Deictic Shifts and the Construction of Temporal and Spatial Perspective in Shadab Zeest Hashmi’s Passing through Peshawar

Abstract

This study examines the role of deictic expressions and deictic shifts in constructing temporal and spatial perspectives in Shadab Zeest Hashmi’s poem Passing through Peshawar. Drawing primarily on the linguistic framework of deixis proposed by Levinson (1983), the study investigates how person, spatial, temporal, and discourse deixis position the speaker and addressee within the poem’s shifting experiential contexts. Using a qualitative textual analysis, selected deictic expressions are identified, categorized, and interpreted according to their contextual and referential functions. The analysis focuses particularly on expressions such as I, you, this town, there, my, once again, used to, and references to movement through the city. The findings suggest that these expressions do more than establish grammatical reference; they continuously shift the reader’s perspective between the speaker’s present journey and remembered experiences of Peshawar. Spatial deixis transforms geographical locations into subjectively experienced spaces, while temporal deixis creates movement between the present and the remembered past. Person deixis further establishes an intimate relationship between the speaker, the addressee, and the remembered city. The study argues that deictic shifts are central to the poem’s construction of memory, place, nostalgia, and cultural belonging. By examining deixis as a mechanism of perspective construction, the study contributes to linguistic and cognitive approaches to contemporary Pakistani poetry and demonstrates how seemingly ordinary deictic expressions can organize complex relationships between language, space, time, and personal experience.

Keywords: Deixis, Deictic Shifts, Spatial Deixis, Temporal Deixis, Person Deixis, Perspective, Memory, Place, Shadab Zeest Hashmi, Passing through Peshawar.