Conclusion and Further Exercises

Now you got to know the basic properties of deixis and its use in Early Modern English.

As you might remember deictic expressions have a shifting meaning depending on the context of the utterance. The terms can point to persons, objects, time, place, social status and discourse sequences. Some words and expressions become deictic only if they occur in particular structures, otherwise non-deictic usage of the same words is possible.

If you want some further information about deixis , follow the links of the bibliography. Of course you can also work in teams and for example try to solve the following tasks.

1) Go back to our very first example and try to find other indexicals than that in the utterance.

2) Watch the filmed version of one of Shakespeare´s plays. Analyze why some scenes of the film are much shorter that those in the book. Is it easier for you to follow the plot in the film or in the book? Why?

3) Search on http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/ for some utterances which contain deictic expressions (you can make use of the advanced search and type in certain expressions you know to be indexicals). “Form [then] a small group which includes at least one person with a good knowledge of a language other than English. Ask this person to translate [these] utterances […] into their other language and explain any problems or differences to you.” (Grundy 2000, 47).