Why is deixis used

Every language needs deixis however, there are differences because there are not universal deictic expressions. Deixis describes the function or use of deictic words, forms, or expressions in the linguistics cf. Deixis is the process of pointing through language and its detonation changes from one discourse to another. The three main types of deixis are person deixis, place deixis and time deixis. Person deixis encodes the different persons involved in a communicative event.

Moreover, the participants need to be encoded which means that you have to find out who the speaker and who the addressee is Giergji, Person deixis refers to the person who the speakers intend to refer to that means that person deixis is realised with personal pronouns.

The utterance is directed from the first person I to the listener, the second person you and the person the speaker is talking about is the third person he, she, it Renkema, Place deixis is also called as spatial deixis and describes where the relative location of people and objects are being indicated Giergji, f. Demonstrative adverbs for place deixis are here, this, these, that, those, there. There is a gestural use for spatial deixis as well as a non-gestural use.

The third one out of the three deixis types is time deixis which is an expression that is being used to point to a point while the speaker is speaking Gjergji, I will explain this type of deixis further in the next point. There are also two deixis types that Levinson has suggested however, they are not as common as the main deixis types. They are named discourse deixis and social deixis.

Social deixis distincts between the social characteristics between participants in a speech Levinson, Discourse deixis refers to specific parts of the discourse to provide increasing text coherence Levinson, Time Deixis is an expression in relation to a certain point of time when utterance is produced by the speaker Giergji, f.

Usually the reference point for time deixis is the moment of utterance which is the coding time. There is a distinction between coding time and receiving time in the written or recorded use of language Levinson, The coding time is the time of utterance and the receiving time is the time of recovery of information by the hearer Giergji, Furthermore, it is being counted either backwards or forward from the coding time in calendrical units.

The most important aspect of time deixis is tense. It encodes a mix between deictic time distinctions and aspectual distinctions [1] , which are hard to separate Levinson, The proximal tense is close to the current situation which means that it is in the present tense and the distal form is distant from the current situation and therefore in the past tense Giergji, f.

The tense system is important for time deixis because every sentence refers to a certain time of an event. Iqra Azhar. Nouha Benyamina. Pretty Shai. Waheed Sasoli. Momina Abid. Rabia Khan. Show More. Views Total views. Actions Shares. No notes for slide. Deixis presentation 1. The deictic words such as I, we, you, he, she, this, that, it, now, then, here, there, tomorrow, yesterday, etc.

The meanings of deictic expressions can be understood only in terms of speakers intended meanings. These expressions are called indexicals, e. This is called deictic reference. It is now She is the mother of Napoleon.

This is Iqbal. That will end then. Letizea was the mother of Napoleon. In the above examples, the underlined words i. It, she, the, this, that, the, are deictic expressions or indexicals. The point of positioning of a speaker is called deictic centre or deictic point. If a speaker is sitting at a specific place and says : Come here. The word here in this case is deictic expression which shows that the location of the speaker is away from the addressee.

Deictic use plus gesture. Deictic use minus gesture. In this sentence the word you is deictic expression, used for only one particular student and it conveys the meaning that you have to read the chapter , you have to read the chapter , you have to read the chapter.

In this example, the statement is general and is without gesture. In these examples, there is a non deictic use 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. In deictic expressions, immediate context or immediate setting must be present, but in non- deictic expressions, there is no immediate context.

In reality, words or phrases that require contextual information to convey any meaning are deictic e. English pronouns are deictic. On the basis of semantic criteria deixis can be classified into three major categories given below: 1. Person deixis which is based on person reference e. Place deixis: Which is based on place reference e.

Time deixis: Which is based on time reference e. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Richard Nordquist. English and Rhetoric Professor. Richard Nordquist is professor emeritus of rhetoric and English at Georgia Southern University and the author of several university-level grammar and composition textbooks. Updated September 10, Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Nordquist, Richard. Deictic Expression Deixis.

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