Deixis refers to words and phrases whose meaning depends on the context of the utterance. There are three main types of deixis: person deixis refers to pronouns like "I" and "you"; spatial deixis indicates locations like "here" and "there"; and temporal deixis refers to times like "now" and "then". Deixis allows speakers to indicate people, places, and times from their own perspective through the use of proximal terms that are near the speaker spatially or temporally, and distal terms that are farther away. Understanding deixis requires understanding not just the literal meaning of words but how their meaning shifts based on who is speaking, where, when, and other contextual factors.

1. PRAGMATICS
DEIXIS
Lecturer: Faizal Risdianto, S. S, M. Hum.
Arranged By:
Nur Ikhsan: 11310058
STATE ISLAMIC STUDIES INSTITUTE (STAIN) OF SALATIGA
2012/2013
A. Introduction

2. Deixis is a technical term (from Greek) for one of the most basic things we do with
utterances. It means ‘pointing’ via language. Any linguistic form used to accomplish this
‘pointing is called a deictic expression. Deictic expressions are also sometimes called indexicals.
They are among the first forms to be spoken by very young children and can be used to indicate
people via person deixis (‘me’, ‘you’), or location via spatial deixis (‘here’, ‘there’), or time via
temporal deixis(‘me’, ‘you’), or location via spatial deixis (‘here’, ‘there’), or time via temporal
deixis (‘now’, ‘then’). All these expressions depend, for their interpretation, on the speaker and
hearer sharing the same context. Indeed, deictic expression have their most basic uses in face-to-
face spoken interaction where utterance such as are easily understood by the people present, but
may need a translation for someone not right there.
Within linguistic view, deixis refers to the phenomenon wherein understanding the
meaning of certain words and phrases in an utterance requires contextual information. Words are
deictic if their semantic meaning is fixed but their denotational meaning varies depending on time
and place. Words or phrases that require contextual information to convey any meaning – for
example, English pronouns – are deictic.
Deixis reference by means of an expression whose interpretation is relative to the context
of the utterance, such as:
- Who is speaking
- The time or place of speaking
- The gestures of the speaker
- The current location in the discourse
- The topic of the discourse
Near speaker – proximal terms (this, here, now)
Away from speaker – distal terms (that, there, then)
B. Kinds of Deixis

3. There are three kinds of deixis, Person Deixis, Spatial Deixis, and Temporal Deixis. This
is the defining each of the kinds of deixis.
1. Person Deixis
Person deixis clearly operates on abasic three – part division, exemplified by the
pronouns for first person (‘I’), second person (‘You’), and third person (‘He, She, It’). In
many languages these categories of speaker, addresses, and other(s) are elaborated with
markers of relative social status.
Person deixis involves the speaker (‘I’) and the addresses (‘You’). In conversation, each
person constantly changes from being ‘I’ to being ‘you’. An example of social contrast
involving person deixis could be the distinction between forms used for a familiar versus
non-familiar addresses in some language.
Person deixis is refers to the pronouns that depend on the words context.
English doesn’t use personal deixis to indicate relative social status in the same way that
other languages do. But the peronoun ”we” has a potential for ambiguity, i.e. between
exclusive “we” (includes the hearer) and the hearer-including (inclusive) “we”.
“Let‟s go (said to some friends)”
“Let us go (said to someone who is keeping the speaker and his/her friends).
2. Spatial Deixis
The concept of distance already mentioned is clearly relevant to spatial deixis, where the
relative location of people and things is being indicated. Contemporary English makes use of
only two adverbs, “here”, and “there”, for the basic distinction, but in older texts and in
some dialects, a much larger set or deictic expressions can be found. These last two adverbs
include the meaning of motion toward the speaker (“Come to bed”) or away from the speaker
(“Go to bed!”).

4. In considering spatial deixis, however, it is important to remember that location from the
speaker’s perspective can be fixed mentally as well as physically. Speakers temporarily away
from their home location will continue to use “here” to mean the (physically distant) home
location, as if they were still in that location. Speakers also seem to be able to project
themselves into other location prior to actually being in these locations, as when they say
“I‟ll come later” (= movement to addresses location).
This is sometimes described as deictic projection and we make more use of its
possibilities as more technology allows us to manipulate location. If “here” means the place
of the speaker’s utterance (and “now” means the time of the speaker’s utterance) then on
utterance such as should be nonsense. i.e. “I am not here now”
The basic of spatial deixis is often psychological distance (rather than physical distance).
Usually physical and (metaphorical) psychologically distant, as when you indicate an item of
food on your plate with “I don‟t like that”.
- The use of ”this” indicate the speaker‟s empathy.
- The use of “that” to indicate the speaker‟s emotional distance.
Similar psychological processes seem to be at work in our distinctions between proximal
and distal expressions used to mark temporal deixis.
3. Temporal Deixis
We have already noted the use of the proximal form “now” as indicating both the time
coinciding with the speaker’s utterance and the time of the speaker’s voice being heard (the
hearer’s “now”). In contrast to “now”, the distal expression “then” applies to both past and
future time relative to the speaker’s present time.
It is worth noting that we also use elaborate systems of non-deictic temporal reference
such as calendar time (dates) as “November 22nd
, 1963? I was in Scotland then and clock

5. time (hours) “Dinner at 8:30 on Saturday? Okay, I‟ll see you then. However, these forms of
temporal reference are learned a lot later than the deictic expressions like “yesterday”,
“today”, “tonight”, “next week”, “last week”, “this week”. All these expressions depend for
their interpretation on knowing the relevant utterance time. If we don’t know the utterance
(i.e. scribbling) time of a note, as “Back in an hour”, on an office door, we won’t know if we
have a short or a long wait a head.
Similarly, if we return the next day to a bar that displays the notice like “Free beer
tomorrow”, then we still be (deictically) one day early for the free drink.
The psychological basis of temporal deixis seems to be similar to that of spatial deixis.
We can treat temporal events as objects that move toward us (into view) or away from us (out
of view). One metaphor used in English is of events coming toward the speaker from the
future (for example, „the coming week‟, „the approaching year‟) and going away from the
speaker to the past (for example, „in days gone by‟, „the past week‟). We also seem to treat
the near or immediate future as being close to utterance time by using the proximal deictic
„this‟, as in ‘this (coming) weekend’ or ‘this (coming) Thursday’.
One basic (but often unrecognized) type of temporal deixis in English is in the choice of
verb tense. Whereas other languages have many different forms of the verb as different tense,
English has only two basic forms, the present as in “I live here now”, and the past as in “I
lived there then”.
The present tense is the proximal form and the past tense is the distal form. Something
having taken place in the past, as in a sentence “I could swim (when I was child)”. Perhaps
less obviously, something that is treated as extremely unlikely (or impossible) from the
speaker’s current situation is also marked via the distal (past tense) form, as in “I could be in
Hawaii (if I had a lot of money).
The past tense is always used in English in those if-clauses that mark events presented by
the speaker as not being close to present reality.
In temporal deixis, the remote or distal form can be used to communicate not only
distance from current reality or facts.
C. Conclusion

6. Deixis means “Pointing” via language. Any linguistic form used to achieve this
“Pointing” is called a Deictic expression or “Indexicals”.
Deixis signals a referent and it relates that referent to a common ground shared by the
speaker and the addressee. Typical deictic include this, that, here and now. All of these words
have the ability to situate the speaker and hearer in relation to one another and to the world
around them.
D. Source of Materials
- Oxford Introduction to Language Study “Pragmatics”
- All Materials of Pragmatics