DEIXIS

GROUP 1

ALRINA RARAS TACAZELY 0203516010

DIAN FATHUR RAHMAN 0203516033
INTRODUCTION
• Relationships between language and
context which is reflected in the
structures of language
Concern
• the ways in which languages encode or
grammaticalize features of the context of utterance
or speech event ; the ways in which the
interpretation of utterances depends on the
analysis of that context of utterances
Example
• 1. I'll be back in an hour
• 2. Listen, I'm not disagreeing with you but
with you, and not about this but about this
• 3. Meet me here a week from now with a stick
about this big.
Approaches
•1. Philosophical Approaches
•2. Descriptive Approaches
Philosophical Approaches
• The topic of deixis, indexical expressions:
how truth-conditional semantics deals
with certain natural language expressions
Examples
• 1. Letizia de Ramolino was the mother of
Napoleon
• 2. I am the mother of Napoleon
•Indexical signs: determined a referent
by an existential relation between sign
and refererent (Burks, 1949)
• Part of philosophical interest in this area arose from
questions whether:
• 1. all indexical expressions can be reduced to a
single primary one
• 2. the final pragmatic residue can be translated out
into some eternal context-free artificial language
Descriptive Approaches
• There are some categories:

person, place and time

Person Deixis
• Person deixis concerns the encoding of the
role of participants in speech event in which
the utterance in question is delivered
• Person deixis is encoded in pronouns : 'I'
for the speaker; 'you' for the addressee;
'he', 'she', 'it', 'we', 'they' for others.
Example
• 1. Let's go to the cinema
• 2. Let's go to see you tomorrow
• 3. Hey, you, you just scratched my car with
your frisbee
2. SPACE/SPATIAL/PLACE DEIXIS
• Words used to point to a location ( here, there) are examples of PLACE DEIXIS.

• It concerns the specification of locations relative to anchorage points in the speech

event. (speaker = centre)
Two basic ways of referring to objects:
By describing or naming
them

By locating them
 Locations can be:
Example
• The station is two hundred yards from the cathedral.
fixed reference points • Kabul lies at latitude 34 degrees, longitude 70 degrees.
• Gunung Pati is 7 kilos from Kelud.

specified relative to other

objects
• It’s two hundred yard away.
• Kabul is four hundred miles of here.
• Gunung Pati is 7 kilos from there.
PURE PLACE-DEICTIC WORDS

Here There
Distal from speaker’s
The speakers’ location is location at CT./
at coding time (CT)
Proximal to addressee
at RT.

It’s very
grateful to be Put the flowers
here with you. there.
Sometimes, there does not generally mean ‘how are things
at some place distant from the speaker’.
• Example 1: How are things there?

‘How are things where the addressee is’

• Example 2: We’re there.

‘there refers to the place we previously mentioned as our goal’

My friends and I visited MAJT yesterday.

We’re there for joining an Islamic seminar.
DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUN
(Proximal-distal dimension)

This That
The object in a The object beyond the
pragmatically given pragmatically given area
area close to the close to the speaker’s
speaker’s location at CT. location at CT.

This is my friend. That is my friend.

Distal dimension with the speaker’s location
• Bring that here and take this there.
 The other Demonstrative Determiners
In North West America, there are 4: In Javanese:
1. This one right here 1. Iki
2. This one nearby
2. Iku
3. That one over there
4. That one way over there
In Arabic, there are:
1. Hadza
In Bahasa Indonesia: 2. Dzalika
• 1. Ini
• 2. Itu
Combination between deictic and non-deictic terms

Deictic Non-deictic
Surfaces, fronts, back,
This, that
sides
This side of the box.
‘The surface of the box’

This side of the tree.

‘That the area of the three visible from the point of speaker CT’.
Perspectives
• The cat is behind the car.

The car intervenes between the

Deictic cat and the speaker’s location.

Meaning
Non- The cat is at the intrinsic rear-
deictic end of the car.
Perspectives
• Bob is the man to the left of Mark.

Bob may be to
Non-deictic
Mark’ own left.

Meaning
Bob may be to the
left from the
Deictic
speaker’s point of
view.
Come vs Go
He’s coming.
• He is moving towards the speaker’s location at CT.

He’s going.
• He is moving away from the speaker’s location at
CT.

I’m coming.
• The speaker is moving towards the location of the
addressee at CT.
Temporal term for deictic location
• There’s a good fast food joint just ten minutes from here.

• ATM terdekat dari sini hanya 5 menit.

