JEngL 29.2 (June 2001)Oh / Study of English Demonstrative Reference
A Focus-Based Study ofEnglish Demonstrative ReferenceWith Special Reference to theGenre of Written Advertisements
SUN-YOUNG OH
University of California, Los Angeles
Speakers/writers choose one from among several available referring expres-sions to refer to an entity, depending on the context. The question then is, “What arethe critical factors that motivate them to prefer one expression to another in a givendiscourse context?” There have been numerous attempts to provide an answer tothis question, all of which fall under the heading of the study of demonstrative refer-ence. The present study takes the position that “focus” is the most critical factor inthe speaker’s choice of demonstrative reference and tests this claim against the datafrom a particular genre (i.e., written advertisements). As will be shown later, thepatterns of demonstrative reference are very different in different discourse types(e.g., speech, writing, or written advertisements). One purpose of the present studyis to show that the focus-based approach is superior to other approaches in explain-ing why the use of the demonstratives differs by discourse type. A second purposeof this study is to describe how demonstrative usage is functionally motivated; thatis, certain kinds of demonstrative reference help advertisers achieve specific func-tional goals.
Studies of Demonstrative Reference
Traditional Accounts
The notion that plays the most significant role in traditional explanations of thedemonstratives is “proximity.” A number of linguists (e.g., Greenbaum and Quirk1990; Halliday and Hasan 1976; Huddleston 1984; Jespersen 1939; Kaplan 1989;
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I would like to express my thanks to Professor Marianne Celce-Murcia for herhelp throughout the development of this article. She tirelessly read through all of my previous drafts andprovided invaluable comments. I would also like to thank editor Charles Meyer and two anonymous ref-erees for their helpful responses and suggestions.
Leech and Svartvik 1975; Lyons 1977; Quirk and Greenbaum 1973; Quirk et al.1985; Ramsey 1968) have observed that the most basic use of this and that is asdeictics (i.e., expressions used for “pointing”), the two being contrasted in terms ofproximity to the speaker. The demonstrative this is used when the referent is nearthe speaker, the demonstrative that when the referent is “near you or not near eitherof us but at any rate not near me” (Halliday and Hasan 1976, 59). Halliday andHasan (1976) consider this proximate/nonproximate (or near/distant) distinction asthe key concept for understanding demonstrative reference and explain other usesof this and that as derived from this basic deictic distinction. In other words, the no-tion of proximity is interpreted on several different levels, as can be seen in the ex-amples below:1
(1) Spatial proximity:This is my friend Charlie Brown. [introducing someone]That is my friend Charlie Brown. [pointing out someone in a crowd]
(2) Temporal proximity:this morning [‘the morning of today’]that morning [‘the morning of a day some time ago’]
(3) Subjective/abstract proximity:Have you seen this report on smoking?
[‘the one I have recently been thinking about’]Have you seen that report on smoking?
[‘the one I was looking at some time ago’](4) Psychological/emotional proximity; this implies the speaker’s approval, and that im-
plies dislike or disapproval:How can this intelligent girl think of marrying that awful bore?
In addition, the anaphoric (i.e., backward reference) and cataphoric (i.e., forwardreference) uses of the demonstratives are also interpreted as extensions of theirdeictic use.
Alternative Approaches
It cannot be denied that the notion of relative proximity is critical with regard atleast to some uses of the English demonstratives. However, exactly how thespatial proximity/nonproximity distinction should be extended to account for allthe various uses of this and that has not been made fully explicit yet (Lakoff 1974,355). Furthermore, as Lyons (1977) has pointed out, stating the difference betweenthe demonstratives in terms of only the proximity to the speaker can be “veryimprecise” (646).
Recognizing this problem, some researchers have tried to find alternative expla-nations for the phenomenon. In an insightful analysis of the Dutch demonstrativedeterminers deze and die, uses of which are parallel to their English equivalents this
and that, Kirsner (1979) argues that the traditional view based on the proxi-mate/nonproximate distinction is inadequate. Kirsner assumes that referring ex-pressions can be marked for high or low “deixis,” which is defined as “the forcewith which the hearer is instructed to find the referent” (García 1975, 65, cited inKirsner 1979, 358).2 According to Kirsner (1979, 358), deze signals HIGH DEIX-IS, or “greater urging that the hearer find the referent,” whereas die signals LOWDEXIS, or “lesser urging that the hearer find the referent.” The speaker will use ahigh deixis form when he or she wants to direct more attention to the referent and alow deixis form for eliciting less attention, depending on whether the referent re-quires special highlighting and/or whether the hearer might have difficulty in iden-tifying it. It has been suggested that Kirsner’s analysis of the Dutch demonstrativesis valid for English as well (Maclaran 1982).
Sidner (1983) uses the notion of focus rather than proximity to explain speakers’demonstrative choices. She defines focus as a particular discourse element onwhich speakers center their attention. The core rule for this and that, according toSidner, is that this is used for main focus, while that is for potential or old focus.When occurring closely together in discourse, this and that can keep the focus ontwo objects at the same time. When occurring separately, however, this usuallymoves the focus from what has been talked about to what is now being referred to,whereas that does not. In contrast to this, that typically functions to allow thespeaker to remention elements without making them the subject of the speaker’s fo-cus and therefore the hearer’s attention (Sidner 1983, 327).
