Deixis and Distance in Semantics

Group 7 : Dina Roihatul Jannah

                  Maya Hafiah

                  Rina Sobarina

A.      The Meaning of Deixis and Distance

Deixis is a term that comes from Greek.  This term is used for one of the most basic things we often do with speech.  Deixis can also refer to something that means 'pointing' through language.  Whatever form of language is used, of course, to refer to this 'pointing' is called deictic expression.  The phrase is shown when seeing a strange object and immediately ask it.  For example 'What is that?  'shows the expression of the deictic expression (' that '), which means to show something in a direct context.  This deictic expression is also often referred to as indexical.  This is what is often said among the first forms spoken by very young children.  This expression is used to indicate people through deixis of people, or location through spatial deixis, or time through temporal deixis.  All of these expressions certainly depend on their interpretation, on speakers and listeners who share the same context.  Indeed, deictic expression has the most basic use in face-to-face oral interactions.

The remarks must of course be easily understood by the people present, but still need translation for someone who is not there.[1] P will put this here.  (Of course, you must understand that Jim told Anne that he would put an additional house key in one of the kitchen drawers.) That means the deixis here is a form of reference related to the speaker context, with the most basic difference between deictic expressions of being a 'near speaker'  'versus' stay away from the speaker'.In English, the 'near speaker', or proximal term, is 'this', 'here', 'now'.  'Far from the speaker', or distal term, is 'that', 'there', 'then'.  The term proximal is usually interpreted in terms of the location of the speaker, or the deictic center, so that 'now' is generally understood as referring to several points or periods of time that have the speaker's speech time at its center.

B.       The Kinds of Deixis

1.         Person Deixis

My first and second person pronouns, me, mine, mine, us, we, yours, yours, yours.  The pronoun is person deictic, this is because it refers entirely to things that depend on context.Differences in deixis here involve person deixis, which (speaker ('I') and the intended person ('You') are mentioned. The simplicity of these forms of expression is able to disguise the complexity of their use. To study deictic expressions, we must find that everyone in  a conversation will inevitably move from 'me' to 'you' all the time, all young people go through this stage in their learning, where this difference is so problematic, like those who say 'read your story' (instead  of 'me') when handing over a favorite books.

Deixis certainly operate in a basic three-part division which is exemplified by the first person pronouns ('I'), the second person ver ('you'), and the third person ('he', 'he', or 'that').In many languages ​​this deictic category of speakers, recipients, and others can be described as a marker of relative social status (for example, recipients of higher status versus recipients of lower status).  Regarding such a situation means referring to one form rather than the other forms, this is certainly described as social deixis.

In some languages ​​this form of deixis person is used with the aim of overcoming someone who depends on the relative social status of the person being addressed.  This social contrast is intended in personal deixis to distinguish between each unknown recipient. For example in French tu (familiar) and vous (non-familiar), this phenomenon is called T / V differentiation. Whereas in Thai there are eleven ways to say someone depends on the status of the person being addressed. The T / V difference, this is a form of communicating something about the relationship of the speaker with the recipient, so that if the speaker has a higher social status, is older or stronger, they will tend to use the T form for the recipient who has a lower social status, whereas the more  young and less powerful, who would tend to use V-forms in return.

But when this social change is happening, as in modern Spain, where a young entrepreneur (higher economic status) talks to an older janitor (lower economic status).  They spoke not looking at socioeconomic status, but paid more attention to the age difference still stronger than economic differences and older women using 'u and younger people using' Usted.

2.         Spatial Deixis

Spatial deixis, which explains the concept of distance that has been mentioned is clearly relevant to spatial deixation, where it designates the relative location of people and objects that are being designated.  Contemporary English uses only two adverbs, 'here' and 'there', for basic differences, but in older notes and in some dialects, the series of deictic expressions is far more numerous and also likely to be found.

The word 'here' is sometimes not the actual physical location of the person who said the words (speaker).  It could be that the basis of spatial deixis that actually has pragmatic meaning is actually psychological distance.  Objects that are physically close will tend to be treated by the speaker as psychologically close distances.  It is also the same if something that is physically far away will generally be treated as psychologically distant (for example, 'the man there').  However, a speaker might also want to mark something that is physically close (for example, the perfume that the speaker inhales) as psychologically distant 'I don't like it'.  In this analysis, words like 'that' have no fixed meaning (ie semantic);  conversely, 'invested' with meaning in context by the speaker.  Similar psychological processes seem to work in our difference between proximal and distal expressions used to mark temporal deixis.

3.         Temporal Deixis

The proximal form now can refer both to the time of speakers' utterances (e.g. when recording an answering machine message) and to the time of the message being played back to a caller (the hearer's now). While now refers to a (relative) time in present, its distal counterpart then refers to both past and future:- Why didn't they do it then? (at a past time)

- I'll be around tonight, so I'll see you then. (at a future time)

You see that it is relevant or appropriate to the speaker's current time, that is, his interpretation depends on knowing the relevant or correct speech time.  This also applies to deictic expressions such as:yesterday, tomorrow, today, tonight, next week, etc.

All these expressions depend for their interpretation on knowing the relevant utterance time. Imagine you want to speak to a professor and find the note back in an hoursticked to her office door. Without any information on when the note was posted on the door, you would not know if you will have a short or a long wait ahead.

Similarly, consider the following notice: "Free beer tomorrow". You can return the next day to this bar but will still be (deictically) one day early for the free beer. Temporal events can be treated as objects that move toward us or away from us, thus the psychological basis of temporal deixis is comparable with that of spatial deixis. In English, we use the metaphor of time as going by, that is, we treat events as coming toward the speaker from the future (e.g. the coming month, approaching Christmas) and as going away from the speaker to the past. One basic type of temporal deixis is in the choice of verb tense. We can say that the present tense is always the proximal form (e.g. I work here now) and the past tense is the distal form (e.g. I worked there then). The distal forms of temporal deixis are used to communicate not only distance from current time but also distance from current reality or facts. What is treated as extremely unlikely or impossible is also marked via the distal form (e.g. If I was a rich girl…).

C.      The Correlation Deixis and Grammar

The basic differences presented so far for people, spatial, and temporal deixis can all be seen from one of the most common structural differences made in English grammar, namely between direct and indirect speech.  As already explained, deictic expressions for people ('you'), place ('here'), and time ('tonight') can all be interpreted in the same context as the speaker when he speaks.

Example: - Do you plan to be here tonight?

- I asked him if he planned to be there that night.

When the context shifts, such as [b.], To what I reported in the previous statement, the previous statement is deactivated as relative to the state when requesting that the proximal forms presented in [a.] Have shifted to the appropriate.  distal form in [b.] This difference in the discourse of English reporting marks the difference between the meaning of 'near the speaker' from direct speech and 'far from speaker' the meaning of indirect speech.

The dexical form of proximal reporting of direct speech communicates, often dramatically, the feeling of being in the same context as the proximity disorder.  Disticting deictic forms of indirect speech make the original speech appear more distant.