Deixis

ABSTRACT For all human beings, a crucial function of language is to draw attention to things in the world. Like most languages, Vietnamese has its set of ‘pointing words’ that fulfil this function, including này ‘this’, đây ‘this/here’ and đấy, đó, kia ‘that/there’, ấy ‘that’, and nọ ‘that’. Though the meaning of these seven words has expanded and changed over time, all of them originally served to orient the hearer’s attention to something proximal or distal to the speaker’s location. These words are termed demonstratives in English or chỉ định từ in Vietnamese. Chỉ định từ currently play a wide range of syntactic and semantic roles. They can occur as the determiner in a noun phrase (nhà này ‘this house’, nhà ấy/kia/nọ ‘that house’) or appear on their own as either pronominals (đây/đấy, đó, kia là nhà tôi ‘this/that is my house’) or as locative adverbs (lại đây ‘come here’, đến đấy/đó/kia ‘go there’). In the appropriate syntactic environments, these terms allow the speaker to ‘point’ not only to specific objects but also to abstract, invisible concepts that are present, distant, remembered or imagined. Despite the wide range of uses of chỉ định từ, an exhaustive analysis of their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic functions has previously been lacking in Vietnamese. Even a cursory analysis of the seven Vietnamese demonstratives reveals that each has not just one meaning or sense, but rather a complex network of related senses, or polysemy network. For example, the demonstrative ấy has thirteen different senses, including the function of indicating the position of a referent in space (a spatial sense), preceding discourse (an anaphoric sense) or in the memory of the speaker and/or hearer (as in recognitional, presentational, place holder, or avoidance usages). In addition, ấy has extended senses indicating person deixis, discourse cohesion, modality and interjective usages. Unquestionably, the form ấy has a wide variety of uses in Vietnamese. Is it coincidence that these uses share the same form ấy? If that were the case, the uses of ấy would be unconnected homonymous meanings. Or are these uses somehow related? If so, then the uses of ấy are polysemous senses, and it should be possible to trace how each sense evolved from another, ultimately tracking the evolution of the polysemy network back to a single ancestral sense. This study analyses the form and function of chỉ định từ as found in a range of written texts, and finds that the various functions of Vietnamese demonstratives are related. The extensions responsible for the current range of demonstrative functions follow recognised paths of metaphoric and metonymic change, so that these changes can be reconstructed from synchronic data even in the absence of direct historical evidence. Although all of the seven demonstratives are argued to be polysemous as the result of semantic extensions, each demonstrative has followed its own path of change and no two demonstratives have identical polysemy networks. These differences are due both to the individual semantics of the different demonstratives, and to the stage of change that each demonstrative has reached. The demonstrative nọ may be the best illustration of this second factor, the stage of development of a demonstrative. The demonstrative nọ once had a spatial sense referring to a distant referent, which is argued to be its oldest and most basic sense. This spatial sense extended to a range of other senses, but over time, the spatial sense itself was lost. The demonstrative nọ is the only one in the system currently lacking any spatial function, though its later, extended senses remain. A logical explanation of the present-day senses of nọ can only be achieved through a reconstructed connection with its now-defunct basic meaning. The polysemy structures of chỉ định từ can only be fully understood via the reconstruction of their earlier senses and the extensions these senses underwent. Without the reconstructed spatial sense of nọ, for example, the demonstrative’s polysemy network looks like a scattered system of unrelated senses, rather than a tidy network of senses related by recognised regular semantic changes. The current study, then, is intended to contribute to the field of linguistics in two ways. First, the study provides an in-depth documentation and analysis of the Vietnamese demonstrative system, which has previously been lacking. This comprehensive documentation and analysis could be used as a resource for diachronic or further cross-linguistic study. Second, the semantic evolution and polysemy of demonstratives has previously received relatively little attention in any language. It is therefore hoped that this research will contribute more generally to the study of universal tendencies of grammaticalisation, language change, and the polysemy networks that can result.

*Winner of 2011 Boyer Prize for Contributions to Psychoanalytic Anthropology*

"In this article, I examine the framing of personal agency in Tzotzil Maya dream narrative. Drawing on contemporary linguistic, psychodynamic, and phenomenological approaches, I focus on the lexical and semantic resources typical of highland Maya dream talk, illustrating the way these resources can be used to pragmatically negotiate questions of volition and authorial responsibility in relation to dream experience. By locating experience at a distance from the speaker, this framing provides an expressive resource for managing—mitigating, diffusing, or even disclaiming—agentic responsibility for described events or experiences, particularly those with significant implications for social status or self-definition. I close with reflections on the interpretive potential of an integrative “cultural psychodynamic” approach, one that draws on discourse-analytic, ethnographic, and psychoanalytic methods and theories in the service of understanding complex cultural subjectivities.