While most researchers have been interested in the opposition between this andthat, Linde (1979) addresses the question of how speakers choose between it andthat within a discourse unit. As she points out, it and that, considered as belongingto two different types of reference (i.e., it to pronouns and that to demonstratives),have rarely been examined systematically as being in opposition. Linde, however,asserts that if the speakers’ choices are carefully examined, a considerable overlapbetween it and that is disclosed, with both words referring to the same kinds of enti-ties within the discourse. For example, she notes that in describing apartment lay-outs, speakers use both it and that to refer to the entire apartment. Focusing on theparticular conditions of the discourse surrounding the reference, she found that thatis preferred to it in referring to the entire apartment, especially when there is a con-trast with another apartment. Integrating various findings of her study, Linde con-cludes that “the diverse conditions affecting the choice of it and that are, in fact, allaspects of the same phenomenon of focus” (Linde 1979, 352). According to her ex-planation, it is favored when the reference is made within the focus of attention,while that is favored when the reference is outside the focus of attention.
It seems clear that the alternative models of demonstrative reference that havebeen proposed in the hope of replacing the traditional proximity-based one have all
resorted to the notion of focus, although they may slightly differ in their definitionsor conceptualizations of the notion.
Spoken versus Written Discourse
Synthesizing previous work on English demonstratives and pronouns, Strauss(1993a, 1993b) developed a general framework for English demonstrative refer-ence. While most English grammar texts have discussed this and that as demon-stratives in a polarity system, leaving out it as a member of the pronominal system(e.g., Kaplan 1995; Leech and Svartvik 1975; Quirk et al. 1985), Halliday andHasan (1976, 56) recognized that “it [it] has more in common with demonstrativereference than with personal reference.” Further strengthening this position,Halliday (1985) included pronominal it as a member of the system of demonstrativereference, and Strauss also incorporated it into her framework in addition to this andthat.
Drawing her major insights from Kirsner (1979, 1993) and Linde (1979),Strauss (1993a, 1993b) also rejected the traditional near/not-near distinction as thecriterion of speakers’ demonstrative choice and proposed instead an alternativeframework, in which this, that, and it are described as markers of high, mid, and lowfocus, respectively. Focus is defined in this framework as the degree of attentiongiven to the referent. Strauss further noted that
subordinate to and implicit in this notion of variable degrees of focus motivat-ing speaker choice of forms are at least two additional factors: 1) the relativeamount of information that the speaker presumes the hearer to have with re-spect to the referent and 2) the relative importance of the referent itself to thespeaker. (Strauss 1993b, 404)
The model is reproduced in Figure 1.This model shows what determines the speaker’s choices within the domain of
focus or attention paid to a particular referent. In the examples below (which are ab-breviated versions of examples found in Strauss 1993b, 408), the degree of focus onthe referent is minimal in (5), greater in (6), and greatest in (7). Accompanying thisincrease in focus is an increase in the newness of the referent and the relative impor-tance attached to it.
(5) A: Hi, I wanted to ask you, I have a night blooming jasmine, and I can’t quite figureout what’s wrong with it. It- the- some of the leaves are becoming brown, and it’sjust kind of dying away.
(6) A: Who has the right to try a man, for a crime. Namely, the courts of the nation inwhich that crime was committed.
(7) A: D’ya wan- wanna hear another story?B: Sure I do!A: Well, this one deals with when I was a . . . freshman . . . we’d go in the embalm-
ing room. . . .
What gives this framework real strength is the fact that it is strongly supported bythe results of Strauss’s (1993a, 1993b) analysis of a large amount of authentic lan-guage data. Strauss examined an extensive corpus consisting of various genresfrom spoken discourse and was able to successfully show that the traditional “nearspeaker”/“far from speaker” distinction fails to explain the majority of tokens ofdemonstratives in everyday spoken English.
While Strauss (1993a, 1993b) concentrated on spoken discourse, Nishimura(1996) attempted to elucidate patterns of demonstrative usage in (academic) writ-ten discourse. Analyzing book reviews and short essay-type articles, she illustratedthe function of each demonstrative in context. On the meaning of demonstratives,she basically agrees with Kirsner (1979): “Writers use this to direct more attentionto the referent crucial to their purpose, while that is used to direct reader’s attentionto the entities which play only supporting roles” (Nishimura 1996, 74).
Comparison of the results of the two studies reveals one notable difference be-tween spoken and written discourse as regards demonstrative usage. While Strauss(1993a, 1993b) found that this is relatively infrequent in her oral data, comprisingonly 15 percent (n = 287) of the total (occurring half as frequently as that and almosta quarter as frequently as it), Nishimura (1996) discovered that this accounts for as
128 JEngL 29.2 (June 2001)
Figure 1: Strauss’s (1993a, 1993b) Schema of Focus for Demonstrative Reference.NOTE: Reprinted by permission.
much as 83.4 percent (n = 136) of the total3 in academic written discourse. In fact,the relative infrequency of this in spoken discourse had already been reported byPassonneau (1989), who, in analyzing conversational interactions, discovered onlyeight tokens of this among more than 700 instances of pronouns. Strauss (1993a,1993b) takes an extremely low frequency of this tokens in her data as the first signif-icant evidence against the traditional model, since it cannot properly explain whythis should be the case given that the choice from among available demonstratives isentirely up to the speaker himself or herself.
It seems that once the focus/attention-based approach to the demonstratives isadopted, the noted disparity between spoken and written discourse is not an acci-dental but a natural consequence. Kirsner (1979) cites the results of a detailed studyof Dutch word frequency (Boogaart 1975), according to which the overall relativefrequency of the high deixis form (i.e., deze) is far higher in writing (56.0 percent, n= 4,811) than in speech (7.2 percent, n = 1,910). Kirsner interprets this skewing asevidence for his claim for the following reason: if it can be agreed that written lan-guage generally imposes greater inferential burdens than spoken, then the frequentoccurrence of high deixis forms in the former is rather expected because high deixisforms direct the reader to the referent more strongly than do low deixis forms.Given Strauss’s (1993a, 1993b) framework of demonstrative reference, we can alsopredict that that and it will appear more frequently in spoken than in written dis-course since they are the forms that encode the meaning of “sharedness,” which ismore likely to be favored and found in spoken than in written discourse. If we ac-cept the traditional account that rests on proximate/nonproximate distinction, it isunclear how referents in written discourse are explicitly nearer than those in spokendiscourse (Kirsner 1979, 371).
