Deixis in Semiotics and Pragmatics: Linguistic Expression Analysis

This essay delves into the linguistic concepts of semiotics and pragmatics, focusing on deixis, the way language references context. It explores the etymology and meaning of deixis, highlighting its importance in communication. The essay then breaks down different forms of deictic expressions, including personal, spatial, temporal, and discourse deixis, providing clear examples to illustrate their usage. Personal deixis involves pronouns and references to people, while spatial deixis deals with place references. Temporal deixis focuses on time references, and discourse deixis refers to the text itself. The essay discusses each type, including proximal, distal, and medial spatial deixis, and encoding/decoding time in temporal deixis, and concludes by examining the dual nature of deictic expressions and their anaphoric functions. The essay provides a comprehensive overview of how deictic expressions function in the English language.

Running head: SEMIOTICS AND PRAGMATICS - DEIXIS
Semiotics and Pragmatics
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1SEMIOTICS AND PRAGMATICS - DEIXIS
Introduction:
The linguistics genre involves the semiotic and the pragmatic expression of language.
Every language has its own form of reference, where certain words are used in order to express
certain circumstances. These words are uttered or used in the situational context. Most of the
times these words can only be understood under specific circumstances as they describe the
present past or future of the situation. this aspect of the language in pragmatic theory is known as
deixis. The word has its etymological origin in the Greek term “deiktikos”. This word is actually
an adjective in the Greek language which means pointing or indicating at something. Thus the
word deixis means pointing at something or indicating any particular situation. In accordance
with the etymology of the word, in linguistic forms that are used in this context are known as
deictic expression. The deictic expressions are mostly used by the young children because when
they learn the language, they have a tendency to point at objects, differently and indicate them,
through their innocence. This is where the deixis terms find their usage mostly. Moreover, there
are various sentences in the English language which seem to be incomplete without the usage of
the deictic expressions. The deictic words actually help the people to be specific in their own
language, and being sure that the other person understands to who, he is speaking to or what he is
speaking about. The following essay aims to discuss this linguistic expression in detail, pointing
at the various forms of deictic expression along with the differences in the different kinds of
deixis. The essay also aims to discuss the use of this deixis with the help of different examples,
so that it becomes easier to relate to the situations and the indications.

2SEMIOTICS AND PRAGMATICS - DEIXIS
Discussion
Deixis words are the phrases that are defined in the linguistics as well as used by the
people in order to provide any contextual information. There are several kinds of deictic
expressions which help the people to indentify not only the objects, but also persons, time, place
and even the situation that they are in. As per the discussion of Vyasi & Salehnejad (2016), the
deixis phrases are used in spoken language in general but they are also often used in other means
of communication which involves writing something down, or in gestures and any other
medium. There are different forms of deictic expressions and the deixis phrases are used in
various categories, such as in indicating persons, or other objects or places.
Personal deixis
The deixis phrases which are associated with identifying or pointing at any person is
known as the personal deictic expression. When any person during their communication, or
while talking points out or speaks about any person by referring him, he used the deixis words
such as she, he, you, me and many others. Hamdan (2015) discusses that in most of the cases the
pronouns are considered and are termed as deixis. The people who are directly or indirectly
involved in the conversation can be objectified with the pronouns or deixis phrases. This might
involve the speaker directly or the person who overhears the conversation indirectly through any
source. There can also be a third category, where the speaker mentions any other person in the
utterance. In many other languages, the personal deixis phrases can be also termed as first
person, second person or third person narrative (Abdullah. 2015).
For example, in the sentences, ‘I am going to play’, ‘Will you accompany me to the
movies’, ‘she was concentrating on her studies, until they came in and disturbed her’, the deixis
phrases or words are I, you, me, she, her and they. These words help the speaker to identify

