Editing Indexicality

{{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.

==In linguistic pragmatics==
{{Main|Deixis}}
In disciplinary linguistics, indexicality is studied in the subdiscipline of [[pragmatics]]. Specifically, pragmatics tends to focus on [[deictics]]—words and expressions of language that derive some part of their referential meaning from indexicality—since these are regarded as "[t]he single most obvious way in which the relationship between language and context is reflected in the structures of languages themselves"<ref name=levinson/>{{rp|54}} Indeed, in linguistics the terms ''deixis'' and ''indexicality'' are often treated as synonymous, the only distinction being that the former is more common in linguistics and the latter in philosophy of language.<ref name=levinson/>{{rp|55}} This usage stands in contrast with that of linguistic anthropology, which distinguishes deixis as a particular subclass of indexicality.

== In linguistic anthropology ==
The concept of indexicality was introduced into the literature of [[linguistic anthropology]] by [[Michael Silverstein]] in a foundational 1976 paper, "Shifters, Linguistic Categories and Cultural Description".<ref name=shifters>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Silverstein |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Silverstein |editor1-last=Basso |editor1-first=Keith H. |editor2-last=Selby |editor2-first=Henry A. |encyclopedia=Meaning in Anthropology |title=Shifters, Linguistic Categories and Cultural Description |url=http://pages.ucsd.edu/~jhaviland/LingAnthCore/LingAnthCoreReadings/SilversteinShifters.pdf |access-date=February 13, 2017 |year=1976 |publisher=University of New Mexico Press |location=Albuquerque |pages=11–55 |archive-date=August 17, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170817162341/http://pages.ucsd.edu/~jhaviland/LingAnthCore/LingAnthCoreReadings/SilversteinShifters.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> Silverstein draws on "the tradition extending from Peirce to [[Roman Jakobson|Jakobson]]" of thought about sign phenomena to propose a comprehensive theoretical framework in which to understand the relationship between language and [[culture]], the object of study of modern [[sociocultural anthropology]]. This framework, while also drawing heavily on the tradition of [[structural linguistics]] founded by [[Ferdinand de Saussure]], rejects the other theoretical approaches known as [[structuralism]], which attempted to project the Saussurean method of linguistic analysis onto other realms of culture, such as kinship and marriage (see [[structural anthropology]]), literature (see [[semiotic literary criticism]]), music, film and others. Silverstein claims that "[t]hat aspect of language which has traditionally been analyzed by linguistics, and has served as a model" for these other structuralisms, "is just the part that is functionally unique among the phenomena of culture." It is indexicality, not Saussurean grammar, which should be seen as the semiotic phenomenon which language has in common with the rest of culture.<ref name=shifters/>{{rp|12; 20–21}}

Silverstein argues that the Saussurean tradition of linguistic analysis, which includes the tradition of structural linguistics in the United States founded by [[Leonard Bloomfield]] and including the work of [[Noam Chomsky]] and contemporary [[generative grammar]], has been limited to identifying "the contribution of elements of utterances to the [[reference|referential]] or denotative value of the whole", that is, the contribution made by some word, expression, or other linguistic element to the function of forming "[[proposition]]s—[[predicate (grammar)|predications]] descriptive of states of affairs". This study of reference and predication yields an understanding of one aspect of the meaning of utterances, their ''semantic meaning'', and the subdiscipline of linguistics dedicated to studying this kind of linguistic meaning is [[semantics]].<ref name=shifters/>{{rp|14–15}}

Yet linguistic signs in contexts of use accomplish other functions than pure reference and predication—though they often do so simultaneously, as though the signs were functioning in multiple analytically distinct semiotic modalities at once. In the philosophical literature, the most widely discussed examples are those identified by [[J.L. Austin]] as the [[performative utterance|performative]] functions of speech, for instance when a speaker says to an addressee "I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow", and in so saying, in addition to simply making a proposition about a state of affairs, actually enters into a socially constituted type of agreement with the addressee, a [[gambling|wager]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Austin |first=J.L. |date=1962 |title=How to Do Things With Words |url=https://archive.org/details/howtodothingswit0000aust |url-access=registration |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |publisher=Harvard University Press |page=[https://archive.org/details/howtodothingswit0000aust/page/5 5] |author-link=J.L. Austin }}</ref> Thus, concludes Silverstein, "[t]he problem set for us when we consider the actual broader uses of language is to describe the total meaning of constituent linguistic signs, only part of which is semantic." This broader study of linguistic signs relative to their general communicative functions is [[pragmatics]], and these broader aspects of the meaning of utterances is ''pragmatic meaning''. (From this point of view, semantic meaning is a special subcategory of pragmatic meaning, that aspect of meaning which contributes to the communicative function of pure reference and predication.).<ref name=shifters/>{{rp|193}}

