Deixis
Words whose meaning depends on the speaker's context, including personal pronouns ('I', 'you'), demonstratives ('this', 'that'), spatial terms ('here', 'there'), and temporal terms ('now', 'then'). Deixis anchors language to speaker perspective.
Real World
Political speeches exploit deixis powerfully: Boris Johnson's 'We will get Brexit done' uses 'we' to position the audience inside a collective, while 'they' distances opponents, constructing us-vs-them discourse through deictic choice alone.
Exam Focus
Identify the deictic centre (who 'I', 'here', 'now' refers to) and discuss what perspective is created — this unlocks marks in both language and literature questions.
How well did you know this?