3SEMIOTICS AND PRAGMATICS - DEIXIS
specific persons. In this context the first person pronoun is I and me, the second person pronoun
are you that is to whom the sentence is addressed. The English language has a third person deixis
word which is used to refer to an external person, such as she and the’.
Spatial deixis
This is another type of deictic expression where the deixis words are used to refer to a
specific place. Thus this form of deixis words are also called place deixis. According to
Stapleton (2017), the word spatial means space and it related to relevant locations, or spaces.
There is a similarity with the personal deixis in this case. The spatial deixis might be used by the
speaker directly, when he speaks about a particular place , or it can also be a place that he
indirectly refers to in his conversation. When a person directly talks about any place, he can refer
it by simple adverbial terms such as ‘here’ or ‘this’. He might often objectify it by saying ‘there’
or ‘that’. These are the four different deixis words that help the person to demonstrate or
represent a particular place directly and indirectly respectively and make it easier for the other
person to understand (Matsumoto, Akita & Takahashi, 2017).
For example, when a person says, “I live in this city”, he makes use of two types of
deictic expression, which are the person deixis and spatial deixis. Also in the sentence, “We have
decided to meet here tomorrow”, the speaker points or identifies the place by using the word
‘here’. In the sentence, ‘The program is going to be held there’, the speaker also talks of a distant
place , and refers to the place by uttering the deixis word ‘there’. However according to Konig
(2017), the spatial deixis is not only limited to these few words. A person can refer to a place by
defining it. As for example, in the sentence, “She lives across the road”, the speaker points out at
the home or at the place which is “across the road”. This ends up being termed as a deixis phrase.

4SEMIOTICS AND PRAGMATICS - DEIXIS
However in accordance with this, there is another form of deictic expression which is
termed as deictic projection. This is where the spatial deixis is used as the point of reference, not
physically but having a metaphorical existence. This can be understood with the example of the
sentence, “she was not present there and asked her colleague to leave her a message”. In this
scenario, the speaker speaks of his metaphorical presence with the deixis word “there”.
Moreover as per the discussion of Mammadov (2014), the spatial deictic expression can be used
in a two way reference point. These are proximal deictic words or the distal ones. This implies
that the proximal deictic words are used to depict a place which is nearer or closer to the speaker.
On the other hand, the distal ones are used to point out at the places which are away from the
speaker. There are also another kind of deictic expression which is termed as medial spatial
deixis. This is used to refer to the place that is near to the person who is addressed to, and not the
speaker. This medial deixis is not common in English language but is used in other languages
such as the Koran, or Japanese. As per the argument of Al Aubali (2015), the Malagasy dialect or
language has seven different points of references which they refer to, when they have to define a
place. This makes the English language so different from other languages.
Temporal deixis
Konig (2015) discusses that this is another form of deictic expression which is used to
objectify time. When the speaker makes use of different adverbs in English language to refer to
the specific time, and include its objectification in his or her utterance, these terms are called
temporal deixis. Few examples of the temporal deictic expressions are ‘now’, ‘soon’, ‘then;’, and
others. In accordance with this, there is also a word ‘tomorrow’ which the speaker uses to
identify the next day. When a speaker objectifies a specific time in his conversation, he makes
use of these words so that the person whom he addresses to or talks to, can also relate to which

5SEMIOTICS AND PRAGMATICS - DEIXIS
time he is talking about. In this context, there are two different kinds of time adverbs which can
be discussed. As per the discussion of Pangaribuan, Manik & Pasaribu (2015), there is Encoding
Time or Decoding time. These are although used at the same time, and have a frequent use, they
do have a slight difference. This can be understood with the help of an example.
When a person says, “The weather is hot now, but when she will arrive it might be
raining”, the deictic expression of now can be termed as encoding time, and on the other hand,
the term when can be identified as decoding time. This can be understood as two different time,
although they are spoken at the same time. Also there can be another differentiation within the
temporal deictic expressions (Green & Hallam, 2015). This can be identified with two different
tenses. In the English language, a tense plays a very important role in defining the deictic
expressions or the deixis phrases. For example, when a person says, “She will go”, he means that
the person he is talking about is about to make a move, which would happen in a short while. On
the other hand if he says “she had gone”, the speaker wants to explain that the person had
already made a move in the past tense and the time has been past. Thus as per the statement of
the simple verbs can help the person to identify two different time, and in this way he can make
use of the deictic expressions in expressing different time. In this manner a speaker makes use of
the temporal deixis to let the other person know about a specific time (Diessel, 2017).
Discourse deixis
Apart from the three of the above categories, there is also another kind of category of
deictic expression which is termed as discourse deixis. This kind of deictic expression is often
called text deixis. According to Wang (2018), this kind of phrases though having the role of
identification is used in the language. This type of deixis words are used to explain the discourse
which is included in the utterance itself. This can be understood with the help of the sentence,

