In linguistics, deixis refers to the phenomenon wherein understanding the meaning of certain words and phrases in an utterance requires contextual information. Words are deictic if their semantic meaning is fixed but their denotational meaning varies depending on time and/or place. Words or phrases that require contextual information to convey any meaning – for example, English pronouns – are deictic. Deixis is closely related to both indexicality and anaphora, as will be further explained below. Although this article deals primarily with deixis in spoken language, the concepts can apply to written language, gestures, and communication media as well. While this article draws examples primarily from English, deixis is believed to be a feature (to some degree) of all natural languages.[1] The term’s origin is Ancient Greek: δείξις deixis "display, demonstration, or reference", the meaning point of reference in contemporary linguistics having been taken over from Chrysippus.[2]
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Possibly the most common categories of contextual information referred to by deixis are those of person, place, and time - what Fillmore calls the “major grammaticalized types” of deixis.[3]
Person deixis concerns itself with the grammatical persons involved in an utterance, (1) those directly involved (e.g. the speaker, the addressee), (2) those not directly involved (e.g. overhearers—those who hear the utterance but who are not being directly addressed), and (3) those mentioned in the utterance.[4] In English, the distinctions are generally indicated by pronouns. The following examples show how. (The person deictic terms are in italics, a signaling notation that will continue through this article.)
In many languages, the third-person masculine pronoun is often used as a default when using "it" is inappropriate but the gender of its antecedent is unknown or inapplicable.
For example:
Also common is the use of the third-person plural, even when a singular pronoun is called for:
In languages which distinguish between masculine and feminine plural pronouns, such as French, the masculine is again used as default. "Ils vont à la bibliothèque" may refer either to a group of males or a group which comprises both genders. "Elles vont..." would only be used for a group of females.
Place deixis, also known as space deixis, concerns itself with the spatial locations relevant to an utterance. Similarly to person deixis, the locations may be either those of the speaker and addressee or those of persons or objects being referred to. The most salient English examples are the adverbs “here” and “there” and the demonstratives “this” and “that” - although those are far from being the only deictic words.[3]
Some examples:
Unless otherwise specified, place deictic terms are generally understood to be relative to the location of the speaker, as in
where “across the street” is understood to mean “across the street from where I am right now.”[3] It is interesting to note that while “here” and “there” are often used to refer to locations near to and far from the speaker, respectively, “there” can also refer to the location of the addressee, if they are not in the same location as the speaker. So, while
exemplifies the former usage,
is an example of the latter.[4]
Languages usually show at least a two-way referential distinction in their deictic system: proximal, i.e. near or closer to the speaker, and distal, i.e. far from the speaker and/or closer to the addressee. English exemplifies this with such pairs as this and that, here and there, etc.
In other languages, the distinction is three-way: proximal, i.e. near the speaker, medial, i.e. near the addressee, and distal, i.e. far from both. This is the case in a few Romance languages and in Korean, Japanese, Thai, Filipino and Turkish The archaic English forms yon and yonder (still preserved in some regional dialects) once represented a distal category which has now been subsumed by the formerly medial "there".[5]
Time, or temporal, deixis concerns itself with the various times involved in and referred to in an utterance. This includes time adverbs like "now", "then", "soon", and so forth, and also different tenses. A good example is the word tomorrow, which denotes the consecutive next day after every day. The "tomorrow" of a day last year was a different day from the "tomorrow" of a day next week. Time adverbs can be relative to the time when an utterance is made (what Fillmore calls the "encoding time", or ET) or when the utterance is heard (Fillmore’s "decoding time", or DT).[3] While these are frequently the same time, they can differ, as in the case of prerecorded broadcasts or correspondence. For example, if one were to write
the ET and DT would be different, with the former deictic term concerning ET and the latter the DT.
Tenses are generally separated into absolute (deictic) and relative tenses. So, for example, simple English past tense is absolute, such as in
while the pluperfect is relative to some other deictically specified time, as in
Though the traditional categories of deixis are perhaps the most obvious, there are other types of deixis that are similarly pervasive in language use. These categories of deixis were first discussed by Fillmore and Lyons.[4]
Discourse deixis, also referred to as text deixis, refers to the use of expressions within an utterance to refer to parts of the discourse that contains the utterance — including the utterance itself. For example, in
“this” refers to an upcoming portion of the discourse, and in
“that” refers to a prior portion of the discourse.
