Pragmatic Study: Theory of Deixis and The Definition

When language is spoken, it occurs in a specific location, at a specific time, is produced by a specific person and is (usually) addressed to some specific other person. Only written language can ever be free of this kind of anchoring in the extra linguistic situation. A sentence on a slip of paper can move through space and time, "speaker" – less, and addressee – less. All natural, spoken languages have devices that link the utterance with its spatio – temporal and personal context. This linkage is called "deixis." (Tanz in Fromkin, 2003: 217)

Definition of Deixis
Deixis is the way in which a small number of words, such as come, go, I, here and now require an addressee to be able to pick out a person, place, or time relevant in understanding how the word refers (Grundy, 2000: 23). Because I, Here, and now identify particular referents, it can be picked out to refer to if we like. We call these words indexical and this function of language deictic, borrowing the Greek word meaning pointing to or picking out. In addition, Levinson (1983: 54) states that deixis is the single most obvious way in which the relationship between language and context is reflected in the structures of languages themselves. The topic of deixis or as philosophers usually prefer, indexical expressions (or just indexicals), may be usefully approached by considering how truth – conditional semantics deals with certain  natural language expressions.
According to Renkema (1993: 76), deixis deals with connection between discourse and the situation in which discourse is used. The words deixis, which is derived from the Greek word meaning “to show” or “ to indicate”, is used to denote those elements in a language which refer directly to the situation, while deictic words are words with a reference point which is depend on the speaker or writer and is determined by the speaker’s or writer’s position in space and time.
Fillmore in Levinson (1983: 54) states that the importance of deictic information for the interpretation of utterances is perhaps best illustrated by what happens when such information is lacking. For example, finding the following notice on someone’s office door “I’ll back in an hour”, we do not know when it was written, we cannot know when the writer will return. A deictic center is a reference point which is related to a deictic expression or an expression that has a deictic usage which has to be interpreted. (Levinson, 1983 : 64). The central person is the speaker, the central time is the time at which the speaker produces the utterance, and the central place is the speaker’s location at utterance time.
The form of deictic is classified into two, namely deictic in which the context is required to determine the reference and non – deictic in which the reference is general rather than to particular identifiable persons (Grundy, 2000:6). In accordance with Levinson (1983: 68), deictic is used for gestural and symbolic, while non – deictic is used for non – anaphoric, and anaphoric.
Based on the preceding definition, it can be conclude that deixis is a words or expressions whose meaning depends on the context of the speaking. To know  the meaning of the language, we have to determine the speaker who produces the utterance, and the location of the utterance in space and time.