Deictic this and speaker containment

Abstract

This article examines a hitherto unnoticed set of deictic uses of the English proximal demonstrative this, namely those where the speaker is contained in the referent of the demonstrative NP. The usual case, where the speaker is not contained in the referent, has been extensively studied and the choice between proximal and distal has been argued to be based on a combination of physical (proximity of the referent to the speaker) and psychological/subjective factors. The present article focuses on those cases where the speaker is contained in the referent, arguing that this leads to a categorical choice in deictic uses, with only proximal this being possible. The article further shows that there are four relevant types of containment. First, spatial containment, where the speaker is physically located in the referent (e.g. this room); second, situational containment, where the referent is an event or state and the speaker is a participant in it (e.g. this conversation); third, set containment, where the referent is a group of people of which the speaker is a member (e.g. in this family); and fourth, temporal containment, where the speaker (or more precisely the time of utterance) is contained in the referent (e.g. this week).