Distinction must be made between discourse deixis and anaphora, which is when an expression makes reference to the same referent as a prior term, as in
Lyons points out that it is possible for an expression to be both deictic and anaphoric at the same time. In his example
“here” or “there” function anaphorically in their reference to London, and deictically in that the choice between “here” or “there” indicates whether the speaker is or is not currently in London.[1]
The rule of thumb to distinguish the two phenomena is as follows: when an expression refers to another linguistic expression or a piece of discourse, it is discourse deictic. When that expression refers to the same item as a prior linguistic expression, it is anaphoric.[4]
Switch reference is a type of discourse deixis, and a grammatical feature found in some languages, which indicates whether the argument of one clause is the same as the argument of the previous clause. In some languages, this is done through same subject markers and different subject markers. In the translated example "John punched Tom, and left-[same subject marker]," it is John who left, and in "John punched Tom, and left-[different subject marker]," it is Tom who left.
Social deixis concerns the social information that is encoded within various expressions, such as relative social status and familiarity. Two major forms of it are the so-called T-V distinctions and honorifics.
T-V distinctions, named for the Latin “tu” and “vos” (singular and plural versions of “you”) are the name given to the phenomenon when a language has two different second-person pronouns. The varying usage of these pronouns indicates something about formality, familiarity, and/or solidarity between the interactants. So, for example, the T form might be used when speaking to a friend or social equal, whereas the V form would be used speaking to a stranger or social superior. This phenomenon is common in European languages.[6]
Honorifics are a much more complex form of social deixis than T-V distinctions, though they encode similar types of social information. They can involve words being marked with various morphemes as well as nearly entirely different lexicons being used based on the social status of the interactants. This type of social deixis is found in a variety of languages, but is especially common in South and East Asia.[6]
Generally speaking, anaphora refers to the way in which a word or phrase relates to other text:
A deictic center, sometimes referred to as an origo, is a set of theoretical points that a deictic expression is ‘anchored’ to, such that the evaluation of the meaning of the expression leads one to the relevant point. As deictic expressions are frequently egocentric, the center often consists of the speaker at the time and place of the utterance, and additionally, the place in the discourse and relevant social factors. However, deictic expressions can also be used in such a way that the deictic center is transferred to other participants in the exchange, or to persons / places / etc. being described in a narrative.[4] So, for example, in the sentence
the deictic center is simply the person at the time and place of speaking. But say two people are talking on the phone long-distance, from London to New York. The Londoner can say
in which case the deictic center is in London, or they can equally validly say
in which case the deictic center is in New York.[1] Similarly, when telling a story about someone, the deictic center is likely to switch to them. So then in the sentence
it is understood that the center is with the person being spoken of, and thus, "to the left" refers not to the speaker’s left, but to the object of the story’s left, that is, the person referred to as 'he' at the time immediately before he ran twenty feet.
It is helpful to distinguish between two usages of deixis, gestural and symbolic, as well as non-deictic usages of frequently deictic words. Gestural deixis refers, broadly, to deictic expressions whose understanding requires some sort of audio-visual information. A simple example is when an object is pointed at and referred to as “this” or “that”. However, the category can include other types of information than pointing, such as direction of gaze, tone of voice, and so on. Symbolic usage, by contrast, requires generally only basic spatio-temporal knowledge of the utterance.[4] So, for example
requires being able to see which finger is being held up, whereas
requires only knowledge of the current location. In a similar vein,
is a non-deictic usage of "this", which does not reference anything specific. Rather, it is used as an indefinite article, much the way "a" could be used in its place.
The terms deixis and indexicality are frequently used almost interchangeably, and both deal with essentially the same idea: contextually dependent references. However, the two terms have different histories and traditions. In the past, deixis was associated specifically with spatiotemporal reference whereas indexicality was used more broadly.[7] More importantly, each is associated with a different field of study; deixis is associated with linguistics, while indexicality is associated with philosophy.[8]