A New Look at Discourse Deixis

To date, most studies on this and that have focused upon their place in spoken discourse, defining their functions on the basis of a handful of selected examples and largely neglecting their broader roles within discourse structures. Analysis of their roles in written discourse has remained limited and tentative. This book aims to address this by carrying out a contrastive analysis of the pronominal uses of this and that within the written academic corpus, investigating their...
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To date, most studies on this and that have focused upon their place in spoken discourse, defining their functions on the basis of a handful of selected examples and largely neglecting their broader roles within discourse structures. Analysis of their roles in written discourse has remained limited and tentative. This book aims to address this by carrying out a contrastive analysis of the pronominal uses of this and that within the written academic corpus, investigating their discursive roles in the light of the tenets of Centering and Rhetorical Structure theories in order to further our understanding of their pragmatic functions. It examines occurrences of this and that in terms of syntax and pragmatics, and describes the circumstances under which this or that is preferred. It sheds interesting new light on the written use of this and that and will be of especial interest to linguists and to instructors in written English as either a first or a second language.