Austėja Žebelytė

Contemporary English: Academic Writing

Year 1, Group 4
20/05/2020

Deictic Expressions

Every language has its deictic expressions. Language users may not even know that they are
using them. Consider this example, if someone would ask an exchange student who is studying
in Vilnius University, “‘Have you been in this country long?’ the words this country and you are
the deictic expressions” (Nordquist 2018). This example shows that deictic expressions are
everywhere in the language. And accounts for the need of comprehensive look into deictic
expressions to be an educated language user. As the Malmkjær (2004) suggests that the most
valuable links between language and context are being performed by speakers through the deictic
expressions of languages. In the English language, there are quite a few deictic expressions, one
of them is location deixis which is made up of adverbs like here and there. Other deictic
expressions will be examined in later paragraphs.

The term deixis will be explained by discussing its definition and importance in the English
language. To start with, deixis is usually referred to, identifying the orientation of objects
and situations concerning different points of reference (Cruz-Ferreira & Abraham 2011).
This explanation was primarily general, and it does not describe the concept of deixis
fully. More specific definition is provided by O'Keeffe et al. who highlight an important
characteristic of deixis by saying that “deixis enables interlocutors to refer to entities in context”
(2011). Indeed,  context for deixis is necessary to understand what people are talking
about. For example, linguists Yule and Widdowson provide an example of contexts
importance in what seems to be an everyday conversation, if a friend speaking with Jim
on the phone hears him saying to his girlfriend, I’ll put this here without context a
friend could not ascertain that, “Jim was telling Anne that he was about to put an extra
house key in one of the kitchen drawers” (1996: 9). Furthermore, Perkins adds that deixis
can be “accompanied by extra-linguistic gesturing or indication by a turn of the head or
a nod in a particular direction” (1992). Also, grammatical items such as demonstratives,
first and second personal pronouns, adverbs of time, motion verbs encode deixis
(O’Keeffe et al. 2011). Thus, deixis has been discussed by linguists a long time ago, resulting
there is not many controversies concerning this term.

After examining what deixis is another term that has to be explained is deictic
expression. The definition of deictic expression is so closely related to deixis that they
can be described as one, just the way Nordquist states that, “A  deictic expression  or
deixis  is a word or phrase (such as  this, that, these, those, now, then, here) that points
to the time, place, or situation in which a speaker is speaking” (2018). Yule and
Widdowson evokes that deixis points through language and “any linguistic form used to
accomplish this ‘pointing’ is called a deictic expression” (1996:9). Pointing or gesturing
takes a crucial part for deictic expressions because it is easier for a receiver to
understand the speaker when something is being pointed out. Moreover, deictic
expressions can be partitioned into a number of categories: person, place, time, and
additional categories such as social and discourse deixis (O’Keeffe et al. 2011). Following
the given categories, the term ‘deictic expressions’ will be examined in this order: person, place,
time, social and lastly discourse deixis.

Different types of deictic expressions will be investigated in this term paper by looking at their
definitions, their importance in the English language, what words make up the specific deictic
expression. It must be noted that not all deictic expressions will have definitions and importance
in the English language provided. Thus, the aim of this term paper is to examine each type of
deictic expression in the English language and their characteristics.

Having discussed the main concepts used in this paper and its aims, the paper turns to the list of
five deictic expressions that have been chosen for research purposes and are laid out to most
common to rarely used deictic expressions by speakers of English.

The first deictic expression that will be examined in this paper is person deixis. Roughly said
personal deixis can be detected by pronouns, which make up this deixis (Nordquist 2018). More
precise definition of person deixis is said by linguists Cruz-Ferreira & Abraham who claims that
“It signals orientation in relation to the speaker and addressee” (2011). Plus, this can be spotted
in dialogues when two people are speaking. For example, if a mother tells her daughter
‘I love you’ the child understands that it was said to her and not somebody else and that the
mother loves her. So, “I refer to the speaker and you to the addressee” (Cruz-Ferreira & Abraham
2011). Moreover, when two speakers talk between each other and have a conversation about
another person that is called a three-part division (Yule and Widdowson 1996:10). This can be
clarified by stating that, “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)”
(qtd. Nguyen 2017). For example, in this phrase ‘Would you like to have dinner’, there is no
first-person but from the context, someone is asking the addressee. Without the pronoun, you the
phrase would not have a meaning to it. Additionally, the linguists O’Keeffe et al. elaborates the
idea of pronoun need in the sentence by demonstrating the relevance of personal pronouns in
everyday conversation. The author provides statistical data which was generated for the Limerick
Corpus of Irish English (LCIE) which shows 20 most frequently used words in everyday life. It
demonstrates that five personal pronouns – I, you, it, he, they occur in this list (2011:44-8). Now,
it is safe to say that pronouns are one of the mostly used deictic expressions by English users.

