indexikal

Indexikal, or indexical in English, is a term in linguistics for expressions whose reference depends on the context of use. The content of an indexikal expression is anchored by the context of evaluation, typically including the speaker, the addressee, the time of utterance, and the place of utterance. Because of this dependence, the same sentence can express different things in different situations.

Common indexicals include pronouns like I, you, he; demonstratives like this and that; temporal terms like now, today, yesterday; and spatial terms like here and there. Proximity contrasts in demonstratives, and the use of here/there, now/then, show how reference shifts with physical or temporal location. Some languages also use social deixis, or logophoric pronouns, to indicate the source of reported speech or attitudes.

Indexicals are central to the study of deixis and pragmatics. They illustrate how linguistic meaning is partially contingent on context, and they pose particular challenges for translation and formal semantic theories, which must model how context supplies or updates reference. In multilingual settings, the range and form of indexical expressions vary across languages, reflecting cultural and social conventions about speakers, time, and space.