84: Look, it's deixis, an episode about pointing!

Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics

Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne

Science

4.8 • 743 Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2023

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Pointing creates an invisible line between a part of your body and the thing you're pointing at. Humans are really good at producing and understanding pointing, and it seems to be something that helps babies learn to talk, but only a few animals manage it: domestic dogs can follow a point but wolves can't. (Cats? Look, who knows.) There are lots of ways of pointing, and their relative prominence varies across cultures: you can point to something with a finger or two, with your whole hand, with your elbow, your head, your eyes and eyebrows, your lips, and even your words. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about pointing, aka deixis. We talk about how pointing varies across cultures and species: English speakers tend to have a taboo against pointing with the middle finger and to some extent at people, but don't have the very common cross-cultural taboo against pointing at rainbows. We also talk about the technical term for pointing in a linguistic context, deixis, and how deictic meanings bring together a whole bunch of categories: pronouns in signed and spoken languages, words like here, this, go, and today, and the eternal confusion about which Tuesday is next Tuesday. Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/729129984955990016/transcript-episode-84-pointing Announcements: This episode is brought to you by all of the fantastic people who have supported the podcast by becoming patrons or buying merch over the years! We say this a lot but it really is very much the case that we would have had to give up making the show a long time ago without your financial support. If you would like to help keep the show running ad-free into the future, listen to bonus episodes, and connect with other language nerds on our Discord, join us on Patreon. In this month’s bonus episode, Lauren gets enthusiastic about the process of doing linguistic fieldwork with Dr. Martha Tsutsui Billins, an Adjunct Teaching Fellow at California State University Fresno and creator of the podcast Field Notes (https://fieldnotespod.com/), whose name you may recognize from the credits at the end of the show! Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/729129330001805312/episode-84-look-its-deixis-a-word-for

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics. I'm Gretchen McCulloch.
0:23.8	And I'm Lauren Gorn, and today we're getting enthusiastic about pointing. But first,
0:28.9	this episode is brought to you by all of the fantastic people who have supported the podcast
0:33.2	by becoming patrons or buying merch over the years. We don't work with a big production company
0:38.7	or anything. It's just us and we're really able to just keep doing the show because of your
0:44.0	support, both in recommending the show to other people and when you're able to help us financially.
0:50.2	You know, I was pretty worried when we were first trying to figure out how to keep
0:53.4	enthusiasm sustainable. Like, were we going to have to run ads for some sort of sketchy,
0:57.7	learn a language overnight type service? Yeah, we get some interesting pitches. Oh, we sure do.
1:05.3	I mean, I don't think all the language learning platforms are bad. I just wouldn't feel
1:09.0	comfortable endorsing them without trying it out for like hundreds of hours, at which point, that's not really very cost-effective.
1:16.1	So it's sort of easier to just say no. And if you like that link enthusiasm exists and you want to
1:22.4	help us continue to exist for many years in the future, we really appreciate your support,
1:27.2	especially on Patreon.
1:28.6	Our most recent bonus episode for patrons was an interview with Martha Tsutui Billens,
1:33.3	a name you might recognize from the credits of this show. We chatted about her work on
1:37.5	politeness in Amami, fieldwork in Japan, and her podcast field notes.
1:42.0	To listen to this bonus episode, many other bonuses, and to help keep the show running,
1:46.8	ad-free, go to patreon.com slash linkthusiasm.
2:00.5	Hey, look, this is a podcast.
2:03.1	Yes, this episode right here now.
2:07.2	Lauren, no one can see that you're pointing right now.
	...

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