B4: Pragmatics: Deixis, Speech acts

What is deixis

/ˈdaɪksɪs/: trực chỉ

• In simple words, deixis means “pointing with words.”

• In Vietnamese, when you say: cái này, cái kia, hôm nay, ở đây, tôi, bạn…

• In English, when you say: this, that, today, here, I, you…

→ All these words point to something, someone, or somewhere.
But! The meaning changes depending on who speaks, where, and when.

→ Deixis: Words and phrases that cannot be fully understood without additional contextual information

Deictic words

• Words' semantic meaning is fixed but their denotational meaning varies depending on time and/or place
  (Nghĩa ngữ của từ là cố định nhưng nghĩa biểu thị của chúng thay đổi tùy theo thời gian và/hoặc địa điểm)

• Words/phrases that require contextual information to convey any meaning

classification of deixis

a) Distance

• Proximal (near the speaker):

• Distal (far from the speaker):

b) Meaning-based types

1. Person deixis (người)

2. Time (temporal) deixis (thời gian)

3. Place (spatial) deixis (không gian)

4. Social deixis (quan hệ xã hội)

5. Discourse deixis (ngữ cảnh hội thoại)

proximal deixis

Proximal (near the speaker):

• I, here, now, this

Distal deixis

Distal (far from the speaker)

• he, there, then, that

Person deixis

- It, this, these boxes,..... => pointing to things
- I, you, he, she, him, them, those teachers,... => pointing to people

Place (spatial) deixis

- Here, there, near that...
- Verbs of motion: come, go,...

Social deixis

• Shows social status, politeness.

• sir, madam, Your Honor

Temporal (time) deixis

Now, then, last week, yesterday, today, tonight, tomorrow, this week, next month, from now on, in the future,...

Discourse deixis

• Establish coherence in a conversation or text by linking different parts of the discourse together

• to begin with, first, next, in the following paragraph, last but not least,..

direct speech acts

an action in which the form used (e.g. interrogative) directly matches the
function (e.g. question) performed by a speaker with an utterance, in contrast to an
indirect speech act

indirect speech act

an action in which the form used (e.g. interrogative) does not directly match the function (e.g. request) performed by a speaker with an utterance, in contrast to a direct speech act

list all syntactic structures with the functions

	Structures	Functions
Did you eat the pizza? Eat the pizza (please)! You ate the pizza.	Interrogative Imperative Declarative	Question Command (Request) Statement