Deixis, mental spaces and categorization: the pronouns we and you in english

Abstract

This article uses a Cognitive Linguistics approach to meaning construction, based on Mental Spaces Theory (Fauconnier 1994, 1997, Fauconnier and Turner 2002). Drawing on cognitive proposals to the analysis of deixis by Rubba (1996) and Marmaridou (2000), our objective is to investigate the diverse uses of the personal pronouns “we” and “you” in English. We demonstrate that the prototypical uses of these pronouns, based on the Idealized Cognitive Model of deixis, permit the construction of nonprototypical uses through processes of blending.