true or false proposition about explanatory cause.
Rather, given typical ̳positions‘, conventionally equated issues and the metaphorical spread
of the discourse itself across them, propositions about different issues can be equated as
general indexical signs of a particular kind of identity.
The metaphorical equivalence from the causal sources in this issue to the same sources in
other issues creates a second-order indexical identity that falls along a continuum from
(politically) conservative to liberal. Recalling Table 1 above, ̳less control‘ by any of the
causal forces on the youth, his peers or any of the active agents or institutions indexes a
certain political liberalness in the speaker, whereas ̳more control‘ along these lines indexes a
(^71) Discursive constructions are relatively constituted by both overlapping denotational and indexical aspects. An
approach that focuses specifically on ̳causal propositions‘, however, is not likely to be a productive one in all
cases. It varies with the nature of the verbal practice under study. The one being studied here, as argued above
(see fns. 4 and 8), lends itself to such a starting point. In contrast, consider the verbal practice of ̳picking
somebody up‘ (i.e. in a bar). In this case, it seems unlikely that one would find regularly repeating ̳(causal)
propositions‘ as a recurrent element in the regular life of the verbal practice. Each case thus merits its own
methodological consideration.