Deixis ???

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Deixis???

• Professor Shaozhong Liu, Ph.D. (Pragmatics) /
  Ph.D. (Higher Education)
• College of Foreign Studies, Guilin University of
  Electronic Technology
• Homepage www.gxnu.edu.cn/Personal/szliu
• Blog cyrusliu.blog.163.com
• Email shaozhong_at_hotmail.com

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Objectives and SLOs

• Objectives
• Familiarize students with to the concept Deixis
• Discuss its relationship with Pragmatics
• Student learning outcomes (SLOs)
• Be able to define the concept
• Be able to illustrate with examples
• Be able to analyze it in utterances

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Defining deixis

• Deixis is a technical term (from Greek) for one
  of the most basic things we do with utterances.
• It means pointing via language.
• Any linguistic form used to accomplish this
  pointing is called a deictic expression. (When
  you notice a strange object and ask, Whats
  that?, you are using a deictic expression that
  to indicate something in the immediate context.
• Deictic expressions are also sometimes called
  indexicals.
• Deictic expressions are among the first forms to
  be spoken by very young children. (Yule,
  1996/2000, p.9)

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• All deictic expressions depend, for their
  interpretation, on the speaker and hearer sharing
  the same context.
• Deictic expressions have their most basic uses in
  face-to-face spoken interaction where uttterances
  are easily understood by the people present, but
  may need a translation for someone not right
  there. (Yule, 1996/2000, p.9)
• Deixis is clearly a form of referring that is
  tied to the speakers context, with the most
  basic distinction between deictic expressions
  being near speaker versus away from speaker.
• In English, the near speaker or proximal terms,
  are this, here, now. The away from
  speaker, or distal terms, are that, there,
  then. (Yule, 1996/2000, p.9)

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• Proximal terms are typically interpreted in terms
  of the speakers location, or the deictic center,
  so that now is generally understood as
  referring to some point or period in time that
  has the time of the speakers utterance at its
  center.
• Distal terms can simply indicate away from
  speaker, but, in some languages, can be used to
  distinguish between near addressee and away
  from both speaker and addressee. (Yule,
  1996/2000, p.10)

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Person deixis

• Personal pronouns I, we, you, he, she, it, we,
  they, and their variants.
• Expressions indicating higher status are
  described as honorifics.
• The discussion of circumstances leading to the
  choice of honorifics is sometimes called social
  deixis.
• T/V distinction of social deixis from French
  tu/vous, familiar vs. unfamiliar, or the higher
  older or more powerful tend to use tu version
  to a lower younger and less powerful addressee
  vous. Examples ni/nin, tu/vous, du/Si
  (German), tu/Usted (Spanish) (Yule, 1996/2000,
  p.11)
• We-exclusive vs. we-inclusive We clean up
  after ourselves around here. (p.11)

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Spatial deixis

• Here, there, hither, yonder Here it is / on the
  yonder hill there stands a creature
• Come, go Come to bed! / Go to bed!
• Deictic projection I am no there now / Hes gone
  to Shanghai.
• Psychological distance Physically close objects
  tend to be treated by the speaker as
  psychologically close. (Yule, 1996/2000, p.13)

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Temporal deixis

• Now, then, from now on,
• then applies to both past and future
• November 22nd, 1963? I was in Scotland then.
• Dinner at 830 on Saturday? Okay, Ill see you
  then.
• Back in an hour!
• Free beer tomorrow!
• Present tense as proximal form vs. past tense as
  distal form
• I could swim (when I was a child).
• I could be in Hawaii (if I had a lot of money).

9

• Past tense used in if-clause to mark events
  presented by the speaker as not being close to
  present reality
• If I had a yacht, / If I was rich,
• Neither ideas are treated as having happened in
  the past time. They are as deictically distant
  from the speakers current situation. So distant,
  indeed, that they actually communicate the
  negative (we infer that the speaker has no yacht
  and is not rich).

10
Context and deixis comprehension

• Without context, it is groundless to assign
  meanings to deictical expressions.
• I agree with you on this, but not on that, with
  you, but not with you.
• Meet me here tomorrow with a stick this big.
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