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Deixis

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

A linguistic device using words like “here,” “now,” or “I” that depend on context to indicate time, place, or speaker, anchoring meaning in situation.

Detailed Definition
Deixis encompasses words whose meaning depends on context—such as pronouns (“I,” “you”), spatial terms (“here,” “there”), or temporal markers (“now,” “then”)—and in poetry, deictic choices shape perspective, intimacy, and the reader’s positioning within the poem’s imagined world.
Example
Example in poetry:
“Here I stand” uses spatial deixis; “Yesterday, today, tomorrow” shows temporal deixis; “You and I” demonstrates personal deixis; In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Let us go then, you and I” uses deixis to draw reader in; Deixis anchors poems in specific moments, as in haiku: “this autumn morning.”
Additional Notes
Deixis uses words pointing to context—"this," "here," "now," "I." From Greek "pointing." Related to demonstratives. Creates immediacy, grounds poem in situation. Study how poets establish spatial/temporal reference points.
Also Known As
Deictic reference pointing words demonstrative reference indexical language
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