Indexicality in Literary
Semiosis
Harri Veivo
University of Helsinki
The Finnish Network University of Semiotics
Peirce on indexicality
• For Peirce, indexicality is one of the three modes in sign
functioning (in addition to iconicity and symbolicity)
• Designates and ”existential” relation between the sign
and its object
– Causal relationship: smoke as sign for fire
– Relation of continuity: sail as sign for ship
– Pointing: fingers, arrows etc.
• In indexicality, the sign draws attention to the object
(designator) and the object determines the meaning of
the sign (reagent)
– Basic examples of indexical signs in language are demonstrative
pronouns (this, that) and adverbs of time and location (today,
yesterday, here): signification established in relation to context of
enunciation
– Important to note: indexical signs may also refer to other signs,
and also function self-reflectively within one text
Peirce on indexicality
“The index asserts nothing; it only says ‘There!’
It takes hold of our eyes, as it were, and forcibly
directs them to a particular object, and there it
stops. Demonstrative and relative pronouns are
nearly pure indices, because they denote things
without describing them; so are the letters on a
geometrical diagram, and the subscript numbers
which in algebra distinguish one value from
another without saying what those values are.”
(C.P. 3.362)
Peirce on indexicality
• Indexicality taken in its large signification refers
to the intertwinement of signs with the world,
the connection between sign systems,
representations and the experiential life-world
– Pertains for the context of production as well as for
the context of reception
• Important to remember: indexicality, iconicity
and symbolicity work together – not sign classes,
but modes of sign functioning
• Other notions in use: shifters, deixis, deictic
signs
Roman Jakobson on shifters
• Indexical elements of language are learned at a
late stage only – and lost first (for ex. in aphasia)
• Shifters: indexical elements in langauge where
the context is necessary for understanding (and
code alone is not enough)
– Examples: personal pronouns ”I” and ”you” – code of
language defines a basic signification, but depend on
the act of enunciation
• Shifters are not ”simple” causal signs, but rather
depend on complex relationships between
language and the world
Benveniste on subjectivity
• “Ego is the one who says ego”: “I” is semantically unsaturated and
acquires meaning only when enunciated (≈ Jakobson)
• Language provides a structure where
– “I”, the one who speaks, is related to “you”, the one who is addressed
in speaking: “I” and “you” are included in the communication situation
– The third person, “he” or “she”, is excluded from the communication
situation
• This structure is for Benveniste the ground for subjectivity in
general: it is by appropriating the resources provided by language –
by speaking as “ego” to someone – that one becomes a subject in
culture
• Extreme conclusion: language fundamentally determines
subjectivity?
• Dialogism (Bakhtin, Vološinov): the addressee (the receiver) is
already effective before words are uttered – thus subjectivity and
communication are fundamentally dialogical, always directed to
and shaped by the other
Indexicality in literature
• In face to face spoken language, the utterer and the addressee share
the context
– Indexical signs are interpreted in relation to a shared perceptible or
known background
• In written discourse, the utterer (the writer) and the addressee (the
reader) don’t share the context in a similar way
– Indexical signs are interpreted in relation to the text and with cultural
(encyclopedic) knowledge
– In this sense, deixis (the “pointing”) in literary texts is a process that
relies on reader’s active participation
• Deixis opens “a creative space” that ties the reading subject to the
world to be interpreted (Nathalie Roelens)
• “Reading fiction means to experience an interspace between the
external and the internal, between reference to a public world of
shared experience and a private world of significations charged
with desire.” (Dines Johansen)
Gomringer’s ”das schwarze geheimnis”
The black secret / is here /
here is / the black secret
• Intratextual indexicality: ”hier” refers to the text itself (or to the
white area within the text?)
• Indexicality creates ambiguity: the secret is black, but the area in
between the text – the blank spot – is white  demands active
interpretation
Deictic centers
• Deictic center: the place (“origo”) in relation to which deictic
elements in the text are organized
• Temporal position
– The point of reference for adverbial expressions of time (“today” - “last
week”, “tomorrow”…)
– Note: difference between deictic expressions of time and “universal”
ones (like “January 22, 1667”)
• Spatial position
– The point of reference for adverbial expressions of space (“here”, “to
the left”, “behind”…) and demonstrative pronouns (“this”, “that”)
• Focalisation
– The point in time and place from where the world represented is
perceived
– Can be attached to a person in the world represented (characternarrator) or not (unmarked narration)
• Note: deictic centers are not necessarily explicitly signalled and
there may be several centers in one text (and even in one phrase)
Deictic shifts
• Deictic centers are linguistic constructions: not
determined “externally”, but created, maintained and
effaced with linguistic means
• Deictic shift: move between deictic centers
– 1) a move from the “real” world to the world of the text: the
fundamental step, “immersion”
– 2) a move from a external narrator’s position to a character’s
position – and vice versa
– 3) a move from one character’s position to another’s position
• Important device in several respects: irony, tragedy
(King Oedipus), comic effects
• To distinguish: who speaks and who perceives
Examples of deictic centers
“I stretch my eyes wide. To my left, the jam-packed harbour of
Santa Lucia. Straight ahead, the Castel del Angelo […] To my
right, Vesuvius above the suburbs. The slate-thin cloud, tilting
on the summit, dissolves as I watch. There’s the ruined mouth of
the crater, dipping on one side and brimming with black mist.”
Andrew Motion: Salt Water (1997)
• “I” is the one who speaks (writes): in this case, all the information
gathered in reading under the figure of the narrator (+ eventual
knowledge of Andrew Motion)
• The deictic center: the spatial location in relation to which the
indexical signs organize the scene represented
– “Left”, “straight ahead” and “right” are not constant, but always
defined in relation to somebody (emphasized here with “my”)
• Note: indexicality (deixis) functions in concordance with iconicity
(word-order mapping order of perception)
Examples of deictic centers
Wind from the northwestern quarter is lifting him high above
the dove-gray, crimson, umber, brown
Connecticut Valley. Far beneath,
chickens daintily pause and move
unseen in the yard of the tumbledown
farmstead, chipmunks blend with the heath.
Now adrift on the airflow, unfurled, alone,
all that he glimpses – the hill’s lofty, ragged
ridges, the silver stream that threads
quivering like a living bone
of steel […]
[…] Through binoculars we foretoken
him, a glittering dot, a pearl.
We hear something ring out in the sky,
like some family crockery being broken,
[…]
•
Decitic centers: the hawk and the human observers on the ground
–
–
•
Explicit markers: “above”, “beneath”
Implicit: “unseen”
Focalization and preception thematized: participate in the creation of deictic centers
–
–
“stream.. like a living bone”
“through binoculars we foretoken”, “a glittering dot, a pearl”