Silverstein introduces some components of the semiotic theory of [[Charles Sanders Peirce]] as the basis for a pragmatics which, rather than assuming that reference and predication are the essential communicative functions of language with other nonreferential functions being mere addenda, instead attempts to capture the total meaning of linguistic signs in terms of all of their communicative functions. From this perspective, the Peircean category of indexicality turns out to "give the key to the pragmatic description of language."<ref name=shifters/>{{rp|21}}

This theoretical framework became an essential presupposition of work throughout the discipline in the 1980s and remains so in the present.

===Adaptation of Peircean semiotics===
{{Main|Semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce}}
The concept of indexicality has been greatly elaborated in the literature of linguistic anthropology since its introduction by Silverstein, but Silverstein himself adopted the term from the [[Semiotic elements and classes of signs|theory of sign phenomena]], or semiotics, of Charles Sanders Peirce. As an implication of his general metaphysical theory of the [[Categories (Peirce)|three universal categories]], Peirce proposed a model of the sign as a triadic relationship: a sign is "something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity."<ref>Peirce, C. S. (1897 [c.]). [http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/sign On Signs] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170619201752/http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/sign |date=2017-06-19 }} [R]. MS [R] 798</ref> Thus, more technically, a sign consists of

* A ''sign-vehicle'' or ''representamen'', the perceptible phenomenon which does the representing, whether audibly, visibly or in some other sensory modality;<ref name="commens">''Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms'', [http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/dictionary.html Eprint] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100822160927/http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/dictionary.html |date=2010-08-22 }}.</ref>{{rp|"Representamen"}}
* An ''object'', the entity of whatever kind, with whatever modal status (experienceable, potential, imaginary, law-like, etc.), which is represented by the sign;<ref name="commens"/>{{rp|"Object"}} and
* An ''interpretant'', the "idea in the mind" of the perceiving individual, which interprets the sign-vehicle ''as'' representing the object.<ref name="commens"/>{{rp|"Interpretant"}}

Peirce further proposed to classify sign phenomena along three different dimensions by means of [[Semiotic elements and classes of signs#Classes of signs|three trichotomies]], the second of which classifies signs into three categories according to the nature of the relationship between the sign-vehicle and the object it represents. As captioned by Silverstein, these are:

*''Icon'': a sign in which "the perceivable properties of the sign vehicle itself have isomorphism to (up to identity with) those of the entity signaled. That is, the entities are 'likenesses' in some sense."<ref name=shifters/>{{rp|27}}
*''Index'': a sign in which "the occurrence of a sign vehicle token bears a connection of understood spatio-temporal contiguity to the occurrence of the entity signaled. That is, the presence of some entity is perceived to be signaled in the context of communication incorporating the sign vehicle."<ref name=shifters/>{{rp|27}}
*''Symbol'': the residual class, a sign which is not related to its object by virtue of bearing some qualitative likeness to it, nor by virtue of co-occurring with it in some contextual framework. These "form the class of '[[Course in General Linguistics#Arbitrariness|arbitrary]]' signs traditionally spoken of as the fundamental kind of linguistic entity. Sign vehicle and entity signaled are related through the bond of a semantico-referential meaning"<ref name=shifters/>{{rp|27}} which permits them to be used to refer to any member of a whole class or category of entities.

Silverstein observes that multiple signs may share the same sign-vehicle. For instance, as mentioned, linguistic signs as traditionally understood are symbols, and analyzed in terms of their contribution to reference and predication, since they arbitrarily denote a whole class of possible objects of reference by virtue of their semantic meanings. But in a trivial sense each linguistic sign token (word or expression spoken in an actual context of use) also functions iconically, since it is an icon of its type in the code (grammar) of the language. It also functions indexically, by indexing its symbol type, since its use in context presupposes that such a type exists in the semantico-referential grammar in use in the communicative situation (grammar is thus understood as an element of the context of communication).<ref name=shifters/>{{rp|27–28}}

So icon, index and symbol are not mutually exclusive categories—indeed, Silverstein argues, they are to be understood as distinct modes of semiotic function,<ref name=shifters/>{{rp|29}} which may be overlaid on a single sign-vehicle. This entails that one sign-vehicle may function in multiple semiotic modes simultaneously. This observation is the key to understanding deixis, traditionally a difficult problem for semantic theory.