The Study
The present study adopts the focus-based approach discussed above to investi-gate the function and use of English demonstrative reference within the genre ofwritten advertisements. Written advertisements are one of the most typical exam-ples of “persuasive discourse” (Lakoff 1981) and have the very explicit purpose ofpersuasion (i.e., selling). It has often been pointed out that the language in adver-tisements is “loaded” in the sense that it is shaped to help achieve this purpose (see,e.g., Amundson 1996; Geis 1982; Toolan 1988; Vestergaard and Schroder 1985). Itwill be interesting, then, to see whether and how the usage of demonstrative refer-ence, which is a feature of advertising language, is tailored to meet the needs of thewritten advertisement genre.
A total of 106 advertisements were collected from various types of magazines(e.g., Time, People, Elle, Glamour, GQ, Sports Illustrated, Stereo Review, etc.)for use as a database.4 Only product-selling advertisements or “commercial con-sumer advertising” were chosen for the study; excluded from consideration were“noncommercial” advertising by government agencies or nonprofit associations,“trade” advertising addressed to the retailer by the manufacturer, and “prestige” ad-vertising where firms advertise a name or an image rather than a product. Also ex-cluded were “classified” advertisements, which appear on special pages and are or-dered according to subject.
On the other hand, a conscious attempt was made to include advertisements for avariety of products (e.g., cars, foods, detergents, drugs, audio equipment, etc.) tominimize the potential effect of the kind of product and the target audience on theresults of the study.
A total of 323 tokens of demonstratives were found in this database. The numberof tokens for each demonstrative is shown in Table 1.
Analysis
This/these and that/those function either as “modifier” followed by an obliga-tory noun (e.g., This book is interesting) and optional modifier(s) or as “head” (e.g.,This is interesting) without any noun or modifier (Halliday and Hasan 1976). Ac-cording to Halliday and Hasan, demonstrative reference can be classified as“exophora” (situational reference) or “endophora” (textual reference), with the lat-ter being further divided into “anaphora” (backward reference) and “cataphora”(forward reference). Halliday and Hasan have also pointed out that a demonstrativereference item may not be “phoric” at all but “nonphoric” (Strauss 1993a, 1993b).For example, if a speaker began a conversational narrative by saying that There wasthis man . . ., this in this utterance is nonphoric: in such cases, the referent is present“neither in the text nor in the situation but only in the speaker’s mind” (Halliday and
Hasan 1976, 61). All four types of reference (i.e., anaphoric, cataphoric, exophoric,and nonphoric) were taken into account in this study. Another important classifica-tion unique to this study concerns whether the referent is the product being adver-tised in the advertisement (“central” reference) or not (“peripheral” reference). Thepurpose of this added distinction was to see what differences are found in the usageof demonstratives when they refer to the product versus to some nonproduct.
In sum, all tokens of this/these, that/those, and it/they5 in the database werecounted and classified according to the following criteria:6
• function (for this and that only): head or modifier;• type of reference: anaphoric, cataphoric, exophoric, nonphoric;• kind of referent: central (product-referent) versus peripheral (nonproduct referent)
reference.
Results and Discussion
The results will be discussed in two sections. The first section discusses the over-all results of the study in comparison with the previous findings in spoken discourse(Strauss 1993a, 1993b) and in written discourse (Nishimura 1996). Specifically, therelative frequency of this, that, and it will be compared across the three differentdiscourse types (i.e., speaking, writing, and written advertisements). The distinc-tion between central and peripheral reference will be mentioned as well. The sec-ond section covers the results for central and peripheral reference in greater detail.
General Results
As can be seen in Table 2, pronominal it accounted for more than half (62 per-cent, n = 200) of the total, with this and that comprising the rest (21 percent, n = 69and 17 percent, n = 54, respectively).
Examples (8) through (10) illustrate the three types of demonstrative reference(the referents are underlined for easy identification):
It(8) The Biore Pore Perfect strip is going to do a clean sweep of your pores, pulling out
more dirt, oil and blackheads than you ever knew you had. It works unlike anythingelse out there. And it’s dermatologist tested.
This/These
(9) . . . And that’s where Red Plaque Finder Tablets come in. Courtesy of the Crest FirstGrade Dental Health Education Program, which has been teaching kids for the last 35years how to keep their teeth healthy. These remarkable red tablets work their magicby zeroing in on the spots where plaque has built up.
(10) PC manufacturers typically ship hard disks formatted with one large partition. Youknow it as the C:drive. Without repartitioning, that drive uses large, inefficientstorage units or clusters to store your data.
An attempt was made to compare the relative frequency of this and that in three dif-ferent discourse types (i.e., written advertisements, spoken discourse, and aca-demic written discourse).7 The results are shown graphically in Figure 2.
