Perspective: Presence and Distance Through Deictic Expressions

Taking the concepts of perspective and grounding in Cognitive Grammar as its starting point, this chapter explores a person’s sense of distance to the past through the analysis of deixis (expressions whose meaning is specified by the discourse situation). The chapter presents a survey of research on deixis in literature, and especially in poetry, and relates this discussion to the broader notion of perspective or viewpoint. In the case studies, the focus is on the significance of definite articles, demonstratives and the relative qualifier all for perspectival language. The findings suggest that expressing distance through deixis is a fundamental aspect of mentally travelling to the past, sometimes by way of aligning the past with the present and other times creating “gaps” in memory that appear meaningful.