Homophora

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In the branch of linguistics called pragmatics, homophora is a subcategory of exophora. In common with all exophora, it is the use of an expression to refer to something outside the text (spoken, signed, or written). That is, it is not a cohesive device; it does not necessarily refer back to an entity already mentioned in the text, and it is not part of its definition that it should so refer back. Specifically, homophora is the use of a referring expression which gains its interpretation from the shared cultural knowledge of the participants in the conversational exchange.

For example, in Did you see the President on TV last night? it will normally be understood which president is being referred to simply through the location in time and space of the speaker or hearer or both (the present president, not the previous one; the president of the country in which the speaker is speaking, and not of some other country), or through the cultural affiliation of the speaker or hearer (e.g. the president of South Africa, not Poland or Malaysia, when the participants are South Africans). Understanding of the expression in the context of use is gained through this type of shared contextual knowledge itself, and not through any other explanation in the text.

Again, in Let's meet the day before Christmas, the speaker and hearer will normally understand exactly when to meet because they live according to a tradition within which Christmas occurs on a particular date. That date differs between the Western and Eastern Christian churches (and others), but the cultural affiliation of the participants will normally eliminate any potential ambiguity.

Such a referring expression, the President or Christmas, may be called a homophor. Proper names may often act as homophors, as when for example Robin Williams may be taken without further explanation as referring to the well-known film actor, rather than to someone else with this common name. Homophoric reference is of course probabilistic; our speaker might have meant some other President, Christmas date, or Robin Williams, but failed to use any means of cancelling out the most probable interpretation in context, and in the absence of such a cancellation that most probable referent is taken to be the one intended.

The precise origin of the term is not fully clear, but it is probably intended to suggest a referring expression that always has the same (Greek hómos) referent (within a given cultural context, of course). It (or rather homophoric) seems to have been first used in the influential book by M.A.K. Halliday and R. Hasan, Cohesion in English (Longman, 1976, pp. 71 and 73).