Editing Indexicality (section)

== In philosophy of language ==
Philosophical work on language from the mid-20th century, such as that of [[J.L. Austin]] and the [[ordinary language philosophy|ordinary language philosophers]], has provided much of the originary inspiration for the study of indexicality and related issues in linguistic pragmatics (generally under the rubric of the term ''[[deixis]]''), though linguists have appropriated concepts originating in philosophical work for purposes of empirical study, rather than for more strictly philosophical purposes.

However, indexicality has remained an issue of interest to philosophers who work on language. In contemporary [[analytic philosophy]], the preferred nominal form of the term is ''indexical'' (rather than ''index''), defined as "any expression whose content varies from one context of use to another ... [for instance] pronouns such as 'I', 'you', 'he', 'she', 'it', 'this', 'that', plus adverbs such as 'now', 'then', 'today', 'yesterday', 'here', and 'actually'.<ref name=iep>{{cite web |url=http://www.iep.utm.edu/dem-indx/ |title=Demonstratives and Indexicals |last=Georgi |first=Geoff |website=The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |access-date=February 19, 2017 |archive-date=December 12, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161212093441/http://www.iep.utm.edu/dem-indx/ |url-status=live }}</ref> This exclusive focus on linguistic expressions represents a narrower construal than is preferred in linguistic anthropology, which regards linguistic indexicality (''deixis'') as a special subcategory of indexicality in general, which is often nonlinguistic.

Indexicals appear to represent an exception to, and thus a challenge for, the understanding of natural language as the grammatical coding of [[logic]]al [[propositions]]; they thus "raise interesting technical challenges for logicians seeking to provide formal models of correct reasoning in natural language."<ref name=iep/> 

The American logician [[David Kaplan (philosopher)|David Kaplan]] is regarded as having developed "[b]y far the most influential theory of the meaning and logic of indexicals".<ref name=iep/>