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19233 | Indexicals are unusual words, because they stimulate the hearer to look around [Peirce] |
Full Idea: Words like 'this', 'that', 'I', 'you', enable us to convey meanings which words alone are incompetent to express; they stimulate the hearer to look about him. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], II) | |
A reaction: Peirce was once of the first to notice the interest of indexicals, and this is a very nice comment on them. A word like 'Look!' isn't like the normal flow of verbiage, and may be the key to indexicals. |