Lecture 1

Context , Deixis

Exercise 1: Identify context

• “Dispatcher: 911 What's the nature of your emergency?

• Caller: My wife is pregnant and her contractions are only two minutes apart”
• Dispatcher: Is this her first child?
• Caller: No, you idiot! This is her husband!

Key

Context: It is the conversation between a customer and a service provider; thus, the
caller supposes that it is the dispatcher duty to answer his questions .

Physical context: on the phone

Linguistic context:
Intonation : The caller is very angry.
Lexical items : “ Is this her first child ?” The dispatcher refers to the baby, the caller
thinks of himself , which leads to misunderstanding

Exercise 2

Correct mistakes in the following sentences

1. In spatial deixis, the proximal forms are ‘I’ and ‘you’. The distal forms are ‘he,
she, it’. Each person in a conversation shifts from being ‘I’ to being ‘you’
occasionally.
2. “here” is distal form. “there” is promixal form.
3. Location from speaker’s perspective sometimes refers to physical location.
This is called deictic projection.
4. “to begin with, first, next, in the following paragraph, last but not least” are
temporal deixis.
 KEY

Correct mistakes in the following sentences

1. In spatial = personal deixis, the proximal forms are ‘I’ and ‘you’. The distal
forms are ‘he, she, it’. Each person in a conversation shifts from being ‘I’ to
being ‘you’occasionally=constantly.
2. “here” is distal = proximal form. “there” is proximal = distal form.
3. Location from speaker’s perspective sometimes refers to physical = mental
location. This is called deictic projection.
4. “to begin with, first, next, in the following paragraph, last but not least” are
temporal= not temporal deixis.

Exercise 3
Decide whether the following statements are True (T) or False (F)

1. Deixis is clearly a form of interpreting that is tied to the speaker’s context.

2. People only use “then” as a distal form in the past tense.
3. “Sunday, November 9th” is a form of deictic temporal reference.
4. People use temporal deixis with the aim of politeness in communication.
5. The speaker and listener have to share the same context in order to be
interpreted correctly.

KEY

1. Deixis is clearly a form of interpreting that is tied to the speaker’s context.àT

2. People only use “then” as a distal form in the past tense.à F
3. “Sunday, November 9th” is a form of deictic temporal reference.àF
4. People use social deixis with the aim of politeness in communication.àT
5. The speaker and listener have to share the same context in order to be
interpreted correctly.àT

Exercise 4. Identify deictic expressions in the following sentences

1. He will go there with me.

2. They tried to hurt me, but he came to the rescue.
3. She was sitting over there.
4. It is raining out now, but I hope when you read this it will be sunny.
5. I enjoy living in this city.
KEY
1. He will go there with me.
2. They tried to hurt me, but he came to the rescue.
3. She was sitting over there.
4. It is raining out now, but I hope when you read this it will be sunny.
5. I enjoy living in this city.

Exercise 5 . Decide types of deixis

1. Sunday? Ok. I will see you then.

2. Yesterday, she went to school at 7am.
3. I had a holiday there last summer.
4. Here is a good spot; it is too sunny over there.

KEY

1. I, youàpersonal deixis;
thenàtemporal deixis
2. Yesterdayàtemporal deixis
sheàpersonal deixis
3. Iàpersonal deixis
thereàspatial deixis
last summeràtemporal deixis
4. Here, thereàspatial deixis

Eercise 6. Matching

1. Personal Deixis A. demonstrated by some proximal forms some verbs of

motion and some location from speaker’s perspective
2. Spatial Deixis B. Demonstrated by proximal form, temporal deictic
expressions verb tense and distal form
3. Temporal Deixis C. Demonstrated by the pronouns for first person ‘I’, second
person ‘you’, and third person ‘he, she, it, they’

Answer: 1. C 2. A 3. B