=== Referential indexicality (deixis) ===
{{Main|Deixis}}
In linguistic anthropology, ''deixis'' is defined as [[Reference#Semantics|referential]] indexicality—that is, [[morpheme]]s or strings of morphemes, generally organized into closed [[paradigm]]atic sets, which function to "individuate or single out objects of reference or address in terms of their relation to the current interactive context in which the utterance occurs".<ref name=hanks>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Hanks |first=William F. |author-link=William F. Hanks |editor1-last=Goodwin |editor1-first=Charles |editor2-last=Duranti |editor2-first=Alessandro |encyclopedia=Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon |title=Rethinking context: an introduction |url=http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/duranti/reprints/rethco.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030312200748/http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/duranti/reprints/rethco.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-date=March 12, 2003 |access-date=February 19, 2017 |year=1992 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |pages=43–76}}</ref>{{rp|46–47}} ''Deictic'' expressions are thus distinguished, on the one hand, from standard denotational categories such as common [[noun]]s, which potentially refer to any member of a whole class or category of entities: these display purely semantico-referential meaning, and in the Peircean terminology are known as ''symbols''. On the other hand, deixis is distinguished as a particular subclass of indexicality in general, which may be nonreferential or altogether nonlinguistic.

In the older terminology of [[Otto Jespersen]] and [[Roman Jakobson]], these forms were called ''shifters''.<ref>Jespersen 1965 [1924]</ref><ref>Jacobson 1971 [1957]</ref> Silverstein, by introducing the terminology of Peirce, was able to define them more specifically as referential indexicals.<ref name=shifters/>

=== Non-referential indexicality ===
Non-referential indices or "pure" indices do not contribute to the semantico-referential value of a speech event yet "signal some particular value of one or more contextual variables."<ref name=shifters/> Non-referential indices encode certain metapragmatic elements of a speech event's context through linguistic variations. The degree of variation in non-referential indices is considerable and serves to infuse the speech event with, at times, multiple levels of [[pragmatics|pragmatic]] "meaning".<ref name=indexicalorder>Silverstein, Michael. "Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life". Elsevier Ltd., 2003.</ref> Of particular note are: sex/gender indices, deference indices (including the affinal taboo index), [[Affect (linguistics)|affect]] indices, as well as the phenomena of [[phonological]] [[hypercorrection]] and social identity indexicality.

====Indexical order====
In much of the research currently conducted upon various phenomena of non-referential indexicality, there is an increased interest in not only what is called first-order indexicality, but subsequent second-order as well as "higher-order" levels of indexical meaning. First-order indexicality can be defined as the first level of pragmatic meaning that is drawn from an utterance. For example, instances of deference indexicality, such as the variation between informal ''tu'' and formal ''vous'' in French, indicate a speaker/addressee communicative relationship built upon the values of ''power'' and ''solidarity'' possessed by the interlocutors.<ref name=BrownGilman>Brown, R., Gilman, A. "The pronouns of power and solidarity, IN: Sebeok, T.A. (ed.) Style in Language. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960.</ref> When a speaker addresses somebody using the V form instead of the T form, they index (via first-order indexicality) their understanding of the need for deference to the addressee. In other words, they perceive or recognize an incongruence between their levels of power and/or solidarity and employ a more formal way of addressing that person to suit the contextual constraints of the speech event.

Second-Order Indexicality is concerned with the connection between [[linguistics|linguistic]] variables and the metapragmatic meanings that they encode. For example, a woman is walking down the street in [[Manhattan]] and she stops to ask somebody where a McDonald's is. He responds to her talking in a heavy "[[Brooklyn]]" [[Accent (sociolinguistics)|accent]]. She notices this accent and considers a set of possible personal characteristics that might be indexed by it (such as the man's intelligence, economic situation, and other non-linguistic aspects of his life). The power of language to encode these preconceived "stereotypes" based solely on accent is an example of second-order indexicality (representative of a more complex and subtle system of indexical form than that of first-order indexicality).

