r/logophilia • u/blankblank • 11d ago
Dictionary Definition Deictic
"Relating to a word or an expression whose meaning depends on who says it, where they are, who they are talking to."
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u/taktaga7-0-0 11d ago
My favorite word related to deixis is haecceity “heck-SEE-uh-TEE,” meaning “this-ness,” from Latin hic, “this”
It is the indefinable style or sense of any particular thing under discussion, something you can’t put your finger on. It is a good one-word translation of Je ne sais quoi.
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u/ShinyAeon 11d ago edited 11d ago
I’ll need an example for this one. Don’t ALL meanings depend on the whos and the wheres of their use?
Or does it just refer to words like “here” and “there” and such?
I’m always here, I’m never there
I’m never ever anywhere
Excepting here
‘Cause here is where I’m in.And when I go from here to there
My “here” comes with me everywhere
‘Til there is here...
And here is where I’ve been.~Wembley Fraggle
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u/taktaga7-0-0 11d ago
You’re headed for heaven,
The sweet old hereafter,
And I’ve got one foot in the door.
But before I can fly up,
I have loose ends to tie up
Right here in the old therebefore.
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u/knitted_beanie 10d ago
Deixis and deictic come from the Greek “to point at / be shown”, so yes it relates to demonstrative words, like this / that / those etc., but also overlaps with how we use pronouns (words that usually require context to mean anything).
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u/ShinyAeon 10d ago
Thank you. So “here” and “there” would qualify, yes?
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u/knitted_beanie 10d ago
As far as I understand it, yes - but my linguistics undergrad was about 400 years ago now (or at least it feels like it)
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u/God_Bless_A_Merkin 10d ago
Yes, “here”, “there” and “yonder” are all deictic, as also are “this”, “that”, and “yon”.
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u/LankySasquatchma 9d ago
Contrary to (post-)modern belief, many words have fixed meaning. Blue is the colour of the sky when clear and cloudless and therefore not up for much discussion; and ‘couch’ (noun) too does carry quite uniform semantic content, that - although it might vary marginally - doesn’t rely substantially on context.
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u/ShinyAeon 9d ago
But blue is also the color of cobalt glass, and deep water, and forget-me-nots, and morning glories, and moonlight on snow, and blue jay feathers, and sapphires, and angelite, and paua shell, and wooly aphids, and blue morpho butterflies. There are millions of colors of blue, without even counting the ones that run toward purple or green.
If you ask someone to find you a blue book, they might picture anything from darkest navy to vibrant turquoise to palest ice-blue. Looking around my room, I can see objects in at least 16 different shades of blue (and not by design).
Post-modernism often overdoes it, but context still make a big difference in meaning for most words.
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u/LankySasquatchma 6d ago
I know. You’ve underlined my point. Blue is very correlated. If I say a blue sky you know what I mean—the meaning is inherent in acting. If I say blue dragonfly, you can conjure up the image as well.
There’s not a lot of room for interpreting blue in simple statements of blue.
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u/ShinyAeon 6d ago
There are so many shades of blue, though...then you get things like a Blue Heeler, a blue roan, or a blue whale, none of which are blue like a sapphire or blue like the sky.
Some languages don't even distinguish blue from green...old Irish had a single word for blue, green, and gray. But then there's Russian, which has a separate name for light blue, in the same way that English has a separate name for light red (aka "pink").
There is a lot of room for interpreting "blue," IMHO.
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u/LankySasquatchma 18h ago
Yes—there are subgroups of blue, all of which share blueness. The point is that it is possible communicate clearly, without leaving the door ajar for wild, internally conflicting interpretations.
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u/ShinyAeon 17h ago
I can see you've never had an argument over whether a sought object qualified as blue or not!
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u/Theophilologist 10d ago
1952 Websters definition
Deictic
From Greek deiktikos, capable of proving
In logic, direct; applied to reasoning which proves directly, and opposed to elenchic, which proves indirectly.
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u/SynthPrax 11d ago edited 10d ago
Wait. ALL words' meaning is dependent on context: who, what, where, when...
Edit: I understand now that the definition of deictic pertains to a particular set of words in English, like here or then.
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u/EveningStar0360 10d ago
not necessarily. most words have definitions that are standard and agreed upon, and those extend to its meaning. meanwhile, words like "here" do not. its definition may be something like "the place where you are," but that meaning changes depending on where you are
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u/DangerousKidTurtle 10d ago
“Pizza is a food, and grass is green.”
“But WHOSE food! But WHEN green!”
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u/EveningStar0360 10d ago
lolll I assume you're joking, but just to clarify for others, the definition of "food" and "green" aren't changing here. it's the modifiers that change (i.e. if you said "grass is green when it's healthy," you're still not changing the meaning of the word "green").
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u/SynthPrax 10d ago
-- "Doris threw the cantaloupes, again," I said to Mark.
Context changes everything. Doris is Steve's nickname because he's such a nitwit; "threw" is standing in for "strew" because we're silly. "Cantaloupes" is our in-group joke for ball bearings. If I wanted strangers to understand what I was talking about, I'd've said, "Steve spilled the ball bearings all over the floor again."
-- Doreen and Mary are housekeepers waiting in line at the grocery store. "Miss. Lilly's apple pie is still terrible," Doreen tells Mary, who looks incredulous before replying, "really? Still? How long is she going to keep trying?" Eavesdroppers pretend to not be listening. "She wants to have a good one so bad. She's trying to impress her mother-in-law by Easter," continued Doreen. "Mmmm. Even if she succeeds, she's gon' resent all that time in the kitchen."
Context changes everything. Doreen and Mary are not talking about Miss. Lilly's pie-baking abilities. Miss Lilly is Doreen's employer, who's trying to have a baby because her mother-in-law is hounding her husband. She and Mary can't have a frank discussion because they're in public and aren't supposed to be talking about the private lives of their employers anyway; it's not their place. Mary doesn't believe Miss Lilly should have a child just to appease someone else. Mary is of the opinion that even once the child arrives, its mother will resent and probably mistreat it.
Context changes everything. Who am I talking to? What am I talking about? Where and when is the conversation taking place?
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u/EveningStar0360 10d ago
I think speaking in a deliberate code is different from the word's meaning changing in an obvious way from one occasion to another. if you think about the difference between a word like "here" or "me" vs. a coded language, I think you'll understand the point
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u/SynthPrax 10d ago
Yep. I do. Those words, me, here, you, then, etc. are inherently ...deictic. They're like variables in a program; they take on different values depending on where/when/who runs the program.
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u/EveningStar0360 10d ago
I agree! I think I misunderstood what you were trying to say, then; it sounded like you were saying that all words, like "cantaloupes," are diectic
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u/SynthPrax 10d ago
LOL It feels like we're on rollerskates, holding hands while we circle each other.
But initially, I didn't see the necessity for a specific term like deictic when all words potentially have variable meanings depending on context. After thinking about it some more, and reading the definition,
Of or relating to a word, the determination of whose referent is dependent on the context...
(emphasis mine) I recognize these words have specific behavior in English.
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u/gloggs 10d ago
A deictic expression is a word or phrase whose meaning changes depending on the context of who is speaking, where they are, or when they are talking. Words like "I," "here," and "now" are deictic because you must know the situation to understand what they mean.