Deixis and anaphora

Abstract

Preliminaries The concept of deixis The reference of certain kinds of expression is determined in relation to features of the utterance-act: the time, the place, and the participants, i.e. those with the role of speaker or addressee. This phenomenon is known as deixis and the expressions concerned are called deictic . Examples of such expressions are given in: [1] i I bought a new stereo system yesterday . ii Do you feel any pain here now? iii Could you pick this up and put it with those boxes, please? Yesterday in [1i] and now in [ii] are interpreted in relation to the time of the utterance: now refers to a time including that of the utterance, while yesterday refers to the day before that on which the utterance takes place. This is a matter of temporal deixis . Here in [1ii] refers to a location close to the speaker, and in [iii] this refers to something located close to the speaker and those boxes to boxes that are further away. This is locative deixis . Finally, I in [1i] refers to the speaker, and you in [ii–iii] to the addressee. This is called person deixis . It will be recalled that we are using such terms as ‘utterance-act’ and ‘speaker’ to cover written as well as spoken language. Example [1i] could be used with the same interpretation as readily in writing as in speech; the others are unlikely to be used in writing because the reference of here , this , and those boxes is determined by very local features of the utterance-act, whereas it is characteristic of writing that writer and addressee are in different places. But of course they don't have to be: if I had lost my voice, for example, I might communicate [ii–iii] to you in writing in your presence. ◼ Varying reference It follows from what we have said that the reference of deictic expressions potentially varies from one utterance to another. This of course applies to referring expressions generally: different utterances of Where's Kim? potentially involve reference to different people called Kim.