6SEMIOTICS AND PRAGMATICS - DEIXIS
“This book is awesome”. In this scenario, the word “this” is used to refer to the discourse which
is yet to come. However in the sentence, “that part of the book had been awesome”, the speaker
wants the people to know the specific portion of the story or the book. In this manner, in the
English language, deixis words can be used differently to identify specific time, or specific
moments (Barlew, 2017).
As per the discussion of Lyon, there is two different function of an expression. A word
can be sued as both deictic expression as well as an anaphora, depending upon the situation, or
how the speaker speaks. For example, “She was born in India, but she did not live here/there all
her life”. In this sentence, the role that the words here or there play, are both anaphoric or deictic.
The words play a dual role in expressing that the speaker who is speaking the sentence is not
present or is present currently in India. In this way as per the statement of Cokal, Sturt & Ferreira
(2014), the speaker is making use of the term in pointing at his place of reference, which can
either be either or. On the other hand, the words here and there can act as anaphora and indicate
the place of India. Thus the words can be used as deictically form of reference in both the cases.
Also there can be other forms in which the discourse deixis can be used. These are the
iconic languages, or the emoticons that the internet language uses in the modern age (Dancygier,
2019). In this age of technology, there are several icons, which resemble arrows and hence helps
the person to identify the place of reference. The use of these icons move beyond being a simple
linguistic terms and become the different forms of discourse which can be used as deictic
expressions.

7SEMIOTICS AND PRAGMATICS - DEIXIS
Social Deixis
This is another category of deictic expression. These kinds of words help the speaker to
convey the information related to the social status, including the social family as well as the
relatives. However the social deictic expressions can also be expressed in two different forms
such as T – V Distinctions and honorifics. It is very important to note here as per the discussion
of Lupyan & Dale (2016), that the social deictic expressions are not common in English
language and is only used in the European or Asian languages.
The first form of social deictic expressions which is called T- V Distinction is generally
used by the European languages specially Latin. In the Latin language, the pronoun ‘you’ ahs
two different versions, which are singular and plural. These are called ‘tu’ and ‘vos’ respectively
(Sidnell & Enfield, 2016), The way the word you is used indicate something about the social
connections, as well as the interaction between the speaker and the person he addresses to. In
most of the cases the word ‘tu’ is used by the people when they talk to a friend or a person who
is of the same age of the speaker. On the other hand the V version of the pronoun is used by the
person when he talks to someone elder to him or to a stranger. In this manner the deictic
expressions vary in other languages. This makes the Latin language much complex to that of
English language (De Cock & Kluge, 2016).
The second form of social deictic expression is called honorifics, which sis mostly
common in the South Asian Languages and also that of the East Asia (Giaxoglou, 2015). Along
with these two places, this kind of honorifics is used in Persia, and the people ho speak Persian
make use of this social deictic expressions. This form of deixis stands as a much complex to that
of the other form of social deictic expression. However the only similarity that this form of social
deixis has with the T- V distinction of Latin language is that it is used to transfer the information

8SEMIOTICS AND PRAGMATICS - DEIXIS
related to the society and relatives to the other person that is conversed to. According to Ivanova
(2016), these kinds of social deictic expression make use of more complex morphemes and also
lexicons. Apart from the normal words, it uses the other forms of words and phrases which help
the conversation to happen. Moreover, another most important aspect of this deictic expression is
that it depends upon the social status of the people who are interacting with one another
(Johansson & Carlin, 2015).
Usage of Deixis
As per the discussion of Molinelli (2015), Indexicality is a term which is much common
to the word deixis. This is another form of deictic expression. Ofordi (2017) discusses that there
is no special difference between the words deixis and Indexicality. Both the terms are most often
sued in order to identify specific objects or places and the usage is related to the point of
reference. Both of these are used in identification of the objects. The only difference between
both of them is that their field of expression are different. Deixis words are used in the field of
linguistics and semiotics, whereas the words of Indexicality is used in fields apart from
linguistics. It is most commonly used in pragmatics and in anthropology or in philosophy.
According to Thapa (2016), the usage of the deictic expressions are not only in linguistics or in
languages or communication. The deictic words are also used in gestures or there is often
symbolic usage of the same. These are also used in tone, or in voice or even in visual expressions
or gestures. Thus the usage of deictic expression is not only limited to the written language but
also in the audio visual expressions. When a person points at a specific object or looks at the
same, he is helping the other person to identify the point of reference.