==== Sex/gender indices ====
One common system of non-referential indexicality is sex/gender indices. These indices index the gender or "female/male" social status of the interlocutor. There are a multitude of linguistic variants that act to index sex and gender such as:

*''word-final or sentence-final particles'': many languages employ the [[suffix]]ation of word-final particles to index the gender of the speaker. These particles vary from phonological alterations such as the one explored by [[William Labov]] in his work on postvocalic /r/ employment in words that had no word final "r" (which is claimed, among other things, to index the "female" social sex status by virtue of the statistical fact that women tend to hypercorrect their speech more often than men);<ref name=wake>Wake, Naoko. Indexicality, Gender, and Social Identity.</ref> suffixation of single phonemes, such as   /-s/  in Muskogean languages of the southeastern United States;<ref name=shifters/> or particle suffixation (such as the Japanese sentence-final use of ''-wa'' with rising intonation to indicate increasing affect and, via second-order indexicality, the gender of the speaker (in this case, female))<ref name=wake/>
*''morphological and phonological mechanisms'': such as in [[Yana language|Yana]], a language where one form of all major words are spoken by sociological male to sociological male, and another form (which is constructed around phonological changes in word forms) is used for all other combination of interlocutors; or the Japanese prefix-[[affixation]] of o- to indicate politeness and, consequently, feminine social identity.<ref name=o>Kamei, Takashi.Covering and Covered Forms of women's language in Japanese.'Hitotsubashi JOurnal of Arts of Sciences' 19:1-7.</ref>

Many instances of sex/gender indices incorporate multiple levels of indexicality (also referred to as ''indexical order'').<ref name=indexicalorder/> In fact, some, such as the prefix-affixation of o- in Japanese, demonstrate complex higher-order indexical forms. In this example, the first order indexes politeness and the second order indexes affiliation with a certain gender class. It is argued that there is an even higher level of indexical order evidenced by the fact that many jobs use the ''o-'' prefix to attract female applicants.<ref name=o/> This notion of higher-order indexicality is similar to Silverstein's discussion of "[[#wine talk|wine talk]]" in that it indexes "an identity-by-visible-consumption<ref name=indexicalorder/> [here, ''employment'']" that is an inherent of a certain social register (i.e. social gender indexicality).

==== Affect indices ====
Affective meaning is seen as "the encoding, or indexing of speakers emotions into speech events."<ref name=affect>Besnier, Niko. Language and Affect. Annual Reviews, Inc., 1990.</ref> The interlocutor of the event "decodes" these verbal messages of affect by giving "precedence to intentionality";<ref name=affect/> that is, by assuming that the affective form intentionally indexes emotional meaning.

Some examples of affective forms are: [[diminutives]] (for example, diminutive affixes in [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]] and [[Amerindian language]]s indicate sympathy, endearment, emotional closeness, or antipathy, condescension, and emotional distance); [[ideophones]] and [[onomatopoeias]]; [[Expletive attributive|expletives]], exclamations, [[interjections]], curses, insults, and [[imprecations]] (said to be "dramatizations of actions or states"); [[Intonation (linguistics)|intonation]] change (common in tone languages such as Japanese); address terms, kinship terms, and pronouns which often display clear affective dimensions (ranging from the complex address-form systems found languages such a [[Javanese language|Javanese]] to inversions of vocative kin terms found in Rural [[Italy]]);<ref name=affect/> [[lexicon|lexical]] processes such as [[synecdoche]] and [[metonymy]] involved in effect meaning manipulation; certain categories of meaning like [[evidentiality]]; [[reduplication]], [[Quantifiers (linguistics)|quantifiers]], and comparative structures; as well as [[inflectional morphology]].

Affective forms are a means by which a speaker indexes emotional states through different linguistic mechanisms. These indices become important when applied to other forms of non-referential indexicality, such as sex indices and social identity indices, because of the innate relationship between first-order indexicality and subsequent second-order (or higher) indexical forms.  (See multiple indices section for Japanese example).

