Pragmatic Functions of Anti-Pre-Emptive Use of Person Deixis and Pre-Emptive Use of Social Deixis in Chinese

Pre-emptive use of deixis involves speakers’ psychological tendency towards using deixis to pre-empt the non-deictic ways of referring to the relevant person, time or place, while anti-pre-emptive use of deixis refers to the phenomenon of non-deictic words substituting deixis. Both the pre-emptive use and anti-pre-emptive use of deixis produce significant pragmatic functions in language communication. This paper discusses the anti-pre-emptive use of person deixis and the pre-emptive use of social deixis in Chinese and concludes that their pragmatic functions are of the same nature.