Theoretical Grammar

 
 
As a linguistic term deixis means ‘identification by pointing’. 
Much of the textual meaning can be understood by looking at linguistic markers that have a pointing function in 
a given context. For example, consider the following note pinned on a professor’s door: “Sorry, I missed you. 
I’m in my other office. Back in an hour.” Without knowing who the addressee is, what time the note was 
written, or the location of the other office, it is really hard to make a precise information of the message. Those 
terms that we cannot interpret without an immediate context are called deixis. Deictic terms are used to refer to 
ourselves, to others, and to objects in our environment. They are also used to locate actions in a time frame 
relative to the present. Deictic terms can show social relationship – the social location of individuals in relation 
to others. They may be used to locate parts of a text in relation to other parts. 
Deictic expressions are typically pronouns, certain time and place adverbs (here, now, etc.), some verbs of 
motion (come/go), and even tenses. In fact all languages have expressions that link a sentence to a time and 
space context and that help to determine reference. 
We can identify five major types of deictic markers – person, place, time, textual and social. 
Person deixis refers to grammatical markers of communicant roles in a speech event. The first person is the 
speaker’s reference to self; the second person is the speaker’s reference to addressee(s) and the third person is 
reference to others who are neither speaker nor addressee. 
Place deixis refers to how languages show the relationship between space and the location of the participants in 
the text: this, that, here, there, in front of, at our place, etc. 
Temporal deixis refers to the time relative to the time of speaking: now, then, today, yesterday, tomorrow, etc. 

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Textual deixis has to do with keeping track of reference in the unfolding text: in the following chapter, but, 
first, I’d like to discuss, etc. Most of the text connectors discussed above belong to this group. 
Social deixis is used to code social relationships between speakers and addressee or audience. Here belong 
honorifics, titles of addresses and pronouns. There are two kinds of social deixis: relational and absolute.