Hullo Folks!
How are you going?
Let’s continue our
adventure to the World of
Language in Use
With the Pragmatics Ranger
E. Aminudin Aziz
Deixis
• Introduction
Deixis (Greek) and Index (Latin) appear to
be cognates, have similar core meanings
in linguistics, involving pointing.
Deictic (‘deiktikos’, Greek) = demonstrative
Demonstrativus (Latin) = deiktikos (Greek)
• Definitions
(now used in linguistics to refer to ) the function
of personal and demonstrative pronouns, of
tense and of a variety of other grammatical and
lexical features which relate utterances to the
spatio-temporal co-ordinates of the act of
utterance (Lyons 1977: 636).
Deictic reference, a.k.a. indexical reference, is
reference to an aspect of the context of
utterance or speech event (Levinson
1983:54).
• Two approaches: philosophical vs descriptive
Philosophical  considering how truth-conditiona
semantics deals with certain natural language
expressions. Consider the following examples:
1. Letizia de Ramolino was the mother of Napoleon
2. I am the mother of Napoleon
3. You are the mother of Napoleon
4. This is an eighteen-century man-trap
5. Mary is in love with that fellow over there
6. It is now 12.15.
Descriptive accounting for the various usage of
deictic/indexical references.
Categories of deixis:
1. Person deixis: concerns the encoding of the role
of participants in the speech events n which the
utterance in question is delivered.
 the category first person is the grammaticalization
of the speaker’s reference to him/herself, second
person the encoding of the speaker’s reference to
one or more addressees, and third person the
encoding of reference to persons or entities which
are neither speakers nor addressees of the utterance
in question.
2. Place deixis: concerns the encoding of spatial
locations relative to the location of the
participants in the speech events.
Proximal  close to the speaker (e.g. here,
this)
Distal  non-proximal, sometimes close to the
addressee (e.g. there, that).
3. Time deixis: concerns the encoding of
temporal points and spans relative to the
time at which an utterance was spoken (or
written message inscribed).
 Coding time (CT) vs Receiving time (RT)
E.g.
a. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.
b. Pay now, free tomorrow.
4. Discourse (or text) deixis: has to do with the
encoding of reference to portions of the unfolding
discourse in which the utterance (which includes
the text referring expression) is located.
E.g.
a. Puff, puff, puff: that is what it sounded like.
b. This is what phoneticians call creaky voice.
5. Social deixis: concerns the encoding of social
distinctions that are relative to participant-roles,
particularly aspects of the social relationship
holding between speaker and addressee(s) or
speaker and some referent.
Distinctions of fine gradation between the
relative ranks of speaker and addressee are
systematically encoded throughout, for
example, the morphological system (i.e.
honorifics), encoded in choices between
pronouns, summon forms or vocatives, and
titles of address in familiar languages.
• Deictic is organised in egocentric way, in that if
we think of deictic expressions as anchored to
specific points in the communicative event, then
the unmarked anchored points, constituting the
deictic centre, are especially assumed to be
as follows:
a) the central person is the speaker;
b) the central time is the time at which the
speaker produces the utterance;
c) the central place is the speaker’s location at
utterance time or CT;
d) the discourse centre is the point which the
speaker is currently at in the production of his
utterance;
e) the social centre is the speaker’s social status
and rank, to which the status or rank of
addressees or referents is relative.
However, there are also various derivative usages,
in which deictic expressions are used in ways that
shift this deictic centre to other participants, or
indeed to protagonists in narratives (deictic
projection, Lyons 1977; point of view, Fillmore
1975)
Different usages of deictic terms
• Deictic
• Non-deictic
a) gestural usages
a) anaphoric usages
require a moment by
moment physical
monitoring of the speech
event for their
interpretation; e.g.
Harvey can only speak
about this loud.
where some terms pick
out as referent the same
entity (or class of
objects) that some prior
term in the discourse
picked out. E.g.
John came in and he lit a
fire.
b) symbolic usages
make reference only to
contextual co-ordinates
available to participants
antecedents to the
utterance. E.g.
This city is really
beautiful
You can come with me if
you like
Otherwise, they are
b) non-anaphoric usages.
E.g.
You’ll have to work hard,
if you want to succeed.
• Consider the following sets of examples
1.a. You, you, but not you are dismissed.
b. What did you say?
c. You can never tell what sex they are
nowadays.
2 a. This finger hurts.
b. This city stinks.
c. I met this weird guy the other day.
3 a. Push not now, but now.
b. Let’s go now rather than tomorrow.
c. Now, that is not what I said.
a. gestural;
b. symbolic;
c. non-deictic/non-anaphoric.
That’s all for today Guys!
We’re just at the narrowest side of
the World of Pragmatics.
Still more to find in the next
journeys into the wilderness.
So …be prepared to catch ’em all!
See ya!!!