Hullo Folks!How are you going?Let’s continue our

adventure to the World of Language in Use

With the Pragmatics Ranger

E. Aminudin Aziz

Deixis• Introduction

Deixis (Greek) and Index (Latin) appear to be cognates, have similar core meanings in linguistics, involving pointing.

Deictic (‘deiktikos’, Greek) = demonstrative

Demonstrativus (Latin) = deiktikos (Greek)

• Definitions

(now used in linguistics to refer to ) the function of personal and demonstrative pronouns, of tense and of a variety of other grammatical and lexical features which relate utterances to the spatio-temporal co-ordinates of the act of utterance (Lyons 1977: 636).

Deictic reference, a.k.a. indexical reference, is reference to an aspect of the context of utterance or speech event (Levinson 1983:54).

• Two approaches: philosophical vs descriptive

Philosophical considering how truth-conditional semantics deals with certain natural language expressions. Consider the following examples:

1. Letizia de Ramolino was the mother of Napoleon

2. I am the mother of Napoleon

3. You are the mother of Napoleon

4. This is an eighteen-century man-trap

5. Mary is in love with that fellow over there

6. It is now 12.15.

Descriptive accounting for the various usage of deictic/indexical references.

Categories of deixis:

1. Person deixis: concerns the encoding of the role of participants in the speech events n which the utterance in question is delivered.

the category first person is the grammaticalization of the speaker’s reference to him/herself, second person the encoding of the speaker’s reference to one or more addressees, and third person the encoding of reference to persons or entities which are neither speakers nor addressees of the utterance in question.

2. Place deixis: concerns the encoding of spatial locations relative to the location of the participants in the speech events.

Proximal close to the speaker (e.g. here, this)

Distal non-proximal, sometimes close to the addressee (e.g. there, that).

3. Time deixis: concerns the encoding of temporal points and spans relative to the time at which an utterance was spoken (or written message inscribed).

Coding time (CT) vs Receiving time (RT)

E.g.

a. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.

b. Pay now, free tomorrow.

4. Discourse (or text) deixis: has to do with the encoding of reference to portions of the unfolding discourse in which the utterance (which includes the text referring expression) is located.

E.g.

a. Puff, puff, puff: that is what it sounded like.

b. This is what phoneticians call creaky voice.

5. Social deixis: concerns the encoding of social distinctions that are relative to participant-roles, particularly aspects of the social relationship holding between speaker and addressee(s) or speaker and some referent.

Distinctions of fine gradation between the relative ranks of speaker and addressee are systematically encoded throughout, for example, the morphological system (i.e. honorifics), encoded in choices between pronouns, summon forms or vocatives, and titles of address in familiar languages.

• Deictic is organised in egocentric way, in that if we think of deictic expressions as anchored to specific points in the communicative event, then the unmarked anchored points, constituting the deictic centre, are especially assumed to be as follows:

a) the central person is the speaker;

b) the central time is the time at which the speaker produces the utterance;

c) the central place is the speaker’s location at utterance time or CT;

d) the discourse centre is the point which the speaker is currently at in the production of his utterance;

e) the social centre is the speaker’s social status and rank, to which the status or rank of addressees or referents is relative.

However, there are also various derivative usages, in which deictic expressions are used in ways that shift this deictic centre to other participants, or indeed to protagonists in narratives (deictic projection, Lyons 1977; point of view, Fillmore 1975)

Different usages of deictic terms

• Deictic

a) gestural usages

require a moment by moment physical monitoring of the speech event for their interpretation; e.g.

Harvey can only speak about this loud.

• Non-deictic

a) anaphoric usages

where some terms pick out as referent the same entity (or class of objects) that some prior term in the discourse picked out. E.g.

John came in and he lit a fire.

b) symbolic usages

make reference only to contextual co-ordinates available to participants antecedents to the utterance. E.g.

This city is really beautiful

You can come with me if you like

Otherwise, they are

b) non-anaphoric usages.

E.g.

You’ll have to work hard, if you want to succeed.

• Consider the following sets of examples

1.a. You, you, but not you are dismissed.

b. What did you say?

c. You can never tell what sex they are nowadays.

2 a. This finger hurts.

b. This city stinks.

c. I met this weird guy the other day.

3 a. Push not now, but now.

b. Let’s go now rather than tomorrow.

c. Now, that is not what I said.

a. gestural;

b. symbolic;

c. non-deictic/non-anaphoric.

That’s all for today Guys!

We’re just at the narrowest side of the World of Pragmatics.

Still more to find in the next journeys into the wilderness.

So …be prepared to catch ’em all!

See ya!!!