Keywords: Chiapas, highland Maya, dreaming, agency, ethnopsychology, evidentiality, narrative, cultural psychodynamics"

The literature on cohesive devices is marked with evident dearth in studies that consider the context-text ties. The current paper attempts to fill this gap, and, therefore, combat an idealised 'villain' in research, which is confining textual analysis to in-text relations. The study propounds the idea of expanding the analysis to include ties between the written text and the surrounding context and culture. The specific purpose is to explore the use and function of the cohesive devices which link the text to the context (exophora) and the ones that relate the text to the culture (homophora). The methodology involved explaining the cohesive devices to a postgraduate TESOL class of eight students (non-native speakers of English) in one of the universities in the UAE. After that, the students were asked to work in pairs and produce four opinion articles about a recent newspaper topic of their choice. They selected the United Kingdom Independent Party (UKIP) leader's call to ban the burqa in the UK. In addition, two articles from the Independent and the Guardian on the same topic were also discussed. Comparative analysis was conducted on the six articles vis-à-vis the use and functions of cohesive devices. The analysis involved four categories: person deixis, spatial deixis, temporal deixis, and the definite article. The findings showed that exophoric and homopohric cohesive devices were employed abundantly, with exophora occurring in more instances. The study also revealed the relevant functions that have evident implications about assumptive and supportive roles of cohesive devices.

1. The first essay aims at clarifying the relation holding or not holding between deixis and indexicality, and then elaborating a new model based on the Danish semiotic enunciation theory that could also account for reference. The semiotic ‘mystery’ in question is the mysterious fact that the intersubjective aspect of deixis has to constitute the referential anchoring of signified meaning in the extra-communicational world. The model proposed may lay the ground for a new understanding of signs as such.
2. The second essay aims at clarifying the relation holding or not holding between deixis and indexicality, and then elaborating a new model based on the Danish semiotic enunciation theory that could also account for reference. The 'mystery' in question is the mysterious fact that the intersubjective aspect of deixis has to constitute the referential anchoring of signified meaning in the extra-communicational world. The model proposed may lay the ground for a new understanding of signs as such.

This book provides the first comprehensive account of temporal deixis in English printed and online news texts. Linking the characteristic usage of tenses with the projection of deictic centres, it notes how conventional tenses, particularly in headlines, are affected by heteroglossia arising from various accessed voices. The resulting tense shifts are interpreted pragmatically as a conventional reader-oriented strategy that creates the impression of temporal co-presence. It is argued that since different tense choices systematically correlate with the three main textual segments of news texts, the function of tense needs to be viewed in a close connection with its local context. Traditional news texts are also contrasted with online news, particularly as far as the effect of hypertextuality on the coding of time is concerned. A two-level structural framework for the analysis of online news is proposed in order to account for their increased textual complexity. The book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students working in the fields of media pragmatics, discourse analysis and stylistics.

The essay  concerns the relationship between aesthetics and onthology. It starts from the analysis of a particularity of the ordinary speech: the deixis. Shifters or indicators are personal and dimostrative pronouns  that means an entity presence in its quality of actus essendi. According to Roberto Diodato the strength of the deixis is particulary vivid in  the aesthetics experience. The author reaches this conclusion through the discussion with the most important philosophers who studied this subject

I argue that Barack Obama’s immediate, imaginary, and discursive deictic references to the actions and character of ordinary citizens, specific geographical markers within the “landscape of American history,” and sacred moments in U.S. history extended and enlarged the relational, spatial, and temporal contours of the national narrative in his 2015 speech on the fiftieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday. In so doing, the president offered a compelling (re)definition of patriotism, civic responsibility, and “the true meaning of America.” More broadly, I argue for an expanded notion of deixis within rhetorical scholarship. Beyond a linguistic “pointing” to bodies, places, and objects within the audience’s immediate vicinity, I detail how indexicals bring various images before the eyes of the audience, link individual texts to their political, historical, social, and cultural contexts, and direct our attention to the most important parts of the national narrative even as they deflect our attention from other parts of the story. Ultimately, I suggest that deixis illuminates theories of rhetorical vision in ways that have gone unnoticed, and it is only when we recognize the psychological and cognitive effects of deictic speech that we can fully appreciate the central role phantasia plays in persuasion, deliberation, and moral judgment.