Following on is place deixis, also called spatial or locational deixis (O’Keeffe et al. 2011: 48-9).
Place deixis consists of demonstratives (this, that, these, those), deictic adverbs of place (here,
there) and verbs of motion (come, bring, take) (O’Keeffe et al. 2011: 48-9). To show the use of
spatial deictic expression consider this example if a mother would shout to her son ‘Come to
bed!’. Come falls into the place deixis category and is widely used as a lexical verb. Cruz-
Ferreira & Abraham highlights the importance of locational deixis by stating that it demonstrates
the orientation or place of events. It helps to comprehend where the location of the participants
and communicative exchange is taking place (2011). To illustrate that statement the authors
provide an example Please put the table here and the lamp there in which here signals nearness
to the speaker and there signifies distance from the speaker (Crus-Ferreira & Abraham 2011).
Also, the context is very important, because without it the listener would not understand where to
put the table and the lamp to. Gesturing helps as well, by directly pointing to space. Moreover,
there is a possibility to refer to an area by not using gestures. Nguyen provides an example by
saying “I love it here!” whilst walking through a park (2017). This demonstrates that people can
use spatial deictic expressions without gestures and the meaning will not be lost.

Time deixis or as Ahmed (2014) refers to a temporal deixis, “refers to the orientation of events in
relation to the time of the communicative exchange and is commonly expressed by words”
(Cruz-Ferreira & Abraham 2011). Deictic expressions in temporal deixis are complex adverbs of
time as next year, last month and adverbs of time such as yesterday, then, tomorrow (O’Keeffe et
al. 2011:50-4). For example, in this sentence This room has been booked for a meeting tonight
the word tonight is time deictic expression that reports when the meeting will take place (Cruz-
Ferreira & Abraham 2011). It must be noted that tense is crucial in time deixis. That is because
every sentence or phrase refers to time of an occasion (qtd. Nguyen 2017). Linguists O’Keeffe et
al. elaborate by stating that there are a range of tenses like past and present simple, past
continuous but present tense is used the most (2011: 50-4). In this sentence, “Say that yoke was
only ringing me to brag about last night” word ringing refers to the recent past and will to
immediate future time (O’Keeffe et al. 2011:50-4). Therefore, the importance of time deixis was
noted by the O’Keeffe et al. who wanted to find the occurrence of the deictic expressions today,
yesterday, and tomorrow compared to the seven days of the week in the Limerick Corpus of Irish
English (LCIE). The results show that deictic expressions today, yesterday, tomorrow occur
almost two times more often than the lexicalised names of the week (2011: 50-4). According to
the statistical data it is safe to say that temporal deictic expressions are used more frequently than
lexical verbs by English speakers.

PLEASE EVALUATE THIS ONE

Next deixis is social deixis which refers to those elements of the language system that represent
the social characteristics of the participants or the social relationship between them or entities
referred to (qtd. O’Keeffe et al. 2011:55-6). It must be noted that there is not a specific deictic
expression that make up this deixis because it depends on the speaker, the language, and the
context that the conversation is taking place in. Furthermore, O’Keeffe et al. elaborate that social
deixis may contain information about communicative participants, such as age, sex, family
relationship, social class or ethnic group. The author provides an example, hurry up baby son all
the boys is finished their breakfast (2011:55-6). The words baby son encodes a variety of social
information about the conversational participants. It shows the age (baby), sex (male) and family
relationship (son) of the addressee being spoken by the parent. Also, with the help of social
deictic expressions people, “typically mark distinctions between the social status of the speaker
and addressee, the higher, older, and more powerful speaker” (Yule & Widdowson 1996:10-2).
A great example is the way people use pronoun you in English, it can be used to talk with a
friend and a headmaster. Linguists Yule and Widdowson note that in French ‘tu’ is used by the
higher, older and more powerful speaker to a lower, younger and less powerful addressee, and be
addressed by the ‘vous’ form in return. The same situation can be found in other languages as in
German (du/Sie) and Spanish (tu/Usted) (1996:10-2). However, social deictic expressions are
used in the English language when people between family members and friends say ‘Let‘s go’
and in more formal context say, ‘Let us go’ (Yule & Widdowson 1996:10-2). Examples given
above show that even though in the English language there are no specific words that make up
social deixis and they can vary within context. Also, the importance of learning social deictic
expressions can be sensed, because there are no restrictions what can fall into this deictic
expression, that means it is being used widely even though the speakers of English do not realise
that.