While spoken and academic written discourse display an opposite tendency re-garding the relative frequencies of this and that, written advertisements show an“in-between” pattern. More specifically, in spoken discourse, that (67 percent, n =589) occurs more frequently than this (33 percent, n = 287), while in written dis-course, this (83 percent, n = 136) occurs much more frequently than that (17 per-cent, n = 27), with this and that appearing with relatively comparable frequency (56
132 JEngL 29.2 (June 2001)
TABLE 2Overall Results
This:Tokens, That: This: Anaphoric, Cataphoric, Exophoric, Nonphoric,Number It That Number Number Number Number
Function (percent) (percent) (percent) (percent) (percent) (percent) (percent)
percent, n = 69 and 44 percent, n = 54, respectively) in written advertisements. Thisresult may be taken as evidence against the common claim that written advertise-ments exhibit the characteristic features of spoken discourse (Amundson 1996;Leech 1966; Toolan 1988) since, at least with respect to demonstrative usage, writ-ten advertisements do not seem to follow the typical pattern of spoken discourse.Perhaps it indicates that written advertisements are a type of discourse that is simi-lar neither to spoken nor to written discourse and, therefore, might be better con-ceived of as an intermediate type of discourse.
However, this does not necessarily seem to be the case. A remarkably differentpicture emerged when the reference was divided into central and peripheral, de-pending on whether the advertised product is being referred to or something else(see Tables 3 and 4).
As Figure 3 illustrates, the relative frequency of this and that is astonishingly dif-ferent between peripheral and central reference. With peripheral reference, that (61percent, n = 54) is much more frequent than this (39 percent, n = 35), just as it is inspoken discourse. On the other hand, only this occurred (100 percent, n = 34) incentral reference, with not one single instance of that. From this result, it may beclaimed that the pattern of demonstrative usage in written advertisements is basi-cally similar to that in spoken discourse, and this similarity is hidden due to the cen-tral focus on the advertised product in advertisements, which inevitably leads to theexclusive use of the HIGH FOCUS form this when referring to the product. Furthersupport for this claim was found when pronominal it was included in the compari-son (see Figure 4).
Peripheral reference in written advertisements displays a parallel tendency tospoken discourse in terms of the relative frequency of this, that, and it, with theorder being it > that > this. In contrast, in central reference, it comprised 76 percent
Oh / Study of English Demonstrative Reference 133
TABLE 3Central Reference
This:Tokens, That: This: Anaphoric, Cataphoric,Number It That Number Number
Function (percent) (percent) (percent) (percent) (percent)
(n = 105) and this the rest (24 percent, n = 34) of the total, while that never occurs, asalready noted.
The conclusion that can be drawn from these results, then, is that the usage ofdemonstrative reference in written advertisements is under the heavy influence ofthe genre-specific characteristics of advertisements, the most significant of whichis a tendency to place a primary, central focus on the product being advertised.
Central Reference
Central reference takes the form of a demonstrative item whose referent is theproduct (or in some cases parts or ingredients of the product) being advertised in the
134 JEngL 29.2 (June 2001)
TABLE 4Peripheral Reference
This:Tokens, That: This: Anaphoric, Cataphoric, Exophoric, Nonphoric,Number It That Number Number Number Number
Function (percent) (percent) (percent) (percent) (percent) (percent) (percent)
advertisement. The following three subsections will discuss three notable tenden-cies found in central reference: (1) an overwhelming preference for this over that,(2) a preference for this as a modifier rather than a head, and (3) a tendency towardmore frequent use of cataphoric reference than in most other types of discourse.
Preference for this over that
According to the results of this study, only it (76 percent, n = 105) and this (24percent, n = 34) occurred in central reference, with that never appearing in thisfunction. The fact that it had the highest frequency is not surprising, given that it,having LOW FOCUS, is generally used to replace a referent after it has been intro-duced into the discourse. Rather, what is of interest here is the astounding differ-ence in frequency between this and that: while this accounted for as many as a quar-ter of the total tokens, that was never used to refer to the advertised product. Theoverwhelming frequency of this compared with that in central reference constitutescompelling evidence that this is indeed a HIGH FOCUS form since it is consis-tently used to refer to the advertised product, which is inherently focused in adver-tisements. As suggested by Strauss (1993a, 1993b), this is the only form that cansignal to the hearer/reader the meaning of “newness” and “importance” of the refer-ent, and this explains why this is repeatedly used to refer to the product in advertise-ments. The following are only a few among many examples of this referring to theproduct:
(11) It’s perfect for the workplace. Especially if you work for the space program. The NECDirection PC. The latest in cutting-edge technology from NEC. Of course, you don’thave to be a rocket scientist to appreciate the raw speed of this machine.
(12) You’ll enjoy some of the finer things in life when you travel in the new 1998 LincolnTown Car. This luxury sedan’s rich interior accommodates six passengers comfortably
Oh / Study of English Demonstrative Reference 135
24 0 76
19 29 52
15 30 55
0 20 40 60 80 100
Central Reference
Peripheral Reference
Spoken Discourse
%
this
that
it
Figure 4: Relative Frequency of this, that, and it.
and features an impressive V-8 engine, responsive steering and an enhanced rear wheeldrive chassis.
One question may arise at this point: once a product has been introduced in the ad-vertisement and is thus “given” to the readers in this sense, how can it maintain itssense of “newness” long enough to merit several tokens of this throughout the ad-vertisement? To answer this question, it is necessary to consider what is actuallymeant by new and given. According to Halliday and Hasan (1976) and Halliday(1985), the semantic categories of new and given mean that information is pre-sented by the speaker as nonrecoverable (i.e., new) or recoverable (i.e., given) to thehearer. What needs to be further noted is the fact that information that is treated asnonrecoverable is not necessarily something that has not been mentioned before. Itcan be nonrecoverable “because it has been previously mentioned but is unexpectedand hence contrastive in the particular context” (Halliday and Hasan 1976, 69). Thetrue meaning of new, then, is “attend to this; this is news” (Halliday 1985, 277).Given this meaning, we may now understand why this is sometimes preferred to itin referring to the advertised product. The advertiser prefers this to it when he or shewants to emphasize a new aspect of the product, which has not yet been mentionedbefore. Using this instead of it, the advertiser signals to the readers that the productshould be viewed in a new way, although it has already been talked about. In otherwords, this indicates that the reader may know the product but not necessarily underthe current description. In example (13) below, for instance, the lengthy adverbialphrase with all the . . . four-wheel drive, which provides detailed technical informa-tion about the product, and the modifier redesigned reshape the previously men-tioned product into a new entity, thereby warranting the use of this. In (14), new in-formation about the product (e.g., that the toothpaste is clinically proven) is addedto the previous description by means of the modifiers co-occurring with this. Aswill be discussed in the following section, both this and the modifier(s) following itwork together to picture a product as renewed.
