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English

Pragmatics

Deixis

Deixis

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Deixis derives from Ancient Greek - δεῖξις (deîxis, “pointing, indicating, reference”) and δείκνυμι
(deíknumi, “I show”) and forms an important part of linguistics and pragmatics, serving to interpret
speech in context.

What is Deixis?

Deixis refers to a word or phrase that shows the time, place or situation a speaker is in when talking.

Also known as deictic expressions (or deictics), they typically include pronouns and adverbs such as 'I',
'you', 'here', 'there', and tend to be used mostly where the context is known to both the speaker and the
person spoken to.

Deixis Examples
"I wish you'd been here yesterday."

In this sentence the words 'I,' 'you', 'here', and 'yesterday' all function as deixis - they reference a
speaker and an addressee, a location and a time. As we are outside of the context, we cannot know who
'I' is, where 'here' is, nor can we be entirely sure when 'yesterday' was; this information is known to the
speaker instead and is therefore termed 'deictic'.

"Last week I flew over there for a quick visit."

In this sentence, 'last week', 'I' and 'there' are the deixis - referencing time, speaker and place.

We do not have enough context to completely understand the whole sentence, whereas the speaker
and the addressee do; they don't need to repeat or state the precise context. Instead, they use words
and phrases that refer to people, time and place and these function deictically.

Let's examine another sentence taken out of context:

'If you come over here I can show you where it happened, all that time ago.'

What questions do you find yourself asking as you look at the sentence?

Deixis a conversation without context StudySmarter

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Without context, we cannot completely understand a sentence that relies on Deixis JW - StudySmarter
Originals
Firstly, we don't know who is speaking, or to whom; we also don't know where 'here' is, or what
happened. Our questions will tend to be 'where, who, what?' and probably also 'when?'. The speaker
and his audience, however, have no such problem; they are in the context, they know the topic, so they
use deictic expressions or words to reference (or 'show') what they are talking about.

There are several examples of deixis in the sentence we have just looked at, e.g: 'Here', 'you' and
'where'. These are deictic expressions of place, person and location.

Let's now recreate the earlier example, starting from context:

'If you come over here I can show you where it happened, all that time ago.'

A tour guide is showing his group around an old fort where a famous battle took place a few hundred
years ago. He says to them: 'If you come over to this part of the castle, I can show you where the siege
took place 500 years ago.'

Here we have context: we know the speaker is a tour guide; we know he is speaking to a group of
tourists; we know where they are (the castle); we know what he is talking about (the siege) and when it
took place (500 years ago).

Let's say we are now either the tour guide or the tourists. At this point, the tour guide starts to move
over to one of the ramparts of the castle, and instead of repeating all the above information, the guide
can simply say: 'If you come over here, I can show you where it happened all that time ago.' This avoids
stating the obvious, it saves time repeating information already given, and both the guide and his
audience understand immediately what he is referring to. At this point, a specific reference becomes a
deictic reference, through the use of words such as 'here', 'it', and 'that'.

NOTE: The pronouns 'I' and 'you' retain the same form as before, but their function shifts - they are now
also deictic expressions or words, and only those aware of the context will know to whom these
pronouns refer.
Deixis - A tour of a castle with a guide StudySmarter

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Once we know the context, we will often automatically switch to deixis.

JW-StudySmarter Originals

Types of Deixis

Now that we have an idea how deixis works, let's look deeper into the various categories.

There are three traditional types of deixis:

Temporal - relating to time: the 'when'.

Spatial, or Local - relating to place: the 'where'.

Personal - relating to the speaker, or the person spoken to: the 'who'.

NOTE: the 1st and 2nd person pronouns (I, you, we) are typically active participants (in that they speak
and hear speech); the third person pronouns (she, he, they) refer to inactive, ie non-speech or narrated
participants.

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Temporal, Spatial and Personal Deixis

Looking at our earlier examples again, we can now identify temporal, spatial and personal deixis:

I wish you'd been here yesterday

'I' and 'you' are examples of personal deixis, (people)

'Here' is an example of local deixis, (place)

And 'yesterday' is temporal deixis. (time)

Last week I flew over there for a quick visit.

'Last week', which relates to when, is the temporal deixis,

'I' refers to a person, and becomes the personal deixis,

'There' refers to location, and is the local deixis.

See if you can identify the temporal, local and personal deixis in the following:

When he got there, he went straight to her.

We booked into this hotel last night; I think he's arriving tomorrow.

In the first, the speaker is referring to third party inactive participants: 'he' and 'her'. 'There' refers to
location, so it becomes location-specific (and therefore 'local deixis').

In the second, note 'this' becomes the local deixis, while 'last night' and 'tomorrow' refer to time, so
become 'temporal deixis'.Describe the Acquisition Stage of a human baby!How is Direct Speech Act
different from Indirect Speech Act?