Anaphoric Reference

Social

Discourse

Discourse deixis, also referred to as text deixis, refers to the use of expressions within an utterance to refer to parts of the discourse that contains the utterance — including the utterance itself. For example, in “ This is a great story” “this” refers to an upcoming portion of the discourse, and in “ That was an amazing day” “that” refers to a prior portion of the discourse.

Distinction must be made between discourse deixis and anaphora, which is when an expression makes reference to the same referent as a prior term, as in “Matthew is an incredible athlete; he came in first in the race”.

Lyons points out that it is possible for an expression to be both deictic and anaphoric at the same time. In his example “I was born in London and I have lived here/there all my life” “here” or “there” function anaphorically in their reference to London, and deictically in that the choice between “here” or “there” indicates whether the speaker is or is not currently in London [9].

The rule of thumb to distinguish the two phenomenon is as follows: when an expression refers to another linguistic expression or a piece of discourse, it is discourse deictic. When that expression refers to the same item as a prior linguistic expression, it is anaphoric [7].

Social deixis concerns the social information that is encoded within various expressions, such as relative social status and familiarity. Two major forms of it are the so-called T-V distinctions and honorifics.

T-V distinctions, named for the Latin “tu” and “vos” (informal and formal versions of “you”) are the name given to the phenomenon when a language has two different second-person pronouns. The varying usage of these pronouns indicates something about formality, familiarity, and/or solidarity between the interactants. So, for example, the T-form might be used when speaking to a friend or social equal, whereas the V-form would be used speaking to a stranger or social superior. This phenomenon is common in European languages [5].

Honorifics are a much more complex form of social deixis than T-V distinctions, though they encode similar types of social information. They can involve words being marked with various morphemes as well as nearly entirely different lexicons being used based on the social status of the interactants. This type of social deixis is found in a variety of languages, but is especially common in South and East Asia [5].

Generally speaking, anaphora refers to the way in which a word or phrase relates to other text:

Ø An exophoric reference refers to language outside of the text in which the reference is found.

· A homophoric reference is a generic phrase that obtains a specific meaning through knowledge of its context. For example, the meaning of the phrase "the Queen" may be determined by the country in which it is spoken. Because there are many Queens throughout the world, the location of the speaker provides the extra information that allows an individual Queen to be identified.

Ø An endophoric reference refers to something inside of the text in which the reference is found.

· An anaphoric reference, when opposed to cataphora, refers to something within a text that has been previously identified. For example, in "Susan dropped the plate. It shattered loudly" the word "it" refers to the phrase "the plate".

· A cataphoric reference refers to something within a text that has not yet been identified. For example, in "He was very cold. David promptly put on his coat" the identity of the "he" is unknown until the individual is also referred to as "David".

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