(13) For those of you whose sense of adventure isn’t bounded by convention or commuterlanes, we present our newest family of powerful Mazda Trucks. Built longer, wider, andstronger, they’ll tow close to three tons without ever breaking a sweat. And, with all therugged performance of the new double-wishbone front suspension and availableshift-on-the-fly four-wheel drive, these redesigned Mazda Trucks are bold enough torun over what they don’t run through.
(14) Dazzling White is the whitening toothpaste with safe, maximum strength peroxidewhitening power. It can safely whiten teeth up to 5 shades. This revolutionary, clinicallyproven brush-in formula is recommended by dentists for at-home use.
The preceding discussion has shown when and why this is used to refer to the ad-vertised product rather than that or it. There is another preferred tendency in rela-tion to the use of demonstrative this in central reference: it functions much more fre-quently as a modifier (74 percent, n = 25) than as a head (26 percent, n = 9). Thelexical head noun that co-occurs with this is in most cases a repetition orsuperordinate of the antecedent. Typically, this accompanies not only a lexical nounhead but also some (oftentimes more than one) modifiers, as is shown in (13) and(14) above as well as (15) and (16) below:
(15) New Visible Difference Perceptual Moisture. Dry skin needs perceptual moisture. Thissheer, weightless formula charged with our exclusive breakthrough Hydra-filagrinolcomplex helps program skin to re-create its own moisture continuously.
(16) And if gray hair is sneaking into your mustache, beard or sideburns, you need Just ForMen Gel. This rich, no-drip gel brushes in fast and stays put to penetrate thathard-to-color gray.
These modifiers appear to serve informative and evaluative functions in advertise-ments. It was suggested earlier that the frequent use of this seems to result from theadvertiser’s need to highlight various aspects of the product and to invite the readersto view the product from many different perspectives. Emphasizing multiple facetsof one product can be done effectively by inserting diverse modifiers, which pro-vide relevant information, between this and the noun head. In fact, using manymodifiers with the resultant complexity of the noun phrase is one of the most typicalfeatures of advertising language. Much of the modification serves to specify in de-tail what the product is like and how it works (Leech 1966, 127). For example, themodifiers patented and limited in examples (17) and (18), respectively, supply in-formation regarding the product.
(17) Use Diminish nightly and see lines and wrinkles become less apparent. Age spots seemto fade. Your skin will grow again. This patented formula with 3 vitamins time releasesRetinol into the skin to minimize lines and wrinkles.
(18) Introducing the 1997 Miata M edition, the newest version of an automatic icon thatstarted the roadster revolution. And still the world’s best-selling sports car. This year, astunning Marina Green is added to this limited edition.
However, advertisers cannot be satisfied with simply providing factual informa-tion about their products. When we recall that advertisements are a type of persua-sive discourse that intends not only to inform but also to persuade, it is reasonable toassume that advertisers will always seek to find ways to influence, as well as in-
form, their readers. This is why modifiers have not only informative but alsoevaluative functions in advertisements. By evaluative, I mean that modifiers in ad-vertisements tend to characterize the product in the most favorable way to engravein the reader’s mind a positive impression toward the product. Thus, we often find inadvertisements attributive adjectives that provide attractive and appealing descrip-tions about the product.
(19) Natrol’s Tonalin CLA is a patented formula made from pure, natural sunflower oil thatmay actually help reduce body fat and increase muscle tone. In fact, Tonalin CLA is anewly recognized dietary ingredient that scientists believe may be the missing and im-portant dietary link to help achieve desired results. Natrol offers this great product intwo distinct formulas, the highest potency 1000 mg Tonalin and 750 mg Tonalin withChromium Picolinate and ThermoActives.
(20) Volvo and excitement—in the past, these were not words most people would be inclinedto use in the same sentence. But things are changing rapidly for Sweden’s largestautomakers. The latest and certainly most dynamic proof of its corporate repositioningis the C70 coupe. This rakish front-drive two-door brings together new levels of luxuryand performance while retaining the firm’s longstanding commitment to safety.
As the reader may have noticed in the above examples, this often occurs with twotypes of modifiers at the same time, with one type serving an informative function(e.g., front-drive) and the other an evaluative function (e.g., rakish). In addition tothe role of information provider and evaluator, the modifiers co-occurring with thisusually function as attention-getters as well, by their very presence between thisand the lexical noun head. Since all these potential benefits of modifiers can be real-ized if and only if this is used as a modifier and not as a head, it is natural, after all,that this occurs as a modifier so frequently in written advertisements.
Tendency toward More Frequent Cataphoric Reference
The third distinctive tendency to be discussed with regard to central referenceconcerns the type of reference. The cohesive relation between a presupposing itemand what is presupposed by it can point either backward (i.e., anaphoric) or forward(i.e., cataphoric), with the typical direction being the former. That is, the interpreta-tion of a presupposing item usually depends on another item that precedes ratherthan follows it.