In this paper we examine the narrative formulae of the Cantar de Mio Cid (CMC) in order to trace phenomena of the transposition of the original deictic reference they include. As a result, it is argued that the formulae used by the narrator of the CMC may have a phatic function as they absorb the perspective of the addressee: either by a centripetal or a centrifugal movements of the narration. Moreover some expressions seem to serve (intratextually) to organize the informational pattern of the plot by enhancing the epic text with an additional meaning. Finally, it is concluded that the analysis of the pragmatic component of the CMC may add some new insights for its literary, linguistic and textual construction.

key words: Cantar de Mio Cid, Spanish epic, deixis, narrative formulae, juglar, performance

RÉSUMÉ:
“L’emploi de la composante déictique dans les formules narratives du Cantar de Mio Cid”

Dans cet article, nous allons analyser les formules narratives du Cantar de Mio Cid (CMC) en vue de suivre les phénomènes de la transposition de la signification déictique originale qu’elles comportent. Il sera ainsi avancé que les formules employées par le narrateur du CMC peuvent avoir une fonction phatique puisqu’elles absorbent la perspective du destinataire: que ce soit par un mouvement centripète ou centrifuge de la narration. De plus, quelques expressions semblent servir (intertextuellement) à organiser le schéma informationnel de l’intrigue en ajoutant au texte épique une signification supplémentaire. Pour finir, nous conclurons que l’analyse de la composante pragmatique du CMC peut apporter quelques nouvelles idées quant à sa construction littéraire, linguistique et textuelle.

mots-clés: Cantar de Mio Cid, épique espagnole, deixis, formules narratives, juglar, performance


STRESZCZENIE:
„Wykorzystanie deiktycznego komponentu języka w formułach narracyjnych Cantar de Mio Cid”

Celem artykułu jest wskazanie w formułach narracyjnych Cantar de Mio Cid  (CMC) zjawiska transpozycji pierwotnych odniesień deiktycznych w nich zawartych. Okazuje się bowiem, że formuły używane przez narratora CMC mogą spełniać funkcję fatyczną, ilekroć wchłaniają perspektywę odbiorcy przez odzwierciedlający się w opowiadaniu ruch zarówno dośrodkowy (w stronę origo), jak i odśrodkowy (od origo). Co więcej pewne wyrażenia wydają się służyć (wewnątrztekstowo) do porządkowania informacyjnej struktury fabuły poprzez naddawanie tekstowi poematu dodatkowych znaczeń. Metoda tutaj zastosowana ma wreszcie za zadanie zwrócić uwagę na potrzebę uzupełnienia analizy CMC o pragmatyczny komponent języka, co mogłoby rzucić nieco inne światło na literacką, językową i tekstową konstrukcję utworu.

słowa kluczowe: Cantar de Mio Cid, hiszpańska epika, deiksa, formuły narracyjne, juglar, performance

В статье на материале Мультимедийного русского корпуса (МУРКО)описывается система русских указательных жестов. Основное внимание уделяется описанию базовых указательных жестов – указанию пальцем и рукой (открытой ладонью). На основе статистической обработки корпусного материала определяются основные лингвистические (референциальные и прагматические) факторы, влияющие на выбор жеста говорящим.

Monticelli, D.; Pajusalu, R.; Treikelder, A. From utterance to uttering and vice versa. Multidisciplinary views on deixis. De l'énoncé à l'énonciation et vice-versa. Regards multidisciplinaires sur la deixis. Vol. II. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 2006.

"This essay, authored in 2001 as a final undergraduate thesis, deals with the changes in narrative (storytelling) due to the proliferation of digital technologies.

Since this book was written a decade ago, it still focuses on CD-Roms as a means of accessing works, though it already considers their dangers of obsolesce and the stimulating possiblities offered by then up and coming Internet networks.

Following Umberto Eco's journey through "narrative woods", Tempus Fugit offers an indepth analysis of 6 artistic CD-ROMs as well as a thorough reflection on the tendencies to become prominent in now present digital narratives.

Tempus Fugit is focused on both narratology and visual arts theories, and became the spur that triggered my ten year interest in this still not very explored field of knowledge.

