A Focus-Based Study of English Demonstrative Reference
Sun-Young Oh · Journal of English Linguistics · 2001
Speakers/writers choose one from among several available referring expressions to refer to an entity, depending on the context. The question then is, “What are the critical factors that motivate them to prefer one expression to another in a given discourse context?” There have been numerous attempts to provide an answer to this question, all of which fall under the heading of the study of demonstrative reference. The present study takes the position that “focus” is the most critical factor in the speaker’s choice of demonstrative reference and tests this claim against the data from a particular genre (i.e., written advertisements). As will be shown later, the patterns of demonstrative reference are very different in different discourse types (e.g., speech, writing, or written advertisements). One purpose of the present study is to show that the focus-based approach is superior to other approaches in explaining why the use of the demonstratives differs by discourse type. A second purpose of this study is to describe how demonstrative usage is functionally motivated; that is, certain kinds of demonstrative reference help advertisers achieve specific functional goals.