Chapter Two Deixis1. What is deixis?1.1 Examples for analysisa) Knowledge is power.b) I am the British Prime Minister.c) The President met the British Prime Minister there yesterday.Questions: Can truth-conditional semantics account for these three sentences equally well? If not, what are the differences between them?1.2 Defining deixisl A technical term from Greek, meaning pointing via language.Any linguistic form used to Accomplish this pointing is called a deictic expression, which is also called an indexical.A deictic expression is used to indicate, something in the immediate context. So a deictic expression encodes information in context (Yule, 1996).l Deictics are expressions whose interpretations make essential reference to certain aspects of their contexts of utterance, including the role of participants in the speech event and their spatio-temporal and social location.To put it simply, those expressions whose meaning cannot be fully understood without reference to the context in which they are uttered, or whose references depend critically on the context in which they are uttered (Levinson, 1983).l Deixis can be classified into different types: Person deixis: me, you, etc. Spatial/place deixis: here, there, etc. Temporal/time deixis: now, then, etc.Others termed discourse deixis (that. this), social deixis (tu, vous)l Deictic expressions including definite noun phrases, personal pronouns, demonstratives, adverbs, tenses, etc. According to Bar-Hillel (1954) Indexical Expressions, more than 90% of the declarative sentences people utter are indexical (involving implicit references to the speaker, addressee, time, and place in expressions).2. Pragmatic description2.1 Categories used to describe deixisl Person deixis: the role of participants 1st person: the speaker2nd person: the addressee3rd person: third party (neither the speaker nor the addressee)l Place deixis: the encoding of spatial locations relative to the location of the speakerProximal: hereDistal:therel Time deixis: the encoding of temporal points or Spans :selative to the time ofspeaking (the coding time as opposed to the receiving time) Proximal:nowDistal:then Proximal:present tenses Distal:past tensesl Discourse deixis: the encoding of reference to portions of the unfolding discourse:That is what I want to know.l Social deixis: tu/vous distinction in French; ni/nin Chinese2.2 Characteristics of deixisl All deictic expressions depend, for their interpretation, on the speaker and the hearer who share the same context. In face-to-face expression, deixis seems more tied to the speakers context. This is because the speaker expresses his ideas about the world from his personal point of view.l Therefore deictic expressions have basic distinctions between being near speaker and distant from speaker or away from speaker.l The deictic center: Deixis has to be interpreted in terms of the speakers location, or the deictic center which means that the speaker organizes messages from his personal point of view. This can be understood as egocentric.CBCBABCThe model by Gisa Rauh (1983) The deictic system:A: the coding timeB: in connection with the coding timeC: not in connection with the coding timel The deictic projection (shifts in points of view, Fillmore, 1975)The speaker speaks as if the central person were the hearer, the central time were the time the hearer received the utterance and the central place were the hearers location rather than the speakers location.Dad will play with you. (talking to his baby)Ive gone to the post office and will be back soon. (the left message on the door)I was looking at this little puppy in a cage with such a sad look on its face. It was like, Oh, Im so unhappy here, will you set me free?(The direct speech represents the feeling of the speaker)l An account of the ego-centric nature of deixis Why is deixis ego-centric in nature?SignalreceivedtransmittedsignalXtransmitterchannelreceiverYTwo points:source of noiseA model of communication by Lyons (1977)a. The role of the encoder and the decoder, especially the role of the encoder (encoding from his perspective);b. The relation established between ego and non-ego in the organization of the message at different dimensions.l Deictic and non-deictic usages Examples:a. You can vacuum while you wash the dishes, and keep your hat on Ill get the groceries.b. I have been monitoring activities on Earth for some time, and have sent an invasion force disguised as trucks there to control widespread corruption.c. Were supposed to see Dr. Gesundheit today, but Sandy refuses to go there unless she gets a balloon.d. Ok, this will prove that Eks is irresponsible: when we were on a committee together, he felt asleep during every meeting that he managed to attend.e. Put that in the wastebasket, ple