If you're Spanish you can order a copy through the public universities library sistem at

http://rebiun.absysnet.com/cgi-bin/rebiun/O7994/IDbfe7c74e/NT2

or

http://ccuc.cbuc.cat/search*cat/X?SEARCH=tempus+fugit+el+relat&SORT=A&searchscope=23



If you're Spanish or not, and want to buy the book, you can either contact me or Fundació Espais, the publishers, at

ttp://www.fundacioespais.com/principal.php?idio=2&plana=publicacions&codi=9&seleccio=2"

This paper deals with space deixis in the Baltic languages – Lithuanian and Latvian. The aim of this study is to overview the whole system of spatial deixis in spoken Lithuanian and in spoken Latvian: to present the existing researches on space deixis and to compare them with the data that was obtained by examining deictic expressions in actual speech events (recorded video material). As the most common deictics are deictic adverbs of space, demonstrative pronouns and verbal affixes of motion/verbs of motion, the following objectives have been identified to achieve the aim: 1) To provide the existing researches on space deixis in the Baltic languages: adverbs of space, demonstrative pronouns, deictically marked third-person pronouns, verbal affixes of motion and verbs of motion; 2) To analyse these expressions of space deixis in actual speech events from the perspective of pragmatics; 3) To compare the systems of space deixis in two Baltic languages and to provide a comprehensive space deixis system in the Baltic languages. The current analysis differs due its approach. In the previous researches space deictics is usually discussed by interpreting XX c. fiction texts/endophoric deixis. This study reflects the whole current situation of space deixis in the spoken Lithuanian and Latvian languages, as well as reveals the pragmatic aspect of the discussed demonstratives, which is crucial in the analysis of deictic words.

Deixis is the method of relating to the spatio-temporal context of an utterance. Deictic expressions or indexicals are among the first forms to be spoken by very young children, and are thus very fundamental to our notion. Deictic concepts are most easily understood by people. Among the various types of deixis, this paper focuses on application of Temporal and Spatial deixis concepts in solving mathematical word problems. A deictic expression is anchored to a deictic center, such that the evaluation of the meaning of the expression leads one to the relevant point. As deictic expressions are frequently egocentric, the center often consists of the speaker at the time and place of the utterance. Also, the deictic center may be transferred to other participants in the exchange, or to persons / places / etc. being described in a narrative. In language, we talk about time in terms of space. From the perspective of conceptual grounding, abstract temporal cognition is grounded in a more concrete spatial cognition. On a similar ground, this paper aims to apply these fundamental concepts of temporal deixis and deictic temporal elements, and project them to a spatial structure, and use the concept of deictic center shifting for solution of mathematical word problems which involve equations based on time-dependent variables. The projection of the temporal problem into a spatial structure simplifies the comprehension process for the student. This deictic approach improves the student's understanding of the problem at hand and increases the student's accuracy in solving such numericals of the same genre.

Работа посвящена лингвистическим характеристикам и стилистическим функциям несобственно-прямой речи (НПР) в американской прессе. В статье затрагиваются как формальные характеристики НПР (дейксис, употребление времен, дискурсивные маркеры речи персонажей), позволяющие отличить ее от иных форм передачи чужой речи, так и стилистические функции. Цель исследования - выявление стилистического потенциала НПР и своеобразие ее употребления в нехудожественном (газетном) тексте. Материалом для исследования послужили репортажи Э. Хэмингуэя 1920-х гг.

Deixis is a type of reference constituted by the meaning of a linguistic sign being
relativized to the extra-linguistic context in which the sign is used. The semiotic
nature of this kind of reference, its exact communicative prerequisites and
functions, its acquisition by children, and its processing have long puzzled linguists,
philosophers, psychologists, and anthropologists. This article presents an
introduction to some of the research that has focused on deictic signs and
meanings and their phenomenology.

La propiedad de los gestos de ser deícticos refiere a su capacidad de señalar en alguna dirección, a algo o a alguien: con el índice extendido, la mano, la mirada, la barbilla, los labios, la cabeza, etc. La variedad de formas que tenemos a nuestra disposición (y que usamos) para señalar hacia algo concreto o abstracto es considerablemente amplia. Sin embargo, parafraseando a Haviland (2000, p. 14), podría parecer que ‘señalar’ es un proceso simple en el que uno extiende su dedo índice (u otro articulador gestual) y refiere ostensivamente al objeto, lugar o persona del que se quiere decir algo. Nada podría ser más fácil de comprender y, no obstante, nada más alejado de la descripción de cómo funciona la deixis gestual.

