10/12/2011

Deixis

指示语 Professor Shaozhong Liu, Ph.D. (Pragmatics) / Ph.D. (Higher Education) College of Foreign Studies, Guilin University of Electronic Technology Homepage: www.gxnu.edu.cn/Personal/szliu Blog: cyrusliu.blog.163.com

Email: [email protected]

Essentials in Pragmatics, Fall 2011 1

Objectives and SLOs

• Objectives 1) Familiarize students with to the concept Deixis • 2) Discuss its relationship with Pragmatics Student learning outcomes (SLOs) 1) Be able to define the concept 2) Be able to illustrate with examples 3) Be able to analyze it in utterances 10/12/2011 Essentials in Pragmatics, Fall 2011 2

Defining deixis

• • • • • 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 immediate context.

. (When you notice a strange object and ask, ‘What’s that?’, you are using a deictic expression ‘that’ to indicate something in the Deictic expressions are also sometimes called indexicals .

Deictic expressions are among the first forms to be spoken by very young children. (Yule, 1996/2000, p.9) 10/12/2011 Essentials in Pragmatics, Fall 2011 3

• • • • All deictic expressions depend, for their interpretation, on the speaker and hearer sharing the same context.

Deictic expressions have their most basic uses in face to-face spoken interaction where uttterances are easily understood by the people present, but may need a translation for someone not right there. (Yule, 1996/2000, p.9) Deixis is clearly a form of referring that is tied to the speaker’s context, with the most basic distinction between deictic expressions being ‘near speaker’ versus ‘away from speaker’. In English, the ’near speaker’ or proximal terms , are ‘this’, ‘here’, ‘now’. The ‘away from speaker’, or distal terms , are ‘that’, ‘there’, ‘then’. (Yule, 1996/2000, p.9) 10/12/2011 Essentials in Pragmatics, Fall 2011 4

• • Proximal terms are typically interpreted in terms of the speaker’s location, or the deictic center, so that ‘now’ is generally understood as referring to some point or period in time that has the time of the speaker’s utterance at its center.

Distal terms can simply indicate ‘away from speaker’, but, in some languages, can be used to distinguish between ‘near addressee’ and ‘away from both speaker and addressee’. (Yule, 1996/2000, p.10) 10/12/2011 Essentials in Pragmatics, Fall 2011 5

Person deixis

• • • • • Personal pronouns: I, we, you, he, she, it, we, they, and their variants.

Expressions indicating higher status are described as honorifics .

The discussion of circumstances leading to the choice of honorifics is sometimes called social deixis .

T/V distinction of social deixis: from French tu/vous, familiar vs. unfamiliar, or the higher older or more powerful tend to use ‘tu’ version to a lower younger and less powerful addressee ‘vous’. Examples: ni/nin, tu/vous, du/Si (German), tu/Usted (Spanish) (Yule, 1996/2000, p.11) We-exclusive vs. we-inclusive: ‘We clean up after ourselves around here.’ (p.11) 10/12/2011 Essentials in Pragmatics, Fall 2011 6

Spatial deixis

• • • • Here, there, hither, yonder: Here it is / on the yonder hill there stands a creature… Come, go: Come to bed! / Go to bed!

Deictic projection: I am no there now / He’s gone to Shanghai.

Psychological distance: Physically close objects tend to be treated by the speaker as psychologically close. (Yule, 1996/2000, p.13) 10/12/2011 Essentials in Pragmatics, Fall 2011 7

Temporal deixis

• • • • • • • • • Now, then, from now on, … ‘then’ applies to both past and future: November 22 nd , 1963? I was in Scotland then.

Dinner at 8:30 on Saturday? Okay, I’ll see you then.

Back in an hour!

Free beer tomorrow!

Present tense as proximal form vs. past tense as distal form: I could swim (when I was a child).

I could be in Hawaii (if I had a lot of money).

10/12/2011 Essentials in Pragmatics, Fall 2011 8

• • Past tense used in if-clause to mark events presented by the speaker as not being close to present reality: If I had a yacht, … / If I was rich, … Neither ideas are treated as having happened in the past time. They are as deictically distant from the speaker’s current situation. So distant, indeed, that they actually communicate the negative (we infer that the speaker has no yacht and is not rich).

10/12/2011 Essentials in Pragmatics, Fall 2011 9

Context and deixis comprehension

• • • • • • Without context, it is groundless to assign meanings to deictical expressions.

I agree with you on this, but not on that, with you, but not with you.

Meet me here tomorrow with a stick this big.

那个你那个了没有？ 那个不大好那个。 今天来多少？跟昨天一样。 10/12/2011 Essentials in Pragmatics, Fall 2011 10

• • • 你怎么样？老样子。 今日复明日，明日何其多？ 昨天、今天和明天。 10/12/2011 Essentials in Pragmatics, Fall 2011 11