==== Deference indices ====
Deference indices encode deference from one interlocutor to another (usually representing inequalities of status, rank, age, sex, etc.).<ref name=shifters/> Some examples of deference indices are:

=====T/V deference entitlement=====
The [[T–V distinction|T/V deference entitlement system]] of [[European languages]] was famously detailed by linguists Brown and Gilman.<ref name=BrownGilman /> T/V deference entitlement is a system by which a speaker/addressee speech event is determined by perceived disparities of 'power' and 'solidarity' between interlocutors. Brown and Gilman organized the possible relationships between the speaker and the addressee into six categories:
# Superior and solidary
# Superior and not solidary
# Equal and solidary
# Equal and not solidary
# Inferior and solidary
# Inferior and not solidary
The 'power semantic' indicates that the speaker in a superior position uses T and the speaker in an inferior position uses V. The 'solidarity semantic' indicates that speakers use T for close relationships and V for more formal relationships. These two principles conflict in categories 2 and 5, allowing either T or V in those cases:
# Superior and solidary: T
# Superior and not solidary: T/V
# Equal and solidary: T
# Equal and not solidary: V
# Inferior and solidary: T/V
# Inferior and not solidary: V
Brown and Gilman observed that as the solidarity semantic becomes more important than the power semantic in various cultures, the proportion of T to V use in the two ambiguous categories changes accordingly.

Silverstein comments that while exhibiting a basic level of first-order indexicality, the T/V system also employs second-order indexicality vis-à-vis 'enregistered honorification'.<ref name=indexicalorder /> He cites that the V form can also function as an index of valued "public" register and the standards of good behavior that are entailed by use of V forms over T forms in public contexts. Therefore, people will use T/V deference [[entailment]] in 1) a first-order indexical sense that distinguishes between speaker/addressee interpersonal values of 'power' and 'solidarity' and 2) a second-order indexical sense that indexes an interlocutor's inherent "honor" or social merit in employing V forms over T forms in public contexts.

=====Japanese honorifics=====
Japanese provides an excellent case study of [[honorifics]]. Honorifics in Japanese can be divided into two categories: addressee honorifics, which index deference to the addressee of the utterance; and referent honorifics, which index deference to the referent of the utterance. Cynthia Dunn claims that "almost every utterance in Japanese requires a choice between direct and distal forms of the predicate."<ref name=japanese>Dunn, Cynthia. "Pragmatic Functions of Humble Forms in Japanese Ceremonial Discourse. 'Journal of Linguistic Anthropology', Vol. 15, Issue 2, pp. 218–238, 2005</ref> The direct form indexes intimacy and "spontaneous self-expression" in contexts involving family and close friends. Contrarily, distal form index social contexts of a more formal, public nature such as distant acquaintances, business settings, or other formal settings.

Japanese also contains a set of humble forms (Japanese ''kenjōgo'' 謙譲語) which are employed by the speaker to index their deference to someone else. There are also [[suppletive]] forms that can be used in lieu of regular honorific endings (for example, the subject honorific form of {{Nihongo3|to eat|食べる|taberu}}: {{Nihongo|2=召し上がる|3=meshiagaru}}. Verbs that involve human subjects must choose between ''distal'' or ''direct'' forms (towards the addressee) as well as a distinguish between either no use of referent honorifics, use of subject honorific (for others), or use of humble form (for self). The Japanese model for non-referential indexicality demonstrates a very subtle and complicated system that encodes social context into almost every utterance.

=====Affinal taboo index=====
[[Dyirbal language|Dyirbal]], a language of the [[Cairns]] [[rain forest]] in [[Northern Queensland]], employs a system known as the affinal taboo index. Speakers of the language maintain two sets of lexical items: 1) an "everyday" or common interaction set of lexical items and 2) a "mother-in-law" set that is employed when the speaker is in the very distinct context of interaction with their mother-in-law. In this particular system of deference indices, speakers have developed an entirely separate lexicon (there are roughly four "everyday" lexical entries for every one "mother-in-law" lexical entry; 4:1) to index deference in contexts inclusive of the mother-in-law.

====Hypercorrection as a social class index====
[[Hypercorrection]] is defined by Wolfram as "the use of speech form on the basis of false analogy."<ref>Wolfram, W. Phonological Variation and change in Trinidadian English-the evolution of the vowel system. Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1969.</ref> DeCamp defines hypercorrection in a more precise fashion claiming that "hypercorrection is an incorrect analogy with a form in a [[prestige (sociolinguistics)|prestige]] dialect which the speaker has imperfectly mastered."<ref>DeCamp, D. 'Hypercorrection and Rule Generalization. 1972</ref> Many scholars argue that hypercorrection provides both an index of "social class" and an "Index of [[Linguistic insecurity]]". The latter index can be defined as a speaker's attempts at self-correction in areas of perceived linguistic insufficiencies which denote their lower social standing and minimal social mobility.<ref name=hyper>Winford, Donald. 'Hypercorrection in the Process of Decreolization: The Case of Trinidadian English. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1978.</ref>