Framed in a critique of digital and new media studies, this dissertation returns to the roots of the study of communication and interaction in rhetoric, linguistics, semiotics, information theory, and cybernetics to develop a philosophy and theory of communication anchored in a pre-symbolic concept of gesture. This reevaluation of communication processes allows for the articulation of communication as dynamic interaction in spacetime, which allows attention to communicative agency and the relations among communicators, communications technologies, and the environments and ecologies in which they are necessarily situated. This, in turn, while drawing from assemblage theory, affect theory, embodied and distributed cognition, interactional sociology, and relational psychology, provides a novel conceptualization of agency in human and non-human forms, as well as the relations among them. The foregoing is anchored in a relational ontology that critiques many of the contemporary, taken-for-granted assumptions about character of ‘information’.

Recent approaches to fiction in the humanities and social sciences have made problematic the twin issues o freferentiality and subjectivity in narrative. There has
been an overall recoil from the naivete of literary analysis built on simplistic equations between the subjectivity of the author and the intentionality found in his or her work, or between literary and historical worlds.

In this presentation, I will focus on how we define the concepts of oral and written language.  Then I will present different moments in the production and transmission of a text, as well as prior and posterior phases, in order to show where aspects of oral and written language can intervene.  I will analyse some types of discourse that are linked to political life.  I will focus on the mix of characteristics of oral and written language and its influence on the linguistic production itself.  More concretely, I will demonstrate how the genres of official speech, parliamentary debate, interview and political cartoon contain both oral and written characteristics, thus increasing the complexity of the linguistic analysis of these discursive genres.

Το παρόν άρθρο εκπονήθηκε στο πλαίσιο παρακολούθησης της Θεματικής Ενότητας: «ΕΓΛ 50 – Ελληνική Γλώσσα και Γλωσσολογία», η οποία υπάγεται στο Μεταπτυχιακό Πρόγραμμα Σπουδών “Ελληνική Γλώσσα και Λογοτεχνία” του Ανοικτού Πανεπιστημίου Κύπρου. Πρόκειται για μία ευσύνοπτη, αλλά όσο το δυνατόν εμπεριστατωμένη συγκριτική παρουσίαση των μηχανισμών πραγμάτωσης και των υποκατηγοριών δύο βασικών σημασιολογικών λειτουργιών, της Τροπικότητας και της Δείξης, στην Αρχαία και στην Νέα Ελληνική.

Abstract in English: This article was elaborated in the gulfs of the Module: «ΕGL 50 - Greek Language and Linguistics», which is part of the Post-Graduate Program “Greek Language and Literature” of the Open University of Cyprus. It is a succinct, but as detailed as possible, comparative presentation of the mechanisms and the subclasses of two basic semantic functions, Modality and Deixis, in Ancient and Modern Greek language.

This dissertation explores the progressive change in language and rhetoric Shakespeare employs to portray distress in his tragedies. Shakespeare began his career as a fairly conventional dramatist, but soon began to develop a new style and to acquire a voice of his own. This shift is most easily detected in the scenes in which his characters are overcome by the difficult situations they find themselves in, when emotions distort and affect their ability to speak. Using Titus Andronicus as a stylistic point of departure, this dissertation compares his early tragedies with his more mature and iconic ones, also known as ‘the major tragedies’: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth.

The first half analyses the relationship between syntax and eloquence in these passages; sentence length, sentence complexity and pause patterns all gradually change to accommodate a new, less poetical form of versified language. The latter section explores Shakespeare’s changing use of rhetorical devices from the overtly artificial language of the early plays to a more realistic and natural style. As the title suggests, pattern and a systematic procedure sustain this new dialect of overwhelming emotions, and contribute to Shakespeare’s unprecedented success at depicting distress.

How is it possible that readers plunge into literary texts and experience them at first hand?
Based upon this question, the “habilitation” explores the immediacy of the psalms. Immediacy is based on the fact that readers can identify with the situations, experiences, emotions, characters and movements expressed in the texts. Therefore, the project aimed to find answer to the following research question: Which aspects of identification can be found in the psalms of the Hebrew Bible? So the aim of this project was it to analyse strategies of the texts, which enable readers to identify with the text-world described in the psalms.