The “usefulness of cataphora for creating focus” (de Beaugrande and Dressler1981, 62) has often been noted, for it causes a temporary problem in the text andhence stimulates the readers/hearers to seek out the referent, with heightened inter-est. In addition, the cataphoric devices in the grammar tell the reader/hearerwhether the referent is important (Givón 1992). Given these capabilities ofcataphora, it is very plausible, as Gernsbacher and Shroyer (1989) and Gernsbacherand Jescheniak (1995) suggest, that speakers mark key concepts with cataphoric
devices. In both of these studies, it was experimentally demonstrated thatcataphoric devices8 can foreground key concepts in three important ways: first, byenhancing the activation of the concepts; second, by suppressing the activation ofpreviously mentioned concepts; and third, by protecting the concepts that theymark from being suppressed by subsequently mentioned concepts. It is not a sur-prise, then, that the results of this study indicate that advertisements, which by theirvery nature necessitate focusing on the advertised product, have frequent recourseto cataphoric reference: cataphoric this occurs relatively more frequently in adver-tisements (9 percent, 3 out of 34) than in spoken (7 percent, 20 out of 287) or aca-demic written discourse (2 percent, 2 out of 103); cataphoric it is surprisingly morefrequent in advertisements (16 percent, 17 out of 105) compared with spoken dis-course (1 percent, 6 out of 1,064).9 Instances of cataphoric this and it can be seen inthe following two examples:
(21) From where you sit, a Dodge Avenger is an eat-up-the-road kind of car. Very racy. But atthe same time, highly intelligent. . . . Using something called structural finite elementanalysis, we’ve helped make reaction to driver input more instantaneous and more pre-dictable. This, too, comes along for the ride: our Customer One Care 3-year or36,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty and 3/36 Roadside Assistance.
(22) It’s perfect for the workplace. Especially if you work for the space program. The NECDirection PC.
Advertisers, like all other speakers/writers, have different linguistic choices attheir disposal. Some of the choices are unmarked in the sense that they are made bymost speakers/writers most of the time, but there are also more marked choices,which are less usual and unexpected. Advertisers may tend to select marked insteadof unmarked choices since unconventional behavior compels notice, thereby at-tracting readers’ attention and enhancing memorability of the advertisements(Amundson 1996; Leech 1966; Pandya 1977, 1983). While the greater use ofcataphoric reference is itself a good example of such tendencies found in advertise-ments, it is not the only kind of marked choice involved here. An unforeseen but in-teresting finding of this study is that it is it rather than this, which regularly servesthe function of cataphoric reference in written advertisements. As noted earlier, it incentral reference was often used cataphorically (16 percent, 17 out of 105), some-thing that is very rare (1 percent, 6 out of 1,064) in ordinary spoken discourse(Strauss 1993a, 1993b). This observation is of great interest because this is an un-marked choice for cataphoric reference, while it is marked (Halliday and Hasan1976, 75). Given the proposed difference in focus signaled by this and it, it is under-standable that the HIGH FOCUS form this rather than the LOW FOCUS form it isan unmarked choice for cataphoric reference since it serves to create focus.
To understand why cataphoric it is preferred to cataphoric this in advertise-ments, it is necessary to consider the typical contexts in which it is used in this way:
(23) It’s the way the city comes alive at night.It’s a 3.5 liter 210-horsepower engine that likes to show off more than a teenager.It’s climate control that falls somewhere between chemistry and artistry.It’s a streetcar named desire.It’s an 8-speaker Bose audio system with a Ph.D. in music appreciation.It’s the first satellite-linked navigation system built in-dash (so you’ll never lose the
directions).It’s a car that knows you better than some people.It’s the Acura RL.
(24) It has a liveliness that equals your own.As you turn to smile, tilt your chin to be kissed, lift your brow in quiet wonder, it shows
its colors.All of them, each and every one.Why wait?The Diamond Solitaire.
What can be noticed in these examples is the fact that when it marks cataphoric ref-erence, its referent, which is the advertised product, does not immediately followbut rather is delayed, with (at least one, but oftentimes several) intervening sen-tence(s) occurring between it and the referent.10 Typically, the delayed mention isthe first appearance of the product name in the advertisement. All these factorswork together to arouse curiosity on the part of the readers by holding back pivotalinformation (i.e., the product name) for a time and then releasing it at a critical mo-ment.11 The assumption is that readers will be stimulated to figure out what the ref-erent for it is by carefully reading such advertisements, using the information givenin the intervening sentence(s). And it is a common belief that if readers can be madeto participate physically or mentally, advertising is more likely to be successful be-cause it will be remembered better.
Peripheral Reference
When only peripheral reference (i.e., reference to a nonproduct) was considered,it still accounted for the largest portion of the total (52 percent, n = 95), that the sec-ond largest (29 percent, n = 54), and this the smallest (19 percent, n = 35). Eventhough these frequency distributions follow those found in spoken discourse,some uses of demonstratives having peripheral reference were unique to written ad-vertisements. The following discussion will center on such noticeable uses ofdemonstratives.
Role of that in Peripheral Reference
In contrast to this in central reference, that appearing in peripheral reference isused as a head more frequently (69 percent, n = 37) than as a modifier (31 percent,
n = 17). When used as a head, it always refers back to a preceding part of the text:12
in other words, it always signals textual reference. Below are some examples of thatwith textual reference, which are typical in the sense that they all contain the expres-sion that’s wh~ (i.e., why, where, what, how, etc.):
(25) During your young adult years, hair follicles can become permanently damaged be-cause of increased levels of dihydrotestosterone, the leading cause of thinning hair.That’s why we’ve developed FIT.
(26) When your child has a fever, you want to bring it down fast. That’s why we’ve devel-oped new PediaCare fever.
(27) Joint stiffness begins with wear and tear on cartilage, the protective cushioning in joints.And that’s exactly where Knox NutraJoint works.
