Deictic expressions
In this interactive exercise you will learn more about deictic expressions. Deictic words are pointers in a text that allow you to identify its time and place. An example would be “here” and “now” in the sentence “You read this here and now”. “Here” is an example of spatial deixis, and “now” is an example of temporal deixis.
For this exercise, we will use Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Brontë’s novel, as you shall see, often changes its deictic expressions across time and place. These changes in deictic expressions from “here” and “now” to “at Wuthering Heights” and “ten years ago” are called deictic shifts.
Spatial deixis and temporal deixis
Try this out for yourself. Mark up the text in the window by selecting it and clicking the corresponding button for spatial deixis and temporal deixis:
Another week over – and I am so many days nearer health, and spring! I have now heard all my neighbour’s history, at different sittings, as the housekeeper could spare time from more important occupations. I’ll continue it in her own words, only a little condensed. She is, on the whole a very fair narrator and I don’t think I could improve her style.
In the evening, she said, the evening of my visit to the Heights, I know, as well as if I saw him, that Mr Heathcliff was about the place; and I shunned going out because I still carried his letter in my pocket, and didn’t want to be threathened, or teased anymore.
Perceptual deixis and relational deixis
In addition to time and space, also the point of view from which something is told can register in “perceptual deixis”, through personal pronouns, mental states (“thinking”, “feeling”), determinate articles, etc. “Relational deixis” also contributes to point of view, because it encodes social relations and expressions that reveal evaluations.
Mark up the text in the window by selecting it and clicking the corresponding button for perceptual deixis and relational deixis:
Another week over – and I am so many days nearer health, and spring! I have now heard all my neighbour’s history, at different sittings, as the housekeeper could spare time from more important occupations. I’ll continue it in her own words, only a little condensed. She is, on the whole a very fair narrator and I don’t think I could improve her style.
In the evening, she said, the evening of my visit to the Heights, I know, as well as if I saw him, that Mr Heathcliff was about the place; and I shunned going out because I still carried his letter in my pocket, and didn’t want to be threathened, or teased anymore.
Perceptual and relational deixis mark the narrator, and their position in relation to other characters. You might have recognised Lockwood from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heightshere. Lockwood hears the narrative of Heathcliff, Cathy and the others from Nelly Dean, and then tells it to us. At the beginning of the second paragraph, the narrator changes from Lockwood to Nelly Dean. This is marked by the deictic shift from “the housekeeper” and “she” to “I”, when Nelly Dean herself starts talking.
Changing deictic expressions
See what happens when we change the deictic expressions. Rewrite the passage below so that the first person becomes the third person, and so that the present tense (marking that Lockwood tells this “now”) becomes the past tense.
These are only very few changes, but they distance us from the immediacy of Lockwood’s narrative. And, as you pay attention to the many different expressions marking Lockwood’s evaluations (relational deixis) in addition to the personal pronouns, it becomes clear that his story is informed by his interests and desire. And the same is true for Nelly Dean when she takes over from Lockwood in the next paragraph, and for all the other characters who tell part of the story…
Brontë’s Wuthering Heights works through layers and layers of such embedded narratives. You can trace them, and the shifts between them, through the deictic expressions and their systematic shifts.
Contributors: Karin Kukkonen and Alexandra Effe. This exercise was created in collaboration with LINK.