differences - Is there a clear delineation between the usages of 'this' and 'that' in American English?


One of my linguistics professors speaks English as a second language, and remarked that she never knows which of the two is appropriate. Given a list of examples, all native speakers in the classroom were able to unanimously agree on which to use, but we couldn't give exact rules.


The closest we came was in the context of proximity ('this' being on the speaker, 'that' covering most of the rest), but with the exception of properties of objects on the speaker e.g. "this jacket is beautiful, I love that color."



Answer



For a Linguistics class, start by reading Fillmore's Deixis Lectures.


Demonstratives like this and that are deictic, contrasting distal that with proximal this. And they're not nearly as complex as they used to be in English, as this puzzle demonstrates.


Since "distal" and "proximal" are formed from the Latin words meaning far and near, I'd say you and your class were on the right track.


But there are many many ways to be "near to" or "far from" something,
because physical motion metaphors like LIFE is a JOURNEY are a dime a dozen.


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