This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘Look, it’s deixis, an episode about pointing!’. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about pointing. But first, 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 don’t work with a big production company or anything; it’s just us. We’re really able to just keep doing the show because of your support both in recommending the show to other people and when you’re able to help us financially.

Gretchen: I was pretty worried when we were first trying to figure out how to keep Lingthusiasm sustainable. Like, were we gonna have to run ads for some sketchy, learn-a-language-overnight type service?

Lauren: We get some interesting pitches.

Gretchen: Oh, we sure do. I mean, I don’t think the language learning platforms are all bad. I just wouldn’t feel comfortable endorsing one without trying it out for hundreds of hours, at which point, that’s not really very cost effective. It’s easier to just say no. So if you like that Lingthusiasm exists, and you wanna help us continue to exist for many years in the future, we’d really appreciate your support – especially on Patreon.

Lauren: Our most recent bonus episode for patrons was an interview with Martha Tsutsui-Billins – a name you might recognise from the credits of this show. We chatted about her work on politeness in Amami, fieldwork in Japan, and her podcast, Field Notes.

Gretchen: To listen to this bonus episode, many other bonuses, and to help keep the show running ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

[Music]

Lauren: “Hey, look! This is a podcast.”

Gretchen: “Yes, THIS episode, right here, now.” Lauren, no one can see that you’re pointing right now.

Lauren: Hm, yeah, it’s a pity because this is one of my favourite types of episodes where we’re gonna talk about gesture in an audio-only format.

Keep reading

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

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.

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

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, 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.

Here are the links mentioned in the episode:

• ‘Why don’t apes point?’ - Michael Tomasellso
• 'Dogs’ responsiveness to human pointing gestures’ - K. Soproni, A. Miklósi, J. Topál, V. Csányi
• 'A Comparative Study of the Use of Visual Communicative Signals in Interactions Between Dogs and Humans and Cats and Humans’ - Á. Miklósi, P. Pongrácz, G. Lakatos, J. Topál, V. Csányi.
• 'The way humans point isn’t as universal as you might think’ - Kensy Cooperrider
• Discussion of lip pointing in 'Encanto’ on Reddit, including video example
• 'Body-directed gestures: Pointing to the self and beyond’ - Kensy Cooperrider
• 'Even Rainbows Have a Dark Side’ - Kensy Cooperrider
• Etymonline entry for ’*deik-’
• Etymonline entry for 'deixis’
• Wikipedia entry for 'deixis’
• Lingthusiasm episode ‘Pronouns: Little words, big jobs’
• 'Pointing in gesture and sign’ - Kensy Cooperrider & Kate Mesh
• 'How Pointing is Integrated into Language: Evidence From Speakers and Signers’ - K. Cooperrider, J. Fenlon, J. Keane, D. Brentari, and S. Goldin-Meadow
• 'Comparing sign language and gesture: Insights from pointing’ - J. Fenlon, K. Cooperrider, J. Keane, D. Brentari, and S. Goldin-Meadow
• 'On the autonomy of language and gesture: Evidence from the acquisition of personal pronouns in American sign language’ - Laura A. Petitto
• 'Demonstratives and deixis in Tamil and Sinhala’ blog post on Xavieremmanuel.org
• 'Spatial deixis in Iaai (Loyalty Islands)’ - Françoise Ozanne-Rivierre
• 'Deictic categories in three languages of Eastern Indonesia’ - Hein Steinhauer
• Lingthusiasm bonus episode 'Is X a sandwich? Solving the word-meaning argument once and for all’

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

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Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, and our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).