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Deictic terms

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Words like “this,” “that,” “here,” or “now” that point to context-dependent meanings

Detailed Definition
Deictic terms are words like “this,” “that,” “here,” “there,” “now,” or “then” whose meaning depends on context and speaker perspective; in poetry, they anchor abstract ideas in immediate sensory or temporal reality, creating intimacy or situating the lyric within a specific moment or space.
Example
Example in poetry:
In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” deictic terms like “here,” “now,” and “you” anchor the speaker’s anxiety in immediate space; In Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror,” the deictic “I” and “she” create shifting perspectives between object and observer; Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road” uses deictic terms (“this,” “here,” “now”) to invite reader participation; Seamus Heaney’s “Digging” employs deictic terms (“Between my finger and my thumb”) to ground memory in bodily presence
Additional Notes
Deictic terms (“this,” “that,” “here,” “now”) anchor the poem in a specific time, place, or perspective; they create immediacy but can become ambiguous if context shifts—use carefully in lyric poetry.
Also Known As
Pointing words Indexical markers Demonstrative language Demonstrative reference
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