Halliday and Hasan (1976, 67) have observed that textual reference occurs mostfrequently “in equative clauses where the demonstrative provides the ‘given’ ele-ment in the message and this then serves to identify some other element that is‘new,’ by simply being equated with it.” This is in line with the standard “given-new” ordering of information within clauses; given information tends to come atthe beginning of the clause, whereas new information tends to come toward the end.The strategic usefulness of this information ordering is attested to by the fact that“the subjects of English sentences are often . . . expressions (re)activating estab-lished or predictable content. The latter stretch of the predicate is, in turn, especiallyserviceable for creating focus” (de Beaugrande and Dressler 1981, 76). These or-dering principles account for why the introduction of the product usually takesplace in the wh-clause following that’s~, as is the case in the examples given above.This ordering sequence ensures that the new and most important information in theadvertisements (i.e., the product name) receives HIGH FOCUS by being placed af-ter the demonstrative.13 Ordering of information seems to be one of the most com-mon devices that advertisers rely on to impose reader focus on their products. Thus,we find evidence of the efforts on the part of the advertisers to create focus (on theirproducts) not only in central reference but in peripheral reference as well.
Using that as the subject of a main clause to refer back to a preceding part of thetext is, in fact, one of the many characteristics of spoken discourse transferred towritten advertisements. The expression that’s why~ is a colloquial substitute for amore formal conjunctive adverbial such as therefore, which is used to draw a con-clusion from an argument (Leech 1966). Although that’s why can easily be replacedwith the conjunctive adverb so, another colloquial substitute for therefore, it islikely to result in some loss in terms of the focus. Note that in example (28), thewriter uses so when focusing some constituent is not necessary, reserving that’swhy for the sentence where placing focus on the product name is crucial.
(28) I’m saving to send my girl to college, so I look for values. But I can’t afford to use a bar-gain detergent when most tough stains don’t come out as well as I’d like. That’s why Iuse Tide with Bleach Ultra 2.
Textual Reference
The foregoing discussion has demonstrated that that is used as a head to refer tosome preceding text in peripheral reference. However, textual reference in writtenadvertisements is often accomplished by other means as well. The results of thisstudy contradict the claim that this and that signal textual reference only when theyare used as heads and are in the singular form (Halliday and Hasan 1976, 66): boththat and this often refer to a preceding part of the text when they function as modifi-ers, as well as when they are in the plural form. In cases where this and that as modi-fiers refer to a part of the text, they typically co-occur with a general noun14 as a head(e.g., accomplishment, problem, honor, news, process, etc.):
(29) Who knows better than the American Dental Association? And for the first time in itshistory, the A.D.A. granted the Seal of Acceptance to a toothpaste that provideslong-lasting protection against cavities, plaque and even gingivitis. The recipient of thishonor? New Colgate Total, the first toothpaste that works between brushings to fightcavities, tartar, bad breath, plaque and gingivitis all day long.
(30) PC manufacturers typically ship hard disks formatted with one large partition. Youknow it as the C:drive. Without repartitioning, that drive uses large, inefficient storageunits or clusters to store your data. The result is that up to 40% of your hard disk’s capac-ity can be totally wasted. PartitionMagic lets you solve that problem by dividing yourhard disk into smaller, more efficient and better organized partitions.
What can be observed in the above examples is that the head nouns included in thedemonstrative noun phrases are characterizing the referents—some part of the pre-ceding text—in a specific way. In case the textual referent has brought up somemerit associated with the product being advertised, the characterization of the refer-ent is complimentary, defining it as an “honor” (example 29). This is a deliberate at-tempt on the part of the advertiser to give the readers a favorable image of the prod-uct with the hope of promoting sales. On the other hand, when the referent is notdirectly related to the advertised product, it tends to be characterized in a less favor-able way, either negatively (e.g., as “problem”) or neutrally (e.g., as “news”). Thus,in example (30), when readers interpret that problem by reference to the precedingsentences, they come to identify the particular kind of problem referred to, whichotherwise might not have been recognized as a “problem” at all. The intention be-hind this usage seems obvious: the advertiser is trying to induce readers to feel thatthey should buy the product to solve the problem. These uses of the demonstrativemodifiers this and that clearly illustrate the influence of the genre-specific charac-teristics of advertisements.
The present study has attempted to determine the function and use of demonstra-tive reference tokens in written advertisements, in comparison with usages found inspoken conversation and in academic written discourse. The results of the studystrongly confirm that speakers’ demonstrative choices are based on the degree offocus that is associated with each demonstrative. In particular, this, that, and it,which signal HIGH, MID, and LOW FOCUS, respectively, are used in ways that re-flect the genre-specific characteristics of written advertisements. The most impor-tant function shared by all three items is to create central focus on the advertisedproduct so as to direct the readers’ attention to the product.
Above all, this, which has HIGH FOCUS, plays the most active role in imposingprimary focus on the advertised product. This is consistently and repeatedly used torefer to the product, thereby associating its inherent meanings of newness and im-portance with the product. In addition, its ability to shift focus helps to continuallyreshape the advertised product into a new entity by highlighting different aspects ofthe product that have not been mentioned previously.
It has the lowest focus among the three demonstratives and thus usually refers tosome element that is already the focus of attention by having been mentioned previ-ously. In written advertisements, it is still used in this way in a majority of the cases,but there is another important way in which it is used as an attention-getter. When itrefers to the product, it often does so cataphorically instead of anaphorically. Usingthe LOW FOCUS form it, instead of this, for cataphoric reference has the advantageof intensifying the focus-creating power by the very markedness and unexpected-ness in linguistic choice.
