The Situational Use

The situational use signifies the use of demonstratives to identify an entity from others in the surrounding situation and establish the referring entity into the universe of discourse (Himmelmann 1996:219-224; Diessel 1999: 135-138). Example (2.17) is

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a typical case of this usage.

(2.17)

This one is bigger than that one. (Diessel 2012: 2418)

Both instances of the demonstratives this and that in (2.17) are the situational use since they are used to refer to the entities in the immediate speech situation. Of this usage, demonstratives carry the properties of deixis. For example, the use of the two demonstratives involves the deictic center, namely the speaker; this refers to the entity that is near the deictic center while that indicates the entity that is relatively far from the deictic center. Moreover, the use of the demonstratives in this example is more than likely to be accompanied with pointing gestures, which assists the addressee to specify which entities the speaker denotes. Therefore, the addressee has to witness the process of the speaking to get the referential meanings of the demonstratives, which shows the interpretation of situational demonstratives relies on the audio-visual information.

In terms of the usages, deictic demonstratives can be distinguished into two types;

one is gestural usage and the other is symbolic usage, as mentioned in 2.1.1 (Fillmore 1997:63; Levinson 1983; 65-66; Diessel 1999: 135; Huang 2007; 134-135). Gestural usage refers to the use of deictic demonstratives in a way that a moment by moment monitoring of some physical aspects is necessary for the interpretation of the

expression. As for symbolic usage, it involves the use of deictic demonstratives in a way whose interpretation only needs the basic spatio-temporal aspects of the speech event or the general knowledge of extralinguistic situations. To illustrate the

difference between gestural and symbolic usages, take a look at example (2.18) and (2.19) respectively.

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(2.18) Gestural deictic demonstratives This one is a genius but this one is a fake.

(Levinson 1983:65) (2.19) Symbolic deictic demonstratives

This city is really beautiful.

(Levinson 1983: 65)

Both instances of the demonstratives in (2.18) are gestural use; the two sentences can be interpreted properly when two conditions are met. Firstly, the speaker provides physical indications to the referents. Secondly, the addressee has to witness the situation at the time of speaking so he/she is able to tell which object this denotes and which entity that specifies. The case in (2.19) by contrast demonstrates the symbolic use, which is not accompanied with any pointing gestures. The referent introduced by the demonstrative city is too large for the addressee to see thoroughly; thus, the monitoring of the physical referent does not assist the addressee to achieve the

identification task well. Instead, the spatio-temporal knowledge of the speech event is sufficient for the interpretation. More specifically, the addressee only needs to know the general location of the speaker to infer which city the speaker refers to.

The use of the symbolic demonstratives is extended to indicate entities that are not currently visible or even that do not have physical existence. Simple daily utterances suffice to illustrate this phenomenon, as provided in (2.14).

(2.20)

a. Hello, is Peter there? [On the phone.]

b. This is a great feeling.

(Levinson 1983:66)

In (2.20a), the demonstrative adverb there locates the current position of the listener,

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where is not within the deictic center; there is selected since the speaker and the listener do not stand in the same space. As for the case in (2.20b), the demonstrative pronoun this indicates the current feeling of the speaker, which is physically absent.

The referent specified by a demonstrative may be even more abstract; the use of demonstratives indicating abstract referent is identified as Deixis am Phantasma (Bühler 1934). Deixis am Phantasma usually involves shifting the point of view from the speaker to other interlocutors in the speech event. It is usual that an intended referent is specified from speaker’s point of view on the scale of proximity and the addressee is able to identify the referent by simply knowing where the speaker currently is since the speaker and the addressee are normally in the same

spatiotemporal situation. However, when the referring entity is absent or not in the perceptual surroundings of the addressee, the speaker may shift the anchorage point to another spatio-temporal situation for the addressee to specify the referent more easily.

The shift of the deictic center is suggested as deictic projection (Lyons 1977 : 578) and this phenomenon is usually triggered by the Deixis am Phantasma, which usually occurs in narratives and descriptions (Himmelmann 1996:222). The extract from the pear stories is a typical example of this phenomenon as in (2.21).

(2.21)

And he’s heading … you see a scene where he’s …coming on his bike this way.

