Sunday 12 March 2017

DEICTIC WORDS: HOW CAN YOU BE I AND YOU AT THE SAME TIME?

Depending on the speaker, you can be I (when you speak about yourself), you (when someone else speaks to you about you or he/she, we and so on...) Don't worry, it's not a case of multiple personality!, the reason is just the fact that pronouns are deictic expressions. What's a deictic expression? Here's the answer from the wikipedia: 
In linguisticsdeixis (/ˈdkss/)[1] refers to words and phrases, such as “me” or “here”, that cannot be fully understood without additional contextual information -- in this case, the identity of the speaker (“me”) and the speaker's location (“here”). Words are deictic if their semantic meaning is fixed but their denotational meaning varies depending on time and/or place. Words or phrases that require contextual information to convey any meaning – for example, English pronouns – are deictic.
And now  feel like child again and watch this video where Glover and Herry, from Sesame Street explain the difference between here and there, and please, please, no matter what life brings to you, be yourself!