Donald Winford conducted a study that measured the phonological hypercorrection in creolization of English speakers in Trinidad. He claims that the ability to use prestigious norms goes "hand-in-hand" with knowledge of stigmatization afforded to use of "lesser" phonological variants.<ref name=hyper/> He concluded that sociologically "lesser" individuals would try to increase the frequency of certain vowels that were frequent in the high prestige [[dialect]], but they ended up using those vowels even more than their target dialect. This hypercorrection of vowels is an example of non-referential indexicality that indexes, by virtue of innate urges forcing lower class civilians to hypercorrect phonological variants, the actual social class of the speaker. As Silverstein claims, this also conveys an "Index of [[Linguistic insecurity]]" in which a speaker not only indexes their actual social class (via first-order indexicality) but also the insecurities about class constraints and subsequent linguistic effects that encourage hypercorrection in the first place (an incidence of second-order indexicality).<ref name=indexicalorder/>

William Labov and many others have also studied how hypercorrection in [[African American Vernacular English]] demonstrates similar social class non-referential indexicality.

====Multiple indices in social identity indexicality====
Multiple non-referential indices can be employed to index the social identity of a speaker. An example of how multiple indexes can constitute social identity is exemplified by Ochs discussion of [[copula (linguistics)|copula]] deletion: "That Bad" in American English can index a speaker to be a child, foreigner, medical patient, or elderly person. Use of multiple non-referential indices at once (for example copula deletion and raising intonation), helps further index the social identity of the speaker as that of a child.<ref name=Ochs>Ochs, Elinor. "Indexicality and Socialization". In J. Stigler, R. Shweder & G. Herdt (eds.) 'Cultural Psychology: Essays on Comparative Human Development'. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.</ref>

Linguistic and non-linguistic indices are also an important ways of indexing social identity. For example, the Japanese utterance ''-wa'' in conjunction with raising intonation (indexical of increasing affect) by one person who "looks like a woman" and another who looks "like a man" may index different affective dispositions which, in turn, can index gender difference.<ref name=wake/> Ochs and Schieffilen also claim that facial features, gestures, as well as other non-linguistic indices may actually help specify the general information provided by the linguistic features and augment the pragmatic meaning of the utterance.<ref>Ochs, Elinor and Shieffelin, Banbi. "Language has a heart". 'Text 9': 7-25.</ref>

===={{anchor|oinoglossia}}{{anchor|wine talk}}Oinoglossia (wine talk)====
For demonstrations of higher (or rarefied) indexical orders, Michael Silverstein discusses the particularities of "life-style emblematization" or "convention-dependent-indexical iconicity" which, as he claims, is prototypical of a phenomenon he dubs "[[wine]] talk". Professional wine critics use a certain "technical vocabulary" that are "metaphorical of prestige realms of traditional English gentlemanly [[horticulture]]."<ref name=indexicalorder/> Thus, a certain "lingo" is created for wine that indexically entails certain notions of prestigious social classes or genres. When "yuppies" use the lingo for wine flavors created by these critics in the ''actual context'' of drinking wine, Silverstein argues that they become the "well-bred, interesting (subtle, balanced, intriguing, winning, etc.) person" that is iconic of the metaphorical "fashion of speaking" employed by people of higher social registers, demanding notoriety as a result of this high level of connoisseurship.<ref name=indexicalorder/> In other words, the wine drinker becomes a refined, gentlemanly critic and, in doing so, adopts a similar level of connoisseurship and social refinement. Silverstein defines this as an example of higher-order indexical "authorization" in which the indexical order of this "wine talk" exists in a "complex, interlocking set of institutionally formed macro-sociological interests."<ref name=indexicalorder/> A speaker of English metaphorically transfers him- or herself into the social structure of the "wine world" that is encoded by the ''oinoglossia'' of elite critics using a very particular "technical" terminology.

The use of "wine talk" or similar "fine-cheeses talk", "perfume talk", "Hegelian-dialectics talk", "particle-physics talk", "DNA-sequencing talk", "semiotics talk" etc. confers upon an individual an identity-by-visible-consumption indexical of a certain macro-sociological elite identity<ref name=indexicalorder/> and is, as such, an instance of higher-order indexicality.