(Himmelmann 1996:222)

In (2.21), the referent this indicates is an imaginary path, which does not exist in the real world. The narrator, in order to make the listeners get a clear picture of the situation, shifts the deictic center to an imaginary spatio-temporal domain; the deictic center is switched to an imaginary observer in the story. This example seems to

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suggest that the use of demonstratives is able to describe non-situational surroundings.

However, this case is regarded as a subtype of the situational use for two reasons. The first reason is that the demonstrative in example (2.15) is deictically anchored in the situation evoked by the ongoing discourse (Linde and Labov 1975). The second reason is that the demonstrative shares a determining feature with deictic

demonstratives (Himmelmann 1996; Diessel 1999; McNeil, Cassell and Levy 1933);

namely, they are frequently accompanied by pointing gestures (McNeil, Cassell and Levy 1933). The imaginary observer in the story could show the direction where the protagonist is coming from by a pointing gesture as if the intended referent exists in the physical world. Demonstratives am Phantasma therefore are included as a subtype of the situational use, even though they are used to indicate abstract referents

(Himmelmann 1999: 222; Diessel 1999:137; McNeil, Cassell and Levy 1933).

In colloquial English the proximal demonstrative is used to introduce a referent that that seems to exist in the mind of the speaker. This use is called new-this (Wald 1983:93) or unmarked this (Givon 2001:456). See example (2.22) for the illustration.

(2.22)

Dear Abby: There is this guy I’ve been going out with for three years. Well, the problem is that he hits me. He started last year. He has done it only four times or five times, but each time it was worse than before……

(Givon 2001:456)

In the example, the instance of the proximal demonstrative is new-this and it does not introduce a referent that exists in the immediate speech situation or discourse but in the mind of the speaker. This use is considered a subtype of the situational use, according to Himmelmann (1996:222). New-this indicates referents that exist in the mind of the speaker, which shares the sense of deixis am Phantasma to some degree.

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Similar to example (2.21), new-this introduces an imagined referent in the speaker’s mind and establishes the referent into the discourse. In this regard, new-this shares essential features with the situational demonstrative.

Demonstratives are used to make reference to a part of the speaker’s body and indicate where something happens to the protagonist in narratives (Himmelmann 1996:221); this is usually achieved with demonstrative adverbs as in (2.23).

(2.23)

She hit him here. (On the back)

(Himmelmann 1996:221)

The demonstrative adverb here is adopted to locate the spot where the person got hit;

the speaker is likely to demonstrate the process with his own body and to use a gesture to point out the exact location of his body. Besides, it is also common that people simply adopt a demonstrative determiner to point out a certain part of the body as well.

Last, demonstratives could be an indication of distance or height measures when the exact quantity cannot be correctly estimated.

(2.24)

a. They he had like wicker baskets, about this tall.

b. yuwa:ni ngunyju ya:ni

Dist-ANA like PROX-ANA It was about this long.

(The speaker indicates two points representing the length of the stringy bar torch.) (Himmelmann 1996: 221)

In (2.24a), the proximal demonstrative this is used to describe the height of the basket

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whereas in (2.24b) the length of the torch. The two examples show some degree of the deictic use of demonstratives; demonstratives here by analogy locate the position on the axis of height, length, weight, distance or other measurement units. Besides, the speaker could use gestures as aids to help the addressee to get a clearer picture of the size of the intended objects, which is one of the defining features of deictic

demonstratives. Thus, demonstratives as an indication of measurement are seen as a subtype of the situational use (Himmelmann 1996: 221).

In conclusion, situational demonstratives serve to point out a currently visible concrete object reference to the deictic center in the physical world; a defining feature of the situational use is the occurrence of gestures in this situations. Nevertheless, the situational use is far more complex in the real communications; that is to say, the situational use is no longer a use that is simply straightforward in terms of the concrete and immediate situation. The use of demonstratives is extended on various levels of displacement and shifts of perspective to meet various communicational needs. The intended referent may be absent from the sight of the speaker or even have no physical existence; these factors trigger a phenomenon that the deictic center is shifted to the perspective of the addressee in interactions or of the protagonists in narratives. Other subtypes of the situational use include demonstratives as reference to body parts and as the indication to measurements. These subtypes show complexity of the situational use. The situational use does not solely depend on the immediate situation surrounding the speaker and the hearer; rather it also involves interactional information.

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