Pragmatics: Deixis
Pragmatics: Deixis
DEIXIS
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Deixis ….
• Deixis is a technical term (from Greek) for one of the most
basic things we do with utterances (Yule, 1996, p. 9). It means
“pointing via” language. Any linguistic form used to
accomplish this “pointing” is called a deictic expression.
Deictic expressions are also sometimes called indexical.
• It is the ability to situate the speaker and hearer in relation to
one another and to the world around them. Levinson (1983, p.
55) says that deixis belongs within the domain of pragmatics,
because it directly concerns the relationship between the
structure of languages and contexts in which they are used.
• Within linguistic view, deixis refers to the phenomenon where
in understanding the meaning of certain words and phrases in
an utterance requires contextual information. Then, deixis can
give interpretation to the context of the utterance, such as who
is speaking, the time or place of speaking, the gesture of the
speaker, the current location in the discourse and the topic of
the discourse.
Types of Deixis
Spatial Deixis
The concept of distance is clearly relevant to spatial deixis or
place deixis, where the relative location of people and things is
being indicated. Levinson (1983, p.62) states:
“Place deixis concerns with the encoding of spatial locations
relative to the location of the participants in the speech event.
Probably most languages grammaticalize at least a distinction
between proximal (or close to speaker) and distal (or non-
proximal, sometimes close to addressee), but many make
much more elaborate distinctions so we shall see. Such
distinctions are commonly encoded in demonstratives (as in
English this vs. that) and in deictic adverbs of place (like
English here vs. there)”
• Spatial deixis show itself principally in the form of location
adverbs such as here and there, and demonstrative such as this
and that.
For example:
Emma is talking to Harriet: “Come here, please!”
Emma request to Mr. Kneithly: “Go there to Randalls!”
In closing, spatial deixis is important to remember that location
from the speaker’s perspective can be fixed mentally as well
as physically. It may be that the truly pragmatic basis of
spatial deixis is distance.
Temporal Deixis
Temporal deixis is commonly grammatical zed in deictic adverb
of time (like English now and then, yesterday and this year) but
above all in tense. English has two basic forms of tenses there are
present and past tense.
•I live here now.
•I lived there then.