Temporal Deixis
The use of “now”
as indicating both the time coinciding between the speaker utterance and the
speaker voice being heard to the listener. In the contrast “now”, the distal
expression “then” applies to both past and future time relative to the speaker’s
present time.
Example :
a.
July 10th, 1990 ? I was in Klaten then. (as
calendar time) “past”
b.
Dinner at 09:00 on Friday ? OK, I’m going to see
you then. (as clock time) “future”
All theese
expressions depend for their interpretation on knowing the relevant utterance
time. The psichological basis of temporal deixis seems to be similar to that of
spatial deixis. We can treat temporal
events as objects that move forward us/speaker (into view) “future” (the coming
month)or away from us/speaker (out of view) “past” (the past month). If we seem
to treat the near or immadiate future as being close to utterance timeby using
the proximal deictic “this” (this (coming) month).
One basic (often
unrecognized) type of temporal deixis in Englis is in the choice of verb tense.
English has only 2 basic forms are the present (is the proximal form) and the
past (is the distal form). The past tense is always “if-clause” that mark events
presented by the speaker as not being close to present reality (If I was
rich,...). So distant, indeed, that they actually communicate the negative (not
reality). The remote or distal form can be used to communicate not only
distance from current time, but also distance from current reality or facts.
Deixis and
Grammar
The basic
distinctions presented so far for person, spatial, and temporal deixis can all
be seen between direct and indirect speech. The deictic expressions for person “you”,
place “here”, and time “this morning” can all be interpreted within the same
context as the speaker who utters.
Example :
a.
Are you planning to here this morning?
b.
I asked her if she was planning to be there that
morning?
This very regular
difference in English reported discourse marks a distinction between the “near
speaker” meaning of direct speech and the “away from speaker” meaning of
indirect speech. The proximal deictic forms of direct speech reporting
communicate, often dramatically, a sense of being in the same context as the
utterance. The distal deictic forms of indirect speech reporting make the
original speech event seem more remote. Their interpretation depends on the
context, the speaker’s intention, and the expression of relative distance.
reference : George Yule's Pragmatics Book
This post is written by
Maha for Blog Information and News. It was posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2012 at 12:00 AM. The post is filed under
education
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