Deictic expression
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In linguistics, a deictic expression is an expression that refers to the personal, temporal, or spatial aspect of an utterance, and whose meaning therefore depends on the context in which it is used. The term was adopted by Charles Peirce from formal logic; it derives from the Greek word deiknýnai, meaning "to show."
There are many different kinds of deictic expressions; they include the personal pronouns (e.g., I, you), the demonstrative pronouns (e.g., this, that), and certain adverbs, such as here and there. In contrast to proper nouns and definite descriptions, which refer to real objects and states of affairs independent of their context, deictic expressions denote other linguistic signs in a given text, or extralinguistic elements in a given speech situation.
Among several near-synonymous terms are Russell's (1940) egocentric particular, Yehoshua Bar-Hillel's (1954) indexical expression, Jespersen's (1923) shifter, and Reichenbach's (1947) token reflexive word.
[edit] References
- Traut, Gregory P. and Kazzazi, Kerstin. 1996. Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. Routledge. London and New York.
