According to the definition provided by Dylgjeri and Kazazi (2013), deixis refers to the group of orientational features of some of the words in the English language, which make it necessary for these words to be used in a particular spatial, temporal, or personal context in order to be understood correctly (p. 87).
The linguistic science distinguishes at least three different types of deictic words in accordance with the kind of context needed to indicate their correct meaning. For instance, spatial deixis refers to the phrases that require some spatial context to be understood: if a person uses the word such as “there” or “here” without indicating the place either directly, as part of the conversation, or indirectly, the listener is unlikely to get the right interpretation of the word. Similarly, in temporal deixis, at least some indication of time is required in order for the expression like “now” or “then” to be understood correctly. Finally, the third category is personal deixis, a feature attributed to pronouns such as “you” and “us”; unless the listener already knows the person or people that the speaker is referring to, these pronouns will not make any sense to him or her.
A clear distinction between deictic expressions can also be made by their proximity to the speaker (ELLO, n.d., para. 2). Proximal deictic words include “this”, “here, “now”, and “us”; they indicate the subject’s spatial, temporal or personal proximity to the speaker. Expressions such as “that”, “there”, “then”, and “them”, on the other hand, are called distal deictic expressions, by which the speaker identifies not only the subject but also its distance from the speaker or the audience.
The function of deixis is, therefore, clear: deictic expressions make the conversation more efficient by reducing the volume of explanations down to a single word or phrase (ELLO, n.d., para. 1). However, deixis can only be used in the situations where the subject of the instruction is clear: for example, the word “here” will become indicative of a location it refers to only if the audience is aware of the speaker’s current location or the location he or she is indicating. In a similar way, temporal and personal expressions become meaningless if taken out of the context. The possibility of confusion is the primary reason why deixis is used mostly in personal interactions, where the speaker and the listener can see each other. These expressions can also be used in phone conversations or writing, as long as some indication of the spatial, temporal, or personal context is given.
The study of deixis is an interesting topic, because it allows exploring the subconscious response of the audience to verbal pointing, as well as linking this response to the features and context of the conversation. This connection has allowed some researchers to link deixis to pragmatics, a subfield of linguistics that “studies how people comprehend and produce a communicative act or speech act in a concrete speech situation” (Dylgjeri & Kazazi, 2013, p. 87). Studying deictic expressions in this light could help to examine the features such as the difference between the speaker’s emotional distance from the object and the actual distance. Overall, further exploration of deixis could help to unravel certain underlying patterns in conversation and speech, and thus to raise our level of consciousness in regular communication.
References
ELLO (n.d.). Deixis.English Language and Linguistics Online. Web.
Dylgjeri, A., & Kazazi, L. (2013). Deixis in modern linguistics and outside. Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2(4): 87-96. Web.