9SEMIOTICS AND PRAGMATICS - DEIXIS
Conclusion:
Thus from the above discussion, it can be concluded that although originating from the
Greek language, the deixis words are used in all language and it is natural for the people of every
language use them. it helps them to talk with a point of reference. The spoken language needs a
specific demonstration or indication constant and this role is played buy the deixis words. The
deictic expression are used in semiotics since they are closely related with the communication
media and also the internet medium. There are several forms and types of deictic expressions
which differ from one another and help the people to identify different objects such as persons,
time, or even place. It can also be concluded that the use of the deictic expressions are not
limited to the linguistics or in languages, but also in gestures and audio visual forms. There are
symbolic representations and identifications where the deixis can be sued as the form of
expression. Moreover, even if all the languages make use of the deictic expressions, there are
sharp difference within different languages, in their usages. The English language stands in sharp
contrast with other languages such as Japanese or Korean in terms of usage of the deixis words.
There are person deixis, spatial deixis, temporal deixis which help the people to identify other
persons, place and time respectively. In accordance to this, there are also other categories such as
discourse deixis, which help the speaker to refer to a particular object in terms of linguistics, or
in discourses, apart from the direct verbal communication. Another form of deixis is the social
deictic expressions which can be classified into two major forms, which are called T-V
distinctions and honorifics. These kind of deictic expressions are not used in English language
but the other European as well as Asian languages. Thus the deixis words help in communication
and expressing ideas to other people.

10SEMIOTICS AND PRAGMATICS - DEIXIS
References:
Abdullah, M. (2015). Deixis: A Pragmatics Analysis. Language in India, 15(12), 3-9.
Al Aubali, F. A. (2015). Deixis in Arabic and English: A Contrastive Approach. International
Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 4(4), 118-124.
Barlew, J. (2017). The semantics and pragmatics of perspectival expressions in English and
Bulu: The case of deictic motion verbs (Doctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University).
Çokal, D., Sturt, P., & Ferreira, F. (2014). Deixis: This and that in written narrative
discourse. Discourse Processes, 51(3), 201-229.
Dancygier, B. (2019). Proximal and distal deictics and the construal of narrative time. Cognitive
Linguistics, 30(2), 399-415.
De Cock, B., & Kluge, B. (2016). On the referential ambiguity of personal pronouns and its
pragmatic consequences. Pragmatics, 26(3), 351-360.
Diessel, H. (2017). Usage-based linguistics. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics.
Giaxoglou, K. (2015). ‘Everywhere I go, you’re going with me’: Time and space deixis as
affective positioning resources in shared moments of digital mourning. Discourse,
Context & Media, 9, 55-63.
Green, K., & Hallam, S. (2015). Deixis in literature. The Bloomsbury Companion to Stylistics,
400-415.
Hamdan, M. (2015). Syntactic and semantic functions of deictic expressions in EFL Saudi
students' writing. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 6(2), 280-285.

11SEMIOTICS AND PRAGMATICS - DEIXIS
Ivanova, A. (2016). Deixis and its role in defining rhetorical space. Revista Signos, 49(92), 329-
349.
Johansson, N., & Carling, G. (2015). The de-iconization and rebuilding of iconicity in spatial
deixis: An Indo-European case study. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, 47(1), 4-32.
König, E. (2015). Manner deixis as source of grammatical markers in Indo-European
languages. Perspectives on historical syntax, 33-60.
König, E. (2017). The deictic identification of similarity. Similative and equative constructions:
A cross-linguistic perspective, 143-164.
Lupyan, G., & Dale, R. (2016). Why are there different languages? The role of adaptation in
linguistic diversity. Trends in cognitive sciences, 20(9), 649-660.
Mammadov, A. (2014). Deictic Representations of Person in Media Discourse. Lodz Papers in
Pragmatics, 10(2), 245-259.
Matsumoto, Y., Akita, K., & Takahashi, K. (2017). . The functional nature of deictic verbs and
the coding patterns of Deixis. Motion and Space across Languages: Theory and
applications, 59, 95.
Molinelli, P. (2015). Plural pronouns and social deixis in Latin: a pragmatic development.
Ofordi, I. C. (2017). INVESTIGATING THE USE OF DEIXES AS A STRATEGY OF
EXCLUSION IN CONVERSATION. Awka Journal of English Language and Literary
Studies, 6(1), 163-177.