The last deixis that will be examined is discourse deixis. Discourse deixis can be used to point to
the elements in the preceding or subsequent discourse (O’Keeffe et al 2011:54-5). This can be
achieved with, for example, words like above and below (Malmkjær: 2004). These two words
help authors to navigate through different texts. Furthermore, Levinson (1983) adds that words
like therefore, in conclusion, well and nevertheless belongs to discourse deixis (qtd. O’Keeffe et
al. 2011:54-5). These words also help to navigate through the text. Moreover, Biber et al. (2002)
elaborate that discourse deictic expressions are linking adverbials who show the relationship
between two units of discourse, words like however, furthermore and yet. Also, in discourse
deixis, “the referent is often distinct from the things described in the sequence” (Webber 1988).
People use discourse deictic expressions in everyday communication when telling a story like, I
was born in Lisbon and I have spent my whole life there. The word there can be used even if the
speaker does not live in Lisbon anymore. This shows that people can use words like there to
navigate through their past. Discourse deixis do not have restricted number of deictic expressions
and it is important for authors and the people to refer to different points of the text. Linguists
O’Keeffe et al. state that it is important to study the occurrence of deixis in speech by this
presenting data. It shows that in the spoken corpus LCIE personal pronouns I takes 2nd place and
you 4th and those whose use is anaphoric it 6th, he 16th, they 18th position (2011: 57-8). This
statistical data shows that people use deictic expressions rather often and more research should
be done for speakers of English to be more cultivated.

Having looked at these five deictic expressions it is time to draw some conclusions. Firstly, all
deictic expressions demand for context. Does not matter if it is person deixis or discourse deixis,
to use deixis we need to be in place of action. Secondly, not all deictic expressions are made of
words that fall into the closed word class. The main deixis categories like person and time is
made out of pronouns, adverbs, demonstratives which means that possibility for new words to
fall into these deictic expressions are low but time, discourse and social deixis is an open class
where new deictic expressions can be made. I believe that deixis is important to know for every
English philology student because often people may use a deictic expression but not realise that
they are using linguistic term and shows their erudition. An observation must be made because
there is one more deictic expression called empathetic deixis but there remains much to be
investigated. If in the future, there will be more research done maybe additional deictic
expressions would be found.

References

1. Ahmed, I. 2014. Deixis presentation. https://www.slideshare.net/ijazzirehmani/deixis-

presentation. [Accessed on 2020 February 24]
2. Biber, D., S. Conrad & G. Leech. 2002. Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and
Written English. London: Longman.
3. Cruz-Ferreira, M. & S. A. Abraham. 2011. The Language of Language: A Linguistics
Course for Starters. Lexington: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform Lexington.
184-186.
4. Malmkjær, K. 2004. The Linguistic Encyclopedia. Second Edition. London: Routledge.
465 p.
5. Nguyen, H. M. 2017. Deixis Types with focus on Time Deixis and Deictic Circle.
https://www.grin.com/document/436399. [Accessed on 2020 April 11]
6. Nordquist, R. 2018. Deictic Expression (Deixis). https://www.thoughtco.com/deictic-
expression-deixis-1690428. [Accessed on 2020 April 11]
7. O’Keeffe, A., B. Clancy & S. Adolphs. 2011. Introducing Pragmatics in Use. New York:
Routledge
8. Perkins, R.D. 1992. Deixis, Grammar, and Culture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Publishing Company
9. Webber, B. L. 1988. Discourse Deixis: Reference to Discourse
Segmentshttps://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1479&context=cis_reports. [Accessed on 2020 April 11]
10. Yule, G. & H. G. Widdowson, 1996:9. Pragmatics. USA: Oxford University Press