1. Definition

The term ‘deixis’ (also deictic expressions or shifters) indicates a group of linguistic elements attested in all languages, whose meaning necessarily implies a return to the uttering act in order to find a particular referent. ‘Deixis’ is a borrowing from Ancient Greek, which originally signified ‘the action of showing’. In fact, deixis draws the attention of the interlocutor(s) to a referent that is present in the situation of com…