DEIXIS

PAPER
to fulfill one of Semantic course assigned by Mr. Asep Hardiyanto, S.Pd.,M.Pd in
English Education Study Program

by
Mutia Tanjung (1588203028)
Siti Aisyah (15882030)

SEKOLAH TINGGI KEGURUAN DAN ILMU PENDIDIKAN

MUHAMMADIYAH KOTABUMI LAMPUNG
KOTABUMI
DECEMBER 2018
 PREFACE

Thank to Allah Subhanahu wataala who has given His bless to the writer
for finishing this Semantic paper. This paper entitled Deixis. This paper is the one
of Semantic task which related to the study of the meaning of linguistic
expression.
This paper made by the writer with patient, hard work, and focus. All of
this have been done with motivation, support, and helped by all of people around
the writer. For the first thank you to Mr. Asep Hardiyanto, S.Pd.,M.Pd who has
given a guidance to finish this paper and also my friends and family who support
and give some suggestions.
Finally, the writer hopes this paper can be useful for the readers and in
education world.

Kotabumi, December 3rd 2018

Writer
 1. Introduction
Utterance is piece of meaningful language spoken in particular occasion
that belongs to space and time, in who is involved, it means who is the speaker
and to whom he/she speaks, so participants can understand well what they are
talking about. The utterance may be a sequence of sentences, or a single phrase, or
even a single word. The same piece of language may yield different meaning if it
is uttered by different participants, place and time. The most important of
utterance is that the speaker and the hearer assimilate what they are talking about.
Absorbing the message or meaning of the utterance is influenced by as far the
speaker and the hearer apprehend well the topic and the context. To have good
and convenient communication, the speaker must auspices the hearer understand
what he or she speaks. In this case they have to have same idea. The similarity of
the idea can be reached by same referent in their mind by using referring
expression.
A referring expression is a piece of language, a noun phrase, that is used in
an utterance and is linked to something outside language, some living or dead or
imaginary entity or concept or group of entities or concepts. That ‘something’ is
the referent, not necessarily physical or necessarily ‘real.’ (Kreidler, 2002: 130).
To decide what the referent of referring expression depends on any way. It
belongs to context or circumstance where the speaker utter, the expression that
has been mentioned in previous utterance and something or someone whom
participants know before having communication. The approaching to this referent
are deictic also anaphore.

2. Definition of Deixis
Deixis term is formed from Greek’s words which mean “pointing” or
“referring”. According to Lyons (1977:677), deixis can be meant as location,
people identification, object, event, process, or the activities which are being
talked or referred by speaker and hearer or addresser. Nababan (1987:40),
explained that in linguistics there are reference term as word or phrase which
show word and phrase or utterance when be talked. The reference is called deixis.
According to Purwo (1984:1), a word will be meant deixis if the reference is not
absolute or can be changed depend on who is speaker, when and where the words
are uttered.

According to C.W. Kreidler (1994 : 144), “The method of relating to the

spatial temporal context of the utterance is labelled as deixis (in greek it means
pointing with words)”. It is supported by Meyer (2009:182) “Words also have a
pointing function commonly referred to as deixis”.

Based on some arguments, it can be conclude that deixis is semantics

indication which is in words or the contractions which its references can be
explained by the situation of the speaker. Clearly, deixis is pragmatics initiative to
understand semantics meaning. The kinds of deictic words are I, we, you, they,
this, that, here, and there. The meaning of these deictic expressions depend the
interpretation of the speaker and hearer or addresser. Lavinson (1983) gave the
example to explain how important the information of deixis. The example is if
you find a bottle in beach which has content a letter which messages as follow:

“Meet me here a week from now with a stick about this big”

This message doesn’t have the contextual background, so it’s not very
informative. It can be said because deixis expression will have the meaning when
it can be explained by reader. Actually, the deixis expression includes in
pragmatics domain. But, because the finding this meaning is very important to
understand the purpose and the condition which really happen, so in the same time
deixis include in semantics domain. Generally, we can say that deixis expression
is the part which references in the utterances which correlates with the situation of
context, expression in advance, indication, etc.

3. Deixis as a parts of references

Deictic expression has been extensively studied, but it would be wrong to
see their context-dependence as exceptional, as a special part of language. Much
of reference involves reliance on context, together with some calculation on the
part of the speaker and hearers. A clear example of this is what Clark (1978) calls
short-hand. Turning on the radio recently, I heard this sentence:
 “It’s a struggle keeping the barnacles from off the crops.”

After a while it became clear that a barnacle was shorthand for barnacle
geese. The reference would have been clear, of course, if I had listened from the
beginning of the programme. This example is characteristic of normal language
use: speakers calculate how much information their hearers need to make
successful references, and where they can economize.

According to Abdul Chaer (2007:291) a word is called referential meaning

if there is a reference, or reference. Words such as horses, reds, and images are
words that are referentially meaningful because there are references in the real
world. Conversely, words like and, or, and because are words that are not
referential meaningful, because the words do not have a reference. Mansoer
Pateda, R (2010:125) in his book says referents or references may be objects,
events, processes, or reality. A referent is something designated by the symbol.
So, if someone says a river, then what is indicated by the symbol is directly
connected with the reference. It is impossible to associate with others. With regard
to this reference, there are a number of words called deictic words, the reference
of which is not fixed to one object, but can be moved from one object to another.
Which includes these deictic words are pronouns.

