Table of Contents

1  Introduction  

2  Deixis - Definition  

3  History - Bühler’s Sprachtheorie  

4  Some Properties of Deixis  

5  Deictic Categories  

5.1  Person Deixis  

5.2  Social Deixis  

5.3  Time Deixis  

5.4  Place Deixis  

5.5  Discourse Deixis  

6  Deixis and Grammar  

7  Deixis between Semantics and Pragmatics  

8  Conclusion  

9  Bibliography  

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1 Introduction

As the information system in our modern technology world becomes more and more important, the research about language and especially commuication has grown to a major element of today’s scholarship. Pragmatics, as a linguistic science dealing with communication, generally is “concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader)”(see Yule,1996: 3). Thus, not the actual meaning of the words are decisive, but the interpretation of the utterance.

A simple principle of language use is the fact, that the more two speakers have in common, the less language they will need to use to identify familiar things. When two persons share the same physical context, the speaker frequently uses demonstratives, pronouns, adverbs and other grammatical features to establish a relationship between language and context. We call these words indexicals and the function of language deictic.

In today’s society deictic usage of laguage becomes more and more problematic. Lyon states: “The facts of deixis should act as a constant reminder […] that natural languages are primarily desigend, so to speak, for use in face-to-face interaction, and thus there are limits to the extent to which they can be analysed […]” (Lyons, 1977 in Levinson, 1983: 54). The permanent application of communicative aids like computers, cellphones or pagers evokes a lack of face-to-face interaction and increases the amount of disaccords during a conversation. In this paper I will illustrate and illuminate the different modes of deictic expressions and ascribe it to the problem of understanding in today’s society.

First, I will give a short definition of deixis as well as a historical grading. Below, I will concentrate on the three major categories person, place and time and briefly on the subcategories social and discourse deixis. Considering as examples the specific categories and their special features will be described and analysed. I conclude with a brief survey about grammar and whether the field of deixis should be classified in pragmatics or in semantics. Finally, I will give a short conclusion that works up the problem of understanding via deictic expression in today’s society.

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2 Deixis - Definition

When you consider pragmatics as the study of the use of language in context, deixis is the most obvious linguistic sign in which the relationship between language and context is reflected in the structures of langauges themselves. The term deixis (derived from the Greek word δείξις meaning pointing or indicating) deals with the use of certain linguistic expressions to locate subjects in spatio-temporal, social and discoursal context (see Marmaridou, 2000: 65). Traditionally, deictic expressions are subdivided into the three major categories of person, place and time. Of late one can add the categories of social and discourse deixis which I will only discuss briefly. Deictic expressions encode specific aspects of the speech event and can only be understood in the immediate context. Therefore deictic expressions are mostly used in face-to-face spoken interaction where contextual parameters can be taken into account easily. To see how important the sharing of the same physical context by speaker and hearer is, imagine a situation where such information is lacking:

(1) Meet me here a week from now with a stick about this big.

In this case it is impossible to understand the exact meaning of the utterance unless we know who to meet, where or when to meet him or her, or how big a stick should be (see Levinson, 1983: 55).

3 History - Bühler’s Sprachtheorie

As I already mentioned the term deixis is borrowed from the greek word for pointing or indicating. In its recent meaning it refers to the theory of language by Karl Bühler published in 1934 and translated into English by D. Fraser Goodwin in 1963. In his “Sprachtheorie” Bühler eleborated the organon model which can be seen as the most important forerunner for deixis.

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By using this model Bühler presents language as a tool or organum for a person who is communicating with another. During a communication the speaker (sender) is talking to the listener (receiver) about the world. In every single utterance there are three main functions that can be distinguished: representation, expression and appeal. Usually one of them is dominating, object-oriented communication is representative, communication that is focused on the feelings of the speaker is expressive and communication that is focused on the listener is an appeal. The circle in the middle symbolizes the concrete given sound, the triangle above the meaning of the sound. Where the triangle is bigger than the circle there is a meaning lacking an expression in sound. In those places where the circle is bigger than the triangle the sound contains information that lacks meaning.

In further researches (“Zweifeldtheorie”) Bühler subdivides the lexicon of a language into the fields of symbol words and the field of deicitic words. The symbol word field represents language by using words that are independent of the actual situation. The address “Wall Street No. 10” denotates always the same thing, the symbol exhibits an invariable content. The deictic word field serves as an aid for pointing. In accordance with Bühler pointing aids like pronouns (“I”,”you”,”he”) and deictic time and place expressions (“now”, “here”, “there”) can replace the pointing finger as a natural instrument. These expressions are variable and can therefore shift the deictic center between speaker and listener. This deictic center is the zero point or origo

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during a conversation which is fixed by the person who is speaking, the time of utterance and the place of utterance.

4 Some Properties of Deixis

Essential for the understanding of deictic expressions is the distinction between gestural and symbolic usage.

Gestural usage means that an expression can only be understood properly with a reference to a physical aspect of the communicative situation.

(2) This one’s a genuine, but this one’s a fake.

The addressee can only interprete this utterance if the speaker either establishes an eye-contact or physically indicates the ment object on any other way. Symbolic usage means that utterances can only be interpreted if one knows certain aspects of the communicative situation.

(3) This city is really beautiful.

In this case it is sufficient to know in which context the term has been uttered, therefore the general location of the speaker must be clear. Additionally, it is possible to distinguish besides gesutral and symbolic usage between deictic and non-deictic usage of deictic terms (anaphoric vs. non-anaphoric).

(4) Jane kicked her shoes off and then she picked up a paper.

The idexical she in (4) has been considered non-deictic usage of deictic terms. In this case the word she refers to a person which has been identified earlier in the discourse, namely Jane.

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