Deictics

Deictics, or deixis, are expressions whose interpretation depends on the context of the utterance. They anchor reference to a deictic center, typically the speaker, the addressee, and the time of speaking, so the same form can refer to different entities in different situations. Because of this context dependence, deictics are sometimes described as indexicals.

The main types of deixis are person, spatial, and temporal. Person deixis covers pronouns like I, you, he, and she, as well as possessives such as my/mine and your/yours, which encode participants in the discourse. Spatial deixis includes terms like here and there, as well as demonstratives such as this and that, which signal proximity or distance relative to the speaker or addressee. Temporal deixis comprises time-related expressions like now, then, today, and tomorrow, anchored to the speech time. Some languages also encode orientational deixis, such as left/right or up/down, linking reference to the physical orientation of the participants.

Deixis is often contrasted with anaphora, which references are internal to the discourse, whereas deixis requires external context. Exophoric deixis points outside the text to the actual physical or social situation, while endophoric (or discourse) deixis relies on information already established within the discourse.

Cross-linguistically, languages vary in how they encode deixis. Many languages have elaborate demonstrative systems that mark multiple distances, and some employ complex verb or noun morphology to reflect deictic center. Sign languages use spatially grounded deictic signs tied to the participants’ bodies and shared space. Deictic reference remains a fundamental mechanism for locating people, objects, times, and directions in communication.