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[13] a. Are you planning to be here this evening?
b.I asked her if she was planning to be there that evening.
When the context shifts, as for example in [13b.], to one in which I report the
previous utterance, then the previous utterance is marked deictically as relative to the
circumstances of asking. Note that the proximal forms presented in[13a.] have shifted to
the corresponding distal forms in[13b.].This very regular difference in English reported
discourse marks a distinction between the ‘near speaker’ meaning of direct speech and
the ‘away from speaker’ meaning of indirect speech.The proximal deictic forms of a
direct speech reporting communicate, often dramatically, a sense of being in the same
context as the utterance. The distal deictic forms of indirect speech reporting make the
original speech event seem more remote.
It should not be a surprise to learn that deictic expressions were all to be found
in pragmatics wastebasket. Their interpretation depends on the context, the speaker’s
intention, and they express relative distance.Given their small size and extremely wide
range of possible uses, deictic expressions always communicate much more than is
said.

REFERENCE AND INFERENCE

Throughout the preceding discussion of deixis,there was an assumption that the
use of words to refer to people and things was a relatively straightforward matter. It is
indeed fairly easy for people to do, but it is rather difficult to explain how they do it.We
do know that words themselves don’t refer to anything.People refer. We must best think
of reference as an act in which a speaker, or writer, uses linguistic forms to enable a
listener,or reader,to identify something.
Those linguistic forms are reffering expressions, which can be proper nouns(for
example,’Shakespeare’,’Cathy Revuelto’,’Hawaii’), noun phrases which are definite (for
example,’the author’,’the singer’,’the island’),or indefinite (for example, ‘a man’, ‘a woman’,
‘a beautiful place’), and pronouns(for example, ‘he’, ‘her’, ‘it’ , ‘them’).The choice of one
type of referring expressions rather than another seems to be based, to a large extent,
on what the speaker assumes the listener already knows.In shared visual context,those
pronouns that function as deictic expressions(for example, ‘Take this’; ‘Look at him!’)
may be sufficient for successful reference, but identification seems more difficult, more
elaborate noun phrases may be used(for example,’Remember the old foreign guy with
the funny hat?’).
Reference,then, is clearly tied to the speaker’s goals(for example, to identify
something) and the speaker’s beliefs(i.e. can the listener be expected to know that
particular something?) in the use of language. For successful reference to occur, we
must also recognize the role of inference. Because there is no direct relationship
between entities and words, the listener’s task is to infer correctly which entity the
speaker intends to identify by using a particular referring expresions. It is not unusual for
people to want to refer to some entity or person without knowing exactly which ‘name’
would be the best word to use. We can even use vague expressions(for example, ‘the
blue thing’, ‘that icky stuff’, ‘ol’ what’s his name’, ‘the thingamajig’), relying on the listener’s
ability to infer what referent we have in mind. Speakers even invents names.There was
one man who delivered packages to our office whose’real’ name I didn’t know, but
whose identity I could infer when the secretary referred to him as in [1].