A Cognitive Interpretation of Discourse Deixis

This paper aims at proposing a cognitive structure for discourse deixis, in terms of which deixis is understood and used to structure reality, so that reality is internally experienced and hence reproduced or changed. The paper also tries to argue that discourse deixis is metaphorically derived from place deixis. This analysis is consistent with and confirms the spatialization-of-form hypothesis, which requires a metaphorical mapping from physical space onto a conceptual space. To be specific, discourse deixis is based on the metaphorical understanding of discourse as time and time as space.