Deixis in Polite Interaction

Abstract

The article examines two crucially important notions – the correlation of politeness and deixis in speech. Viewing the category of politeness as a most important means to regulate the complicated relations between the agents of a communication process – the speaker and the addressee, the author attempts to reveal the role of deictic units in speech and demonstrate the importance of their right choice and application in expressing the speaker’s intention. To define the degree of politeness, the article distinguishes between speaker-centered and addressee-centered utterances.