Inside a text, we could find some elements (words) which are used to make a reference for some information. So, they are words which show us something that is already mentioned or it is going to be mentioned afterwards. They are a sort of reminders or signals which maintain the thread speech/discourse and they help us to follow it.

The cohesion is a feature of a well-structured text, consisting of different phrases /sentences which are connected between themselves using linguistics devices that let every sentence could be read in relation with the others, as a whole.

The grammatical structure, cohesion, is established through cohesion devices such as anaphora, cataphora, ellipsis, deixis.

Anaphora Definition

The use of a word referring back to a word used earlier in a text or conversation, to avoid repetition, for example the pronouns he, she, it, and they and the verb do in I like it and so do they.

In English grammar, anaphora is the use of a pronoun or other linguistic unit to refer back to another word or phrase.

The word that gets its meaning from a preceding word or phrase is called an anaphor. The preceding word or phrase is called the antecedent, referent, or head.

Some linguists use anaphora as a generic term for both forward and backward reference.

In the following examples, anaphors are in italics and their antecedents are in bold.

"The following example illustrates what an anaphor is in the grammatical sense of the word:
Susan plays the piano. She likes music.
In [this] example, the word she is an anaphor and refers back to a preceding expression, in this case Susan. As can be seen in this example, an anaphor is an item that commonly points backwards...
If a man has talent and can't use it, he's failed.

Pronominal Anaphora
"The most widespread type of anaphora is that of pronominal anaphora. . . .
"The set of anaphoric pronouns consists of all third person personal (he, him, she, her, it, they, them), possessive (his, her, hers, its, their, theirs) and reflexive (himself, herself, itself, themselves) pronouns plus the demonstrative (this, that, these, those) and relative(who, whom, which, whose) pronouns both singular and plural... Pronouns first and second person singular and plural are usually used in a deictic manner...
(Ruslan Mitkov, Anaphora Resolution. Routledge, 2013)

Cataphora

The cataphora reverses the normal pattern of the pronoun referring back to a noun by first using the pronoun and then introducing the noun. The effect is that the reader is put into a state of suspense, because he does not initially know who or what the sentence is talking about. This gives the writer the opportunity to surprise the reader by associating the initial characterization with an unexpected noun.

What is cataphora?

Cataphora is a figure of speech or literary device in which a pronoun or pro-verb used initially in a sentence refers to an expression or subject which is used afterward. It is the opposite of anaphora, which places the pronoun or pro-verb later than the expression or subject in a sentence.

Examples of Cataphora

Since this can be a confusing term, some examples are in order

Example 1: If you want some, I’ve just made a fantastic loaf of banana bread.

(The word “some” refers to the banana bread, which has not been used in the conversation up until that point. In order to the listener to know what the speaker is talking about, the speaker must name the object that “some” refers to later in the same sentence. Thus, “some” is an instance of cataphora in a sentence.)

Example 2: After she was assigned a polite and respectful writer, the girl became less nervous about buying an essay.

(Here, the word “she” is cataphora, referring to the girl, which is only mentioned later in the sentence.)

Example 3: Once it landed safely, the helicopter opened its doors.

(Here, cataphora is present where “it” is used initially refer to the helicopter, which is mentioned in the second portion of the sentence.)

Cataphora can also be used in more formal language, or cross-linguistically, as in the following example:

Example 4: This is what he believed: that all men were created equal.

A deictic expression or deixis is a word or phrase (such as this, that, these, those, now, then, here) that points to the time, place, or situation in which a speaker is speaking. Deixis is expressed in English by way of personal pronouns, demonstratives, adverbs, and tense. The term's etymology comes from the Greek, meaning "pointing" or "show," and it's pronounced "DIKE-tik."

It sounds more complicated than it really is, for sure. For example, if you would ask a visiting exchange student, "Have you been in this country long?" the words this country and you are the deictic expressions, as they refer to the country where the conversation happens and the person being addressed in the conversation, respectively.

Types of Deictic Expressions

Deictic expressions can be one of several types, referring to who, where, and when. Author Barry Blake explained in his book "All About Language":

"Pronouns make up a system of personal deixis. All languages have a pronoun for the speaker (the first person) and one for the addressee (the second person). [Unlike English, some] languages lack a third person singular pronoun, so the absence of a form for 'I' or 'you' is interpreted as referring to a third person....
"Words like this and that and here and there belong to a system of spatial deixis. The here/there distinction is also found in pairs of verbs such as come/go and bring/take....
"There is also temporal deixis found in words like now, then, yesterday, and tomorrow, and in phrases such as last month and next year." (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Common Frame of Reference Needed

Without a common frame of reference between the speakers, the deixis on its own would be too vague to be understood, as illustrated in this example from Edward Finegan in "Language: Its Structure and Use."

"Consider the following sentence addressed to a waiter by a restaurant customer while pointing to items on a menu: I want this dish, this dish, and this dish. To interpret this utterance, the waiter must have information about who I refers to, about the time at which the utterance is produced, and about what the three noun phrases this dish refer to." (5th ed. Thomson, 2008)

When people are together in conversation, it's easy to use deictics as a shorthand because of the common context between those present—though those present don't actually have to be in the same location at the same time, just understand the context. In the case of movies and literature, the viewer or reader has enough context to understand the deictic expressions that the characters use in their dialogue.

	Created by Andrea Lladro over 5 years ago

Anaphora Cataphora Deixis