Nurofik Ari Armansyah
2003512006
Maria Agustin Daniastuti 2003512002
Anik Nur Maidah
2003512049
Damaris A. Putri
DEIXIS
The Contents:
 1. Deixis Definition
 2. Categories of Deixis and the Examples of
Each Deixis
 3. Conclusion
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Deixis Definition
 The single most obvious way in which the
relationship between language and context is
reflected in the structures of languages
themselves.
 Concerns on the interpretation of utterances
depends on the analysis of that context of
utterance.
 “Pointing language”
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We can see from each sentence:
“I’ll be back in an hour.”
( a notice on someone’s office door )
“Listen, I’m not disagreeing with you but with
you, and not about this but about this.”
( someone says when the lights go out )
“Meet me here a week from now with the
stick about this big.”
( a message on a bottle )
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 The words I, you, here, this,
deixis
don’t have “constant referent”
 It is used as referring expressions.
ex: “We meet here at the lunch time,” said a
manager to his workers in a cafeteria.
 To help the hearers to identify the referent.
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Philosophical Approaches
 Indexical expressions may be usefully approached
by considering how truth-conditional semantics
deals with certain natural language expression.
ex: - You are the mother of Napoleon
- This is an eighteenth-century man-trap.
- Mary is in love with that fellow over there.
- It is now 12.15
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Definite Descriptions
Donnellan (1966)
Referential Use
The man drinking champagne is Lord Godolphin.
Attributive Use
The man who can lift this stone is stronger than an
ox.
That man ((the speaker indicates the man drinking
champagne)) is Lord Godolphin.
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Descriptive Approach
Indexical expressions are approached by using the
categories of deixis (person, place, time, discourse
and social)
Gesture usage
Symbolic usage
Non-deictic
Not that one, idiot, that one.
That’s a beautiful view.
Uh, I did this and that. (non-anaphoric)
John came in and he lit a fire
(anaphoric)
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Categories of Deixis:
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1. Person Deixis
2. Place Deixis
3. Time Deixis
4. Empathetic Deixis
5. Social Deixis
6. Discourse Deixis
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1. Person Deixis
Person deixis concerns with the encoding of the
role of participants in the speech even in which
the utterance in question is delivered.
It can be called deictic reference to the
participant role of a referent, such as:
 the speaker
 the addressee, and
 referents which are neither speaker nor
addressee.
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Kinds of Person Deixis
 Yule (1996) describes that person deixis
involves the speaker and the addressee and
operates in a basic three-part division they
are:
 First person (I). The first person deixis is a
reference that refers to the speaker or both
speaker and referent grouped with the
speaker which is expressed in singular
pronouns (I, me, myself, mine) and plural
pronouns (we, us, ourselves, our, ours).
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 Second person (you). The second person
deixis is a deictic reference to a person or
persons identified as addressee, such as you,
yourself, yourselves, your, yours.
 The third person (He, She, It). Third person
deixis is a deictic reference to a referent(s)
not identified as the speaker or addressee.
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2. Place Diexis
 Levinson (1983) stated that place deixis
concerns for the specification of locations to
anchorage points in the speech event and
typically the speaker, and there are two basic
ways of referring objects by describing or
naming them on the one hand and by locating
them on the other.
 Briefly, place deixis is an expression used to
show the location relative to the location of a
participant in the speech event.
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The Examples:
There are:
- a proximal (close to the speaker)
such as this, these, and here
- a distal (sometime close to the
addressee) such as that, those and
there.
Source: Levinson 1983
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3. Time Deixis
Time deixis is also called as
temporal deixis. It is reference to
time relative to a temporal
reference point. Typically, this
point is the moment of utterance.
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Examples of Time Deixis
Temporal adverbs
 This / last / next Monday / week / month /
year.
 Now, then, ago, later, soon, before.
 Yesterday, today, tomorrow.
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4. Empathetic deixis
 Empathetic deixis is the metaphorical
use of deictic forms to indicate
emotional or other psychological
“distance” or “proximity” between a
speaker and a referent.
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Examples of Empathetic
Deixis
 The use of this to indicate the
speaker’s empathy
 The use of that to indicate the
speaker’s emotional distance
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5. Social Deixis
Social deixis concerns with the aspects
of sentences which reflect or establish
or determined by certain realities of
participants or the social situation in
which the speech event occurs.
(Levinson:1983)
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Still Social Deixis here... 
There are two basic kinds of social
deixis information that seems to be
encoded in language around the world.
They are:
 Relational social deixis
 Absolute social deixis
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a. Relational social deixis
 Relational
social deixis is a deictic
reference to some social characteristic of
referent apart from any relative ranking of
referents.
 In English, relational social deixis may be a
lexical items (e.g. my husband, teacher,
cousin, etc.), pronouns (you, her).
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b. Absolute social deixis
 Absolute social deixis is a deictic reference
usually expressed in certain forms of address
which will include no comparison of the
ranking of the speaker and addressee.
 For examples:
your highness, Mr. President, your majesty,
etc.
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6. Discourse deixis
Discourse deixis is an expression used
to refer to certain discourse that
contain the utterance or as a signal and
its relations to surrounding text.
Levinson (1983, p.85)
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Still Discourse Deixis....
Discourse deixis should be distinguished
from a related notion that of anaphora.
Anaphora concerns with the use of a
pronoun to refer to the same referent as
some prior term.
Levinson (1983, p.85-86)
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Example of Discourse Deixis:
 Use of this to refer to a story one is about to tell in:
- I bet you haven’t heard this story.
 Reference to Chapter 7 of a book by means of in the next
chapter or in the previous chapter, depending on whether
the reference is made from Chapter 6 or 8.
 Use of this in a creaky-voiced utterance of:
 This is what phoneticians call a creaky voice.
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Conclusion
 Deixis is the way in which the
relationship between language and
context is reflected in the structures of
languages themselves. It concerns on
the interpretation of utterances
depends on the analysis of that
context of utterance.
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References
Grundy, P. 1995. Doing Pragmatics. London: St.
Martin’s Press, Inc.
Levinson, S. C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Purwo, B. K. 1990. Pragmatik dan Pengajaran
Bahasa. Yogyakarta: Kanisius.
Yule, George. 1996. Pragmatics. New York:Oxford
University Press.
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