Cambridge Grammar of English Hardback with cd-rom a comprehensive Guide

Referring to psychological closeness and distance

This

can be used to underline or highlight that the speaker thinks something is

important or newsworthy and will probably be familiar to the listener, instead of

using unmarked the:

One of the strategies is 

this new attack on long-term unemployment.

This

focuses or highlights new topics, making them more immediate and significant:

A quarter of people in the group resigned, didn’t they, and 

this has led to other

people protesting too. But what can we do?

That

can distance the speaker from aspects of the topic:

You can’t say women shouldn’t be allowed to drive trucks because they can’t

work the long hours. 

That’s just sexist.

This

and that sometimes express contrasts in emotional distance (sometimes

called emotional deixis) and can signal different attitudes. This normally conveys

a more positive and involved attitude whereas that suggests a more detached and

possibly critical attitude:

Now tell me what you think of 

this new girlfriend he’s got?

(compare the more disapproving: Now tell me what you think of that new

girlfriend he’s got?)

Similarly, that sometimes carries a feeling of dismissal or rejection of something as

problematic:

[speakers are discussing new parking restrictions which have been introduced

and a proposal to change the existing voucher system for parking]

A: They’ve just brought all that parking in. There’s nothing much you can do

about it. 

B: Yeah. Abolition of the car-parking voucher scheme. How can he do that? He

can’t do 

that. It’s not in his power to do that. 

C: What’s he saying? 

B: He says he’s gonna abolish the parking scheme. Which is obviously stupid.

You know the voucher scheme. 

C: Mm. 

B: Which, obviously everyone wants to get rid of that stupid voucher scheme. 

180 | From utterance to discourse

Cambridge Grammar of English

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In narratives

In narratives, anecdotes, jokes and similar forms, this can be used instead of the

indefinite article a/an to create a sense of immediacy when introducing important

people and things in the story:

This girl Susanna knew in New York, she went to live with this guy called Ché.

That

can be used in narratives instead of the definite article the to refer to things

that are well known to listeners:

Then we drove round 

that big roundabout and over that bridge, you know the

one just as you come into Norwich.