Deixis
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In linguistics, deixis refers to the phenomenon wherein understanding the meaning of certain words and phrases in an utterance requires contextual information. Words which have a fixed semantic meaning, but have a denotational meaning that constantly changes depending on time and/or place, are deictic. A word or phrase whose meaning requires this contextual information — for example, English pronouns — is said to be deictic. Deixis is closely related to both indexicality and anaphora, as will be further explained below. Note that this article deals largely with deixis in spoken language, but the same concepts can apply to written language, gestures, and communication media, as well. Also note that though this article is primarily concerned with deixis in English, it is believed to be a feature (to some degree) of all natural languages.
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