4. Deictic Elements
The deictic elements of a language are the linguistic forms relating the
utterance to a particular time, place, speaker, or discourse context. Deictic
elements include information about adverb of location (here and there),
demonstrative (this/these and that/those), not only that but also deictic elements
may also include information about motion towards and away from the speaker.
We can see this in English: the comparation between come and go in below tells
us something about the location of the speaker:

“Come into my bedroom”

“Go into my bedroom”

We have to interpret the situation described in a rather complicated way to accept

these sentences.
 5. Classification of Deixis
According to Meyer (2009:183) there are three classification of Deixis,
they are; Referential/Person Deixis, Spatial Deixis and Temporal Deixis.

a. Referential Deixis (Person)

Referential deixis is the deixis which is used to point a word or words
refer to something (Meyer,2009:183). Referential deixis refers to the
use of pronouns of first, second and third person. The first person is the
speaker, and the second person is the addressee or the hearer. While the
third person is neither the speaker nor the hearer (Cruise,2000:319).

English Singular Plural

1st person I/ me we/ us

2nd person you you
rd
3 person he/him/,she/her, it they/ them

Example:
1. I gave her a gift on her birthday last year.
2. He lent me some books for his lecture.
3. You never tell me about your girlfriend.
4. Would you like to have an ice cream cone?
5. He tried to hurt me but they came to the rescue

b. Spatial Deixis

Spatial deixis also known as place deixis, concerns itself with the
spatial locations relevant to an utterance. It used to situate the
speaker/writer spatially with respect to what these expressions are
referring to (Meyer,2009:186). 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

1. The adverbs “here” and “there”

It is interesting to note that while “here” and “there” are often used
to refer to locations near to and far from the speaker. ”here” refers
 to locations near to the speaker while “there” refers to location far
from the speaker.
2. The demonstratives “this/these” and “that/those”
These words indicate entities close to or removed from the speaker.
3. The Preposition
The proposition to show the exact place of something like above,
below, upstairs, etc.

For example:
If Mary is preparing to continue travel to the USA from Arab Saudi, her
mother says: ‘you should bring warm clothes, the weather is cold there.
Different with this country”

‘There’ and ‘this’ are place deixis. ‘There’ that refers to The USA, the
location that far from the speaker. And ‘this country’ refers to country
where they are standing now.

c. Temporal Deixis
Temporal deixis is the deixis which is used to point the time. It locates
time or points or intervals on the time axis using the moment of
utterance, as a reference point. Time, or temporal, deixis concerns itself
with the various times involved in and referred to in an utterance. Time
adverbs can be relative to the time when an utterance is made or when
the utterance is heard. This includes temporal expression such as now,
then, yesterday, today, tomorrow, last week, next month, and so on. In
addition to that, distinction in tense will be. Example:
“Did you call me last night?
Rachael booked a cake
Rachael is booking a cake
If, on May 3rd 2013, I say, “I am full of anxiety now for incomplete
presentation material tomorrow”. ‘now’ refers to at the time when the
speaker speaks that is May 3rd 2013, while ‘tomorrow’ refers to the day
after the day of the utterance in which it is used, that is May 4th 2013.
 6. Anaphore
According to Kreidler (2002:145) Anaphora is a kind of secondary
reference in which a previous reference is recalled by use of special function
words or equivalent lexemes. Anaphora means an expression that refers to
something mentioned earlier in the context. Examples:

Adam loves cats. No wonder he has 20 cats.

John buys new ring for jane. It is a diamond ring.
Jack and Jill tried to lift the box and push it onto the top shelf.
Samuel loves flowers, and that is why he plant a lot of them and always
present them for his mother and sister.
Anaphoric expression can be found in Proform which is to express stands
for another word, phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is retrieved from
the context. Proform is used to avoid the usage and the repetition of the word used
in one sentence.

a. A Pronoun is used to substitutes a noun or a noun phrase in a sentence

Laptop is the most important gadget in student life because it is

needed to do assignment and search for material.

b. A Pro-adjective is used to substitutes an adjective or a phrase that

functions as an adjective.

Her dress is green. So is mine.

c. An adverb or phrase functions as adverb in a sentence will be substitute

with Pro-adverb.

He exercised regularly. I did too.

d. Pro-verb it is used substitutes a verb or a Verb Phrase.

I like cats as he does.

e. Pro-sentence substitutes an entire sentence or sub-sentence

Do you love animals? – Yes, I do.

 7. Referential Ambiguity
According to Kreidler (2002:151) Misunderstandings occur when the
speaker has one referent in mind but the listener thinks it is different. No doubt
we have all experienced, and been troubled by, this kind of problem in reference.
We can see other instances of referential ambiguity that are due to the nature of
referring expressions, the vagueness that pieces of language necessarily have.
Some referential ambiguity occurs when:

a. An idefinite referring expression may be specific or not

I wanted to buy a newspaper

Here a newspaper may refer to a specific newspaper or some

newspaper,any newspaper.

b. Anaphora is unclear because a personal pronoun, he, she, it or they,

can be linked to either of two referring expressions

Jack told Ralph that a visitor was waiting for him.

c. The pronoun you is used generically or specifically

If you want to get ahead, you have to work hard

Is you the addressee or is this sentence a general platitude?)

d. A noun phrase with every can have distributed reference or

collected reference
I’m buying a drink for everybody here.
(One drink for all or one drink for each?)
 REFERENCES

Cruise, Alan. 2000. Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and

Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press

Kreidler, Charles W. 2002. Introducing English Semantics. New York.

Levinson, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. England: Cambridge University Press

Lyon, John. 1977. Semantic 2. Great Britain: Cambridge University Press

Meyer, Charles F. 2009. Introducing English Linguistics. England: Cambridge

University Press