Yesterday I was walking along the beach when I found a bottle with a message in it.

Now this is a message:

"Please help me, I've been marooned on this island for six months now!"

Even though this message was perfectly understandable, I couldn’t help that unlucky castaway.

I couldn’t tell WHO had written the message, WHICH island (s)he is marooned on or even HOW LONG they have been there (since you do not know how long the message has been at sea; it may have been written years ago). That's because the message contains many deictic words.

So what are deictic words and how could we decide whether a word is a deictic word?

Before answering this question, I want to remind you guys one of the characteristics of an utterance:

An utterance is the use by a particular speaker on a particular occasion (an utterance is tied to a particular time and place)

Ok, so come back to the message I mentioned earlier. "Please help me, I've been marooned on this island for six months now!"It’s obviously an utterance right?

So please pay attention to some words like me, I, this, now. And I tell you, such words are called deictic words. Ok, so, without the situation of the utterance, I mean without knowing the speaker, the time and the place of the utterance, can you completely get what the message means? Not completely right?

So I say: a deictic word is one which takes some element of its meaning from the situation (i.e. the speaker, the addressee, the time and the place) of the utterance in which it is used.

And the general phenomenon of these deictic words’ occurrence is called deixis.

Based on the particular speaker, particular time and place tied to an utterance, we can divide deixis into 3 main categories:

Person deixis: like in the message, it is I, me

Temporal deixis: it is now

Spatial deixis: it is this

If a word is a deictic word, what it refers to will have a relationship with the speaker of the utterance or a spatial, a temporal relationship with the situation of the utterance.

Ok, so let’s have a look at some more examples.

First, with person deixis. Let’s have a look at this utterance:

“We are both students.”

“We” refers to the people uttering this utterance right? Does the word “we” have a relationship with the speaker of the utterance? Yes. So, “we” here is a deictic word.

Second, with temporal deixis. Let’s have this utterance as an example:

“Big sale tomorrow”

“Tomorrow” refers to the day after the day of the utterance. Does the word “tomorrow” have a temporal relationship with the situation of the utterance? Yes. So, “tomorrow” here is a deictic word.

Last, with spatial deixis. Let’s have:

“This book”

“That book”

Do the word “this” and “that” have a spatial relationship with the situation of the utterance? Ok, look at me.

If I stand here, I say “this book”. However, with the same book at the same location, but I change my location, in other words, I change the place of the utterance. I will have to say “that book”. So “this” refers to things near the speaker and “that” refer to things far from the speaker. So word “this” and “that” have a spatial relationship with the situation of the utterance. They are therefore deictic words. Likewise we have the two verbs “go” and “come”

If I want you to move to the door using the word go, I’ll say “Go to the door”. That is when I’m not standing near the door. How about when I’m standing near the door. I’ll say “Come to the door”. “Go” refers to the movement away from the speaker while “Come” refers to the movement toward the speaker. So they also have a spatial relationship with the situation of the utterance. And therefore they are deictic words.

Ok, so far we have looked at the way how to decide whether a word is a deictic word. Ok, let’s play a quick game for more examples. In this game, I’ll show you a sentence and your job is to list all of the deictic words in that sentence. We have 3 groups ok, and you have to yell “PING PONG” to get the chance to answer the question. DO NOT answer the question without yelling PING PONG or your answer won’t be counted.

I saw you standing there.

Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away.

It was then that she pulled him toward her.

Can you take this plate into the kitchen for me?

Once you’re inside, the treasure will be found on your right.

Let’s take you home.

Why don’t we move to another room?

Both authors of this book were born in May.

Please don’t bring food into the bathroom.

Dogs are animals.