== 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/>

== In philosophy of mind and metaphysics ==
Indexicality is also studied in relation to fundamental issues in [[epistemology]], [[self-consciousness]], and [[metaphysics]],<ref name=iep/> for example asking whether indexical facts are [[further facts|facts that do not follow from the physical facts]], and thus also form a link between philosophy of language and [[philosophy of mind]]. Related ideas include [[haecceity]] in medieval scholastic philosophy, and the [[type-token distinction]].

Some philosophers have used indexicality as a way of defining the [[Philosophy of self|self]]. The philosopher Benj Hellie coined the phrase "the [[vertiginous question]]" to describe the question of why, of all the subjects of experience out there, ''this'' one—the one corresponding to the human being referred to as Benj Hellie—is the one whose experiences are ''live''. (The reader is supposed to substitute their own case for Hellie's.)<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hellie |first1=Benj |last2= |first2= |date=2013 |title=Against Egalitarianism |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/HELCFC |journal=Analysis |volume=73 |issue= |publisher= |pages=304–320 |doi=10.1093/analys/ans101 |access-date=}}</ref> Other philosophers have described similar phenomena. Tim S. Roberts refers to the question of why a particular organism out of all the organisms that happen to exist happens to be you as the "Even Harder Problem of Consciousness".<ref>{{cite journal|last=Roberts|first=Tim S.|title=''The Even Harder Problem of Consciousness'' by Roberts. Tim S.|journal=NeuroQuantology|date=September 2007|volume=5|issue=2|pages=214–221|doi=10.14704/nq.2007.5.2.129 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228618472}}</ref> [[Herbert Spiegelberg]] has referred to it as the "I-am-me experience", and it has been called the "Ich-Erlebnis" by German psychologists.<ref>{{citation |last=Watanabe |first=Tsuneo |contribution=From Spiegelberg's "I-am-me" experience to the solipsistic experience |title=IHSRC 2009 (The 28th International Human Science Research Conference) |place=Molde, Norway |date=1 June 2009 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/388593480_From_Spiegelberg's_I-am-me_experience_to_the_solipsistic_experience |access-date=2 February 2025 }}</ref><ref>{{citation |last=Watanabe |first=Tsuneo |contribution=Enigma of the private self and studies of the "I-am-me experience": Towards a phenomenological approach to the development of the subjective self |title=ISTP (International Society for Theoretical Psychology) 2017 Conference (Tokyo, Japan) |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/386086401_Enigma_of_the_private_self_and_studies_of_the_I-am-me_experience_Towards_a_phenomenological_approach_to_the_development_of_the_subjective_self }}</ref> Japanese philosopher [[Hitoshi Nagai]] has used the concept of first person perspectives as a way of defining the self, defining the self as the "one who directly experiences the consciousness of oneself".<ref>* Why Isn’t Consciousness Real? (1) ''Philosophia Osaka'' No. 6, 2011:41-61 [http://hnagai.web.fc2.com/why_isnt_consciousness_real_day1.pdf PDF]</ref>

Similar ideas have been discussed by [[Thomas Nagel]] in the book ''[[The View from Nowhere]]''. It contrasts passive and active points of view in how humanity interacts with the world, relying either on a subjective perspective that reflects a point of view or an objective perspective that takes a more detached perspective.<ref name="MindsAndBodies">{{cite book |last1=McGinn |first1=Colin |title=Minds and Bodies: Philosophers and Their Ideas |date=1997 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-511355-6 }}{{pn|date=January 2022}}</ref>  Nagel describes the objective perspective as the "view from nowhere", one where the only valuable ideas are ones derived independently.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Thomas |first1=Alan |title=Thomas Nagel |date=2015 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-49418-8 }}{{pn|date=August 2024}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Conversational scoreboard]]
* [[Quasi-indexical]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20090116054211/http://arche-wiki.st-and.ac.uk/~ahwiki/bin/view/Arche/IndexicalsBib Arché Bibliography of Indexicals]
*[http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/dictionary.html Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms], consisting in Peirce's own definitions and characterizations. See "Index".
*[http://www.iep.utm.edu/dem-indx/ Demonstratives & Indexicals] at [[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]].

{{Formal semantics}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Semantics]]
[[Category:Formal semantics (natural language)]]
[[Category:Linguistics terminology]]

[[Category:Charles Sanders Peirce]]