3. Time Deixis

• Temporal or Time Diexis is any expression used to point to a time

• Concerning with the various times involved in and referred to in an utterance, such as:
tonight, last week, yesterday, before, after, etc.
• Including time adverbs like now, then, soon and so forth, and also different tenses.
 Example of Time Deixis
• Tomorrow
Tomorrow denotes the consecutive next day after every day. The tomorrow of a
day last year was a different day from tomorrow of a day next week.
 Concept of Encoding Time(ET) and Decoding Time(DT)
• Fillmore : the time adverbs can be used relative to the time when an
utterance is made. Fillmore calls this time as the “encoding time (ET)” ; On
the contrary, The time when the utterance is heard is called “decoding time
(DT)

• While these are frequently the same time, they can differ, as in case of pre-
recorded broadcast or correspondence.

“It is raining now, but I hope when you read this it

will be sunny”.
• The ET and DT would be different, with the formal deictic
term concerning ET and the latter concerning DT.
 Concept of Encoding Time(ET) and Decoding Time(DT)

• Moreover, when I say, “I am going to start a new chapter”, it is an excellent

example of ET. But when a teacher conveys a written message to his/her class, by
writing on the white board: “I will back in an hour”, he is referring to the decoding
time or DT.
• complexities in the usage of tense, time adverbs and other time-deictic
morphemes (letter writing, or pre- recording of media programmes)
Þ deictic centre remains on the speaker and CT: – This programme, is being
recorded today, Wednesday April 1st, to be relayed next Thursday.
Þ deictic centre is projected on the addressee and RT: – This programme was
recorded last Wednesday, April 1st, to be relayed today. (deictic centre was
projected into the future)
Time Diexis: Tenses
• Tenses are generally separated into absolute (deictic) and relative
tenses.

• Absolute tense refers immediately to the time of the speaker's

utterance: simple past, simple present
He went

• whereas the pluperfect is relative to some other deictically specified

time, as in
He had gone
 4. DISCOURSE DEIXIS
• Concerns the use of expressions within some utterance to refer to some
portion of the discourse that contains that utterance (including the
utterance itself. (Levinson, 1983: 85)

• Place discourse deixis

“This” can be used to refers to a forthcoming portion of the discourse.
i.g : I bet you haven’t heard this story
“That” to a preceding portion
i.g : That was the funniest story I’ve never heard
Time discourse-deictic
It seems natural that time-deictic words can be used to refer to portions of the
discourse:

Examples:
• Last week
• Next Thursday

• Last paragraph
• In the next Chapter
 SOCIAL DEIXIS
• Social Deixis is concerned with the codification of the social status of
the speaker, the addressee, or the third person or entity referred to, as
well as social relationships holding between them (see, e.g., Levinson
1983: 63, Anderson and Keenan 1985, Fillmore 1997: 111-12, Manning
2001)
• Two Types (Comrie 1976, Levinson 1983: 90-1, Brown and Levinson
1987)
1. absolute
2. relational
Major form of social deixis:
Honorifics.
• Yule (1996: 10) stated that deictic expressions which indicate higher
status are described as honorifics. The discussion of the circumstances
which lead to the choice of one of these forms rather than another is
sometimes as social deixis. (e.g. sampeyan, panjenengan)
T-V Distinction
• Social deixis is exemplified by certain uses of the so-called TV (tu/vous) pronouns in
many language. The varying usage of these pronouns indicates something about
formality, familiarity, and/or solidarity between the interactants.
• I  (T form ) might be used when speaking to a friend or social equal,
• We  (V form) used for speaking to a stranger or social superior.(Cruse, 2000: 321)
Categorization of social deictic information:
• Speaker and referent (e.g. referent honorifics)
• Speaker and addressee (e.g. addressee honorifics)
RELATIONAL • Speaker and bystander (e.g. by stander or audience
honorifics)
• Speaker and setting (e.g. formality levels)

• Authorized speaker:
Thai: ‘khrab’  a polite participle that can only be used by
ABSOLUTE male speakers.
kha’  a polite participle that can only be used by female
speakers
• Authorized recipient:
Title Address: Your Honour, Mr. President
Anaphoric Reference
• anaphora refers to the way in which a word or phrase relates to other text.
• Exophoric reference refers to language outside of the text in which the reference is found.
i.g. The queen is pretty. (Location?)
• Endophoric reference refers to something inside of the text in which the reference is found.
i.g. "Susan dropped the plate. It shattered loudly"
References
Grundy, P. Doing Pragmatics (second ed.). New York, USA: Oxford University Press, Inc.
Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Newyork: Cambridge University press 1983.
Lyons, J. (1997). Semantics 2. Newyork, Newyork, USA: Cambridge University press.
• Santi : “tomorrow”. Tidak usah mengkhawatirkan masa depan. Don’t worry about
tomorrow. How to analyze it?
• Sirojul: discourse deixis: that is what I mean.