deíctica

Deíctica, also known as deixis, is a linguistic and philosophical concept referring to expressions whose interpretation depends on the context of the utterance. Common deícticas include personal pronouns (I, you, he), demonstratives (this, that), and temporal or locational adverbs (now, here, there). The term derives from the Greek deixis, meaning "indication" or "pointing."

Deícticas are typically categorized by type: person deíctica concerns who is being referred to; place deíctica concerns location; time deíctica concerns when an event takes place; discourse deíctica concerns elements of the ongoing or preceding text or conversation. Some scholars also discuss social deíctica, which signals aspects of the speaker’s relationship to others, such as formality or status. Languages vary in how they encode these cues, with many providing proximal/distal contrasts or distinct verb forms to mark spatial or temporal distance.

Function and context: deíctical expressions anchor utterances in a contextual framework centered on the speaker, the addressees, the time of speaking, and the location of the discourse. They are inherently context-sensitive and often require adjustment when the reference point shifts, such as in reported speech or narrative perspective, a phenomenon sometimes described as deictic shift.

Relation to theory and practice: deíctica is central to theories of reference, semantics, and pragmatics. It interacts with but is distinct from anaphora, which relies on antecedents within the discourse. The study of deíctica encompasses cross-linguistic variation, translation challenges, and applications in discourse analysis, language learning, and natural language processing. See also: deixis, indexical expressions.