Good afternoon teacher and classmates, in this opportunity, I am going to talk about deixis and

distance and an additional topic: ellipsis. So, I am going to start with the first topic. Deixis.
Definition
A deictic expression o deixis refers to such words and phrases that cannot be fully understood without
any contextual information. Such as:
Who is the speaker
The time of place of speaking
The gesture of the speaker
The current location in the discourse
The topic of the discourse
In other words, 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. Deixis is expressed in English by way of
personal pronouns, demonstratives, adverbs, and tense. The term's etymology comes from the Greek,
meaning "pointing" or "show.
Example
For example, if we would ask a visiting exchange student, "Have you been in this country long?" the
words this country and you are the deictic expressions, as they refer to the country where the
conversation happens and the person being addressed in the conversation, respectively.
Some other examples of deictic expressions
It is now 12:15.
She is the mother of Napoleon.
This is Alicia.
That will end then.
Letizea was the mother of Napoleon
In the above examples, the underlined words i.e. It, she, the, this, that, the, are deictic expressions or
indexicals.
Types
On the other hand, deictic expressions can be one of several types, referring to who, where, and when.
The first one is person deixis; it refers to the person who the speakers intend to refer to. That means
that person deixis is realized with personal pronouns such us I, you, he, she, me, him, them etc.
For example
I am going to the mall.
Would you like to have dinner?
They tried to hurt me, but he came to the rescue.
In these sentences, the underlined words i.e I, you, they,me and he indicate the people who are being
talked about in the sentence.
Another type of deictic expression is place deixis
It is also called as spatial deixis and describes where the location of people and objects are being
indicated
Demonstrative adverbs for place deixis are here, this, these, that, those, there, yonder, and so on.
The following examples are worth mentioning:
I enjoy living in this city.
Here is where we met last month.
She was sitting over there.
In these examples, the underlined words i.e this, here, there, indicate where people are.
The third one out of the three deixis types is time or temporal deixis which is an expression that is
being used to point to certain period while the speaker is speaking.
Actually, time deixis includes time adverbs like now, then, soon and so forth, and also different tenses.
For example
She is writing a letter right now.
I will see him this week.
Where were you last month?
In these examples, the underlined words i.e now,this,last indicate a certain period in which the person
acts.
Distance
That's all about the types of deixis. Now I am going to explain about the distance in deixis.
There are two types of distance: proximal and distal.
Proximal refers to objects close to the speaker, while distal refers to objects distant from the speaker.
As you can see, in the comparison chart we have the distance and proximity according to the deixis
types.
In person deixis type, the words me, us, our and this girl represent objects close to the speaker, while
the words him, them, that woman represent objects not close to the speaker.
Then, in spatial deixis type, the words here, this bed, behind me represent objects close to the speaker,
while the words there, those hills, over yonder represent objects distant from the speaker.
Finally, in temporal deixis type, the words now, today, this morning represent objects close to the
speaker, while the words then, yesterday, last week, next year represent objects distant from the
speaker.
The last topic I'm going to talk about is ellipsis.
Ellipsis
An ellipsis is a punctuation mark made up of three dots (...). An ellipsis is used:
To show an omission of a word or words (including whole sentences) from a text.
To create a pause for effect.
To show an unfinished thought.
To show a trail off into silence
The term "ellipsis" also refers to omitting repeated words for efficiency or effect. For example:
Mark likes cakes; Lee likes pies.
Mark likes cakes; Lee, pies.
(Here, the comma replaces the word "likes”). This is also known as ellipsis.
That's all thank You.