Editing Indexicality (section)

{{Short description|Phenomenon of a sign pointing to (or indexing) some object in the context in which it occurs}}
In [[semiotics]], [[linguistics]], [[anthropology]], and [[philosophy of language]], '''indexicality''' is the phenomenon of a ''[[Sign (semiotics)|sign]]'' pointing to (or ''indexing'') some element in the [[context (language use)|context]] in which it occurs. A sign that signifies indexically is called an '''index''' or, in philosophy, an '''indexical'''.

The modern concept originates in the [[semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce]], in which indexicality is one of the three fundamental sign modalities by which a sign relates to its referent (the others being [[iconicity]] and [[Symbolic anthropology|symbolism]]).<ref name=peirce>[[Charles Sanders Peirce|Peirce, C.S]]., "Division of Signs" in ''Collected Papers'', 1932 [1897]. {{OCLC|783138}}</ref> Peirce's concept has been adopted and extended by several twentieth-century academic traditions, including those of linguistic [[pragmatics]],<ref name=levinson>{{cite book |last=Levinson |first=Stephen C.|date=1983|title=Pragmatics|url=https://archive.org/details/pragmatics00levi|url-access=registration |location=Cambridge|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=0-521-29414-2|author-link=Stephen Levinson}}</ref>{{rp|55–57}} [[linguistic anthropology]],<ref>{{cite book |last=Lee |first=Benjamin |date=1997 |title=Talking Heads: Language, Metalanguage and the Semiotics of Subjectivity |location=Durham |publisher=Duke University Press |pages=95–134 }}</ref> and Anglo-American philosophy of language.<ref name=stanford>{{cite web |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/indexicals/ |title=Indexicals |last=Braun |first=David |date=2016 |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward N. |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=The Metaphysics Research Lab, Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford University |access-date=February 12, 2017 |archive-date=May 2, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240502215224/https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/indexicals/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Words and expressions in [[language]] often derive some part of their referential meaning from indexicality. For example, ''I'' indexically refers to the entity that is speaking; ''now'' indexically refers to a time frame including the moment at which the word is spoken; and ''here'' indexically refers to a locational frame including the place where the word is spoken. Linguistic expressions that refer indexically are known as [[deixis|deictic]]s, which thus form a particular subclass of indexical signs, though there is some terminological variation among scholarly traditions.

Linguistic signs may also derive nonreferential meaning from indexicality, for example when features of a speaker's [[register (sociolinguistics)|register]] indexically signal their [[social class]]. Nonlinguistic signs may also display indexicality: for example, a [[pointing]] [[index finger]] may index (without referring to) some object in the direction of the line implied by the orientation of the finger, and smoke may index the presence of a fire.

In linguistics and philosophy of language, the study of indexicality tends to focus specifically on deixis, while in semiotics and anthropology equal attention is generally given to nonreferential indexicality, including altogether nonlinguistic indexicality.