On the other hand, that, the MID FOCUS form, participates in creating focus inrather indirect ways. Since the use of that is limited to the area of peripheral refer-ence, its role is not so much primary as supporting, compared with the roles of thisand it, which regularly appear in central reference. That is never used to refer to theadvertised product: having lower focus than this, it might have the undesirable ef-fect of directing less attention to the product. In addition, there is a possibility thatthe use of that might add a pejorative reading to the product, especially given that inadvertisements, “newness” is valued much more highly than the meaning of“shared/givenness” implied by that. Thus, that is frequently employed in peripheralinstead of central reference to refer to some preceding part of the text. Typically, itappears as a subject of a main clause, referring back to a preceding sentence, and itallows for the new information regarding the product to be placed toward the end ofthe sentence and thus to draw the natural focus on itself.
In conclusion, the patterns of demonstrative usage in written advertisements arelargely determined by the genre-specific characteristics of advertisements. Sinceadvertisements are a type of persuasive discourse, it is logical that the linguistic fea-
tures of advertisements are well adapted to suit the purpose of the discourse towhich they belong, that is, persuasion or “selling.” In the future, it would be inter-esting to examine how the varying levels of focus associated with demonstrativereference are exploited in other types of discourse to satisfy the particular needs ofthe type of discourse chosen.
Notes
1. All the examples provided in this section are taken from Quirk et al. (1985,374), except (4), which is from Greenbaum and Quirk (1990, 121, note).
2. Note that this is different from the traditional definition of the term deixis:
“By deixis is meant the location and identification of persons, objects,events, processes and activities being talked about, or referred to, in relationto the spatiotemporal context created and sustained by the act of utteranceand the participation in it, typically, of a single speaker and at least one ad-dressee” (Lyons 1977, 637).
3. Since Nishimura (1996) did not include it in her examination of the Englishdemonstratives, her findings are limited to this and that. Nonetheless, the strikingdiscrepancy between the two discourse types still remains even when instances of itare excluded from consideration. In spoken discourse, the relative frequency of thisand that is 33 percent/67 percent, while in the academic written discourse inNishimura’s corpus, it is 83 percent/17 percent.
4. This self-compiled database is admittedly not very large in comparison towork carried out on the basis of standardized machine-readable corpora. It shouldbe noted, therefore, that some of the generalizations made in this article are basedon low frequencies.
5. The nonreferential cases of it as an “empty” or “prop” subject (Quirk et al.1985) are not included in any of the counts or classifications:
What time is it now?It’s very hot today.
Also excluded are cases of it as an anticipatory subject in cleft sentences or inclauses with extraposition:
It was in April that my parents got married.It seems that Tom loves his new job.
6. From now on, this, that, and it will be used as representative forms that in-clude not only the singular but also the corresponding plural forms (i.e., these,those, and they).
7. Since Nishimura (1996) did not examine the usage of pronominal it in rela-tion to demonstratives this and that, it was not possible to compare the relative fre-quency of all three items across the three discourse types.
8. Gernsbacher and Shroyer (1989) and Gernsbacher and Jescheniak (1995)define cataphoric devices as those that enable forward reference, as opposed to ana-phoric devices, which enable backward reference. They use the term more broadlythan here to include not only cataphoric pronouns but also the indefinite this andeven spoken stress. However, their major claim about the advantages of cataphoricdevices applies to the cases being discussed here as well.
9. Since information on the use of it in academic written discourse was notavailable, comparison of the frequency of cataphoric it in advertisements and aca-demic written discourse could not be made.
10. As one referee pointed out, it may be thought of as being both cataphoric andexophoric at the same time. In other words, the referent of it may be found not onlyin the text but also in the visual layout of the advertisements. In any case, it still re-mains the case that the reader needs to go through the text to obtain the exact identi-fication of the referent since the visual aid would not be enough by itself. For exam-ple, the reader of the advertisement from which example (23) is taken may get thesense from the picture of the car shown in the advertisement that it refers to the car;however, without reading the text to the end, he or she will not be able to find themake of the car, which is in fact the most important information in automobile ad-vertisements.
11. It is not the case that this never refers to the product cataphorically. However,when this occurs in cataphoric reference, different effects are achieved. Used in thisway, this almost always appears in headlines and has a nonlinguistic (i.e., a picturein the advertisement) as well as a linguistic referent. The major difference betweenthis and it when they both are used cataphorically is that, unlike it, the referent forthis is not delayed but immediately follows. It seems that with cataphoric this, thereis no explicit intention to arouse curiosity, but rather this serves its usual “pre-sentative function” (Nishimura 1996).
12. This is in contrast with the finding that in academic written discourse, that al-most always refers back to a noun phrase in the same sentence rather than a preced-ing sentence (Nishimura 1996).
13. In other genres, textual reference is made not just with that but also withother demonstrative(s). This is extensively used in this function in academic writtendiscourse (Nishimura 1996), where it appears as a subject in a main clause and re-fers back to the immediately preceding sentence, just as that does in written adver-tisements. It seems to be the case, then, that exclusion of the HIGH FOCUS formthis from textual reference in advertisements is due to the advertiser’s fear of impos-ing unwanted focus on secondary information, which may result in some loss of thecentral focus on the product.
14. Halliday and Hasan (1976, 274) define the class of general noun as “a smallset of nouns having generalized reference within the major noun classes, those such
as ‘human noun,’ ‘place noun,’ ‘fact noun’ and the like.” The typical examples thatthey give include people, person, and man for human noun; place for place noun;and question and idea for fact noun. General nouns that appear in written advertise-ments seem to be less general compared with these typical ones, in the sense thatthey often carry some positive (e.g., honor, accomplishment) or negative (e.g.,problem) overtones. This, in fact, enables them to characterize the referent in a spe-cific way, a point that will be further discussed in this section.
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