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There is a critical ambiguity in the sentence of the title. I'll repeat it here:

"Yesterday the doomsday cult said the world would end tomorrow". Which day is the end?

The ambiguity is this: Am I telling you that they said "tomorrow", which is now today? Or am I telling you that they said "in two days", which is now tomorrow?

Obviously there are ways to rewrite the sentence to be clearer, and ideally I wouldn't say a sentence like this in the first place.

But my question is whether there is a word for this kind of ambiguity where quoting relative times may refer to being relative to the time of original utterance, or may be relative to the time of the quoting.

There are plenty of other ways to construct this "relative time shifting" in normal life. For example, "Last week I talked to him, he told me his birthday was yesterday". Was it yesterday at that time, or is it yesterday relative to now?

"I dropped Jeff off at the mall 2 hours ago, he said to pick him up in 3 hours" - did Jeff originally say 5 and I am pre-subtracting, or did Jeff originally say 3, leaving only one hour to go?

Again, for clarity, I am wondering how we describe these situations. I am not asking for opinions of how to resolve the ambiguity, just whether there is a concise descriptive term that labels the phenomenon we're seeing.

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  • In context, it's news if yesterday's dire prediction referred to today, and we are still here. Commented yesterday

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The issue is that "tomorrow" is deictic, which means that it is assumed to be relative to the time of the current utterance if not explicitly quoted (as in direct speech), not the original one which is now being reported.

Deixis is reference by means of an expression whose interpretation is relative to the (usually) extralinguistic context of the utterance, such as:

  • who is speaking
  • the time or place of speaking
  • the gestures of the speaker
  • the current location in the discourse

...

A deictic center is a reference point in relation to which a deictic expression is to be interpreted.

...

The deictic center is most typically the present time, location, participant role, and so forth of the speaker.

The SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms

Occasionally the deictic center can shift

There are, however, conditions under which the deictic centre for some deictic expressions shifts from speaker to addressee or to some other person...

In [She realised Ed must have left at least a week ago], at least a week ago could be interpreted at face value as “at least a week before the time of the utterance”, but it is also possible for it to have the interpretation “at least a week before the time of her realisation”. In this case I adopt the perspective of the person whose thoughts and experiences I am reporting.

(The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language p1453)

The difficulty in interpreting the sentence in the OP comes from a possible mid-sentence shift of the deictic center from the current speaker in the here and now to the doomsday cult in the there and then.

As suggested by Andrew Leach in the comments under this answer, a concise description would be deictic ambiguity. But if we wanted to capture the time aspect of it, perhaps temporal deictic ambiguity would be more specific.

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  • Very interesting! I find it odd that the deictic center can shift (or not shift) with time (thus creating the ambiguity - it's not clear if I'm shifting or not when I quote something in the past) but does not apply for speakers. If I say "Jeff told me I should buy a boat", there is no ambiguity. The words Jeff said were definitely "you should buy a boat". But if I say "Yesterday Jeff said he's going to buy a boat tomorrow", it's unclear if 'tomorrow' was Jeff's wording or if 'in 2 days' was Jeff's wording (and I am shifting). Seems there is room here for more analysis. Commented yesterday
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    To me, tomorrow must mean 'the day after the present one', so Jeff's reported speech cannot be referring to today. Commented yesterday
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    So what's the answer to the question? Might it be diectical ambiguity? Commented yesterday
  • @KateBunting That's interesting. I also suspected whether or not people would really interpret it as referring to today and so I asked around the office: so far five in favor of the end of the world being today and only one for tomorrow. Commented yesterday
  • @TJM The examples you have provided do not quote, but use indirect speech or reported speech. Your further example with Jeff saying yesterday that he's going to do something tomorrow is pretty much the same as the example in the OP, so I'm not sure what further analysis is required, at least as far as providing the "concise descriptive term." Of course the one with Jeff telling you to buy a boat is unambiguous (at least out of context) as there is no overt deictic element - no yesterday or tomorrow. Commented yesterday

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