Read this message:
I’ll meet you here tomorrow.
It looks simple.
But if the message appears alone on a screen, several questions remain.
Who is I?
Who is you?
Where is here?
Which date is tomorrow?
The sentence is grammatically complete. Its reference is not.
To understand it, the reader needs the context of utterance.
Words such as I, you, here, there, now, then, this, that, today and tomorrow are often called deictic expressions.
The linguistic phenomenon is deixis.
Some English words do not carry a fixed referent. Their meaning is completed by the situation in which they are used.
I is grammatically stable and referentially mobile
The pronoun I always refers to the speaker or writer of the current utterance.
But the person it identifies changes every time someone new speaks.
Mei: I am tired.
Arun: I am tired.
Same word. Different referent.
This is person deixis.
You depends on the addressee
You need to submit the form.
Who is you?
One student? A class? A customer? The reader of a public notice?
Context supplies the addressee.
Person deixis builds participation roles
I / me / my → speaker side
you / your → listener side
we / us / our → speaker plus some group
they / them / their → people outside the immediate speaker–listener group
These small pronouns can build social alignment.
We can include or exclude the listener
We need to submit the report today.
Between teammates, we probably includes the listener.
Now a teacher says:
We will discuss your results with the department later.
Does we mean teacher + students, or teacher + staff?
Context decides.
This is one reason we is powerful in institutional and political language.
Place deixis anchors language spatially
Here typically refers to the speaker’s location. There commonly points to another location.
Come here.
I’ll meet you there.
The word does not contain coordinates. Context does.
This and that often encode distance
Take this book.
Pass me that book.
This often indicates greater proximity to the speaker, while that often indicates greater distance.
The relation is measured from a deictic centre, usually the speaker.
Distance can be emotional, not only physical
I love this little café.
I’m tired of that ridiculous excuse.
The demonstrative can participate in stance.
Distance becomes psychological.
Time deixis depends on when the sentence is produced
Words such as:
now
today
yesterday
tomorrow
next week
last year
move with the speaker’s temporal position.
If a message is read later, they can become ambiguous.
Tomorrow is a moving target
Suppose an email says:
The meeting is tomorrow.
If the email was written on 28 August but read on 30 August, the original deictic centre has moved.
When precision matters, convert relative time into an absolute date.
Deixis explains why.
Historical documents require deictic reconstruction
A diary says:
We arrived here yesterday.
To understand it fully, a historian needs:
date of entry
writer identity
location
The reader must reconstruct the original centre: who was speaking, where, and when.
Narrative changes the deictic centre
Tomorrow, they would leave this place forever.
A story can shift the reference point away from the reader’s real present and into a character or narrator’s world.
The reader relocates.
A five-part deixis map
Person deixis: I, you, we, they.
Place deixis: here, there, this place, that side.
Time deixis: now, then, today, tomorrow.
Discourse deixis: this argument, that claim, the following point.
Social deixis: titles, honorifics and forms of address that signal relationship or status.
Discourse deixis points inside the text
This is the main problem: the evidence is incomplete.
That explains why the experiment failed.
The same demonstratives that point around a physical room can point around a text.
Space becomes discourse structure.
This connects deixis to paragraph cohesion
The sample was small and the participants came from one school. This limits how widely the findings can be generalised.
What does this refer to?
The two limitations together.
If the reference is unclear, paragraph cohesion breaks.
Demonstratives can package a whole proposition
We’re going to eat first and then see the film. Are you happy with that?
That means the plan.
Small demonstratives can carry large chunks of previous discourse.
That can activate shared knowledge
You know that old shop on the corner?
The speaker assumes the listener can locate the referent through shared experience.
Deixis therefore connects with presupposition and shared knowledge.
This can introduce something as vivid or immediate
Then this guy walked in carrying a huge box.
The person is new, but this can make the figure feel immediate or salient.
Deictic expressions also manage narrative attention.
Deixis matters in spoken instructions
Put it there.
This may be perfectly clear in a classroom where the teacher is pointing.
On a printed worksheet, the same sentence may be useless.
Language that relies on gesture in speech may need explicit nouns in writing.
Digital communication removes shared physical context
Leave it over there.
In person, gesture may solve the reference.
In text chat, the phrase may fail.
Digital communication often replaces physical deixis with a named location, photo, map pin, link or time stamp.
Deixis matters in public speeches
Recent discourse research continues to show how person and spatial deictic expressions such as I, we, our, you and here help speakers build solidarity, authority and group identity.
A critical reader should ask:
Who exactly is included in “we”?
Political we deserves careful reading
We must protect our future.
Possible we:
government
citizens
nation
humanity
speaker + audience
The rhetorical power comes partly from leaving the set broad.
Direct and reported speech shift the centre
Direct:
Mei said, “I will finish this tomorrow.”
Reported later:
Mei said that she would finish it the following day.
Changes:
I → she
this → it
tomorrow → the following day
The deictic centre shifts from the original speech situation to the reporting sentence.
Deixis matters in comprehension questions
“I won’t stay here another night,” he said.
Question:
What does “here” refer to?
The answer cannot be found inside the word. The reader must locate the speaker in the scene.
Deixis matters across subjects
History: reconstruct here, then, now in primary sources.
Geography: spatial reference can depend on map perspective.
Science: this sample and that result depend on discourse reference.
Mathematics: this equation and the following graph point within a solution.
A practical deictic-centre method
- Who? Who is speaking?
- To whom? Who is addressed?
- Where? What counts as here?
- When? What counts as now?
- What text position? What does this or that point to?
- What social relationship? Does the form of address encode status?
Parent-friendly practice
Say:
Put this there tomorrow.
Ask whether someone could understand it next week on a recording.
Then rewrite it explicitly:
Put this red folder on the kitchen table on Sunday morning.
The child learns why deixis is efficient when context is shared.
Teacher-friendly diagnosis
Person-centre error: I/we/you assigned to wrong participant.
Spatial-centre error: here/there interpreted from reader rather than speaker.
Time-centre error: tomorrow/today interpreted from wrong date.
Discourse-reference error: this/that linked to wrong idea.
Social-deixis error: address form misread.
Medium error: spoken deictic instruction copied into writing without enough context.
Singapore relevance
Singapore students operate in highly multimodal communication: classroom speech, messages, announcements, maps, online lessons, formal emails and oral presentations.
In a classroom:
Put it here.
may be perfect.
In an email, it may be unusable.
Learning deixis therefore improves both English and communication design.
Hilary Mantel as a high-level literary lens
Hilary Mantel is useful here only as a high-level lesson in perspective. The meaning of here, now, we, this depends on whose world the reader has entered.
The transferable lesson is:
before interpreting a pointer word, locate the mind and moment from which it points.
AI and deictic ambiguity
AI systems can misread tomorrow, here, we or this when conversation history or current date is incomplete.
A safe verification prompt is:
Resolve every deictic expression in this message into an explicit person, place, date or discourse referent. Flag anything the context does not determine.
Connections eduKateAI can learn
deictic expression → context required → explicit referent
I/you/we → participation roles
here/there → spatial centre
now/then/today/tomorrow → temporal centre
this/that → physical, emotional or discourse distance
direct speech → reported speech → deictic centre shift
historical text → reconstruct original speaker/place/date
The public principle is that deixis anchors language to a viewpoint, and the same word can identify different referents when the viewpoint changes.
Related eduKateSG resources
- Pronoun Reference and Reference Chains
- Given and New Information
- Presupposition in English
- Narrative Time
Research basis
This article draws on current Cambridge Grammar guidance and recent 2025 discourse/pragmatics research on person, spatial, temporal, discourse and social deixis.