Demonstrative reference (Halliday & Hasan, 1976) is a form of verbal pointing towards a referent, identified by its location on a scale of proximity. It is assumed by Halliday and Hasan (1976) that that is always anaphoric, whereas this may either be anaphoric or cataphoric. The main sources in English of cataphoric cohesion are this, these and here, while the cohesive use of then embodies anaphoric reference to the time just referred to (Table 5).

 

 

The definite article (the) is used when “the referent is assumed to be known to the speaker and the addressee” (Biber et al., 1991, 69). When the interpretation of the anaphoric definite noun phrase is dependent on the larger situational or social context, the text may require “extensive pragmatic inferencing on the part of the addressee” (ibid., 264) as the location, or extent of the information for the recovery of the exact meaning is not specified. A major problem in identifying cohesive ties established by the definite article is that it is also used to express general meanings, or to refer to unique items exophorically. Below is such an example from a thesis, where a singular NP in sentence 203 refers to the plural presupposed item with a general meaning:

Exophoric reference established by the definite article is sometimes “homophoric” (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, 71), meaning that its interpretation depends on a shared cultural context or general knowledge; this use is not always easy to distinguish from anaphora, especially in student papers (see Chapter 6). According to Halliday and Hasan (1976, 72), the definite article is only used anaphorically with a lexical item that is identical to, or synonymous with its referent; it is not used cataphorically, only in a structural sense. In the latter case, the definite article indicates that the item is identifiable from or by the nominal group in which it occurs. How this identification takes place will be described in more detail in Chapter 6, but generally, prepositional phrases, defining relative clauses and superlatives have recoverable referents in their containing sentences.

Here, the bold the has (1) homophoric reference, that is, it refers to the unique sky, and in a (2) situational sense, it is the sky that we are looking at. It is also specified (3) structurally by the prepositional phrase that follows it in the same sentence with the shooting stars. But in search of a more general referent, one can find the sky in the preceding sentence, to which the refers (4) cohesively. While this obviously introduces ambiguity in the analysis of texts, Halliday and Hasan do not offer a solution, but only hope that this phenomenon is rare. It is indeed rare, but in principle, whenever the sentence is interpretable in its own right, as in this example both are, then it will be regarded self-contained and will not be indicate as a cohesive tie in the analysis. In doing so the analysis remains consistent with the definition of reference in that for certain items to refer cohesively to something else, they cannot be “interpreted semantically in their own right, they make reference to something else for their interpretation” (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, 31). Where the interpretation of items is possible without referring to something else, cohesion is more likely to be of a lexical nature and is therefore not investigated here. In fiction, definite noun phrases are often presented as familiar (without a preceding indefinite noun phrase) in order to involve the reader earlier in the story; however, this use is rare and less accepted in academic writing. Selective demonstrative determiners (this, that, these, those) establish reference by indicating “proximity to the speaker and the addressee” (Biber et al., 1991, 69). The most obvious interpretation of proximity is in terms of distance (in a given situation or anaphorically in the given text), but it is also associated with time; according to Halliday and Hasan (1976, 60) “that tends to be associated with a past-time referent” and this usually has a present or future referent. Without going into further detail, they also emphasize that “there are marked differences among different styles and varieties of English as regards their patterns of anaphoric usage of this and that” (ibid., 61). While demonstrative determiners are “closely related in meaning to the definite article” (ibid., 272), they specify the number and the distance of the referent. Another distinction is that the definite article is usually unstressed, while demonstrative determiners are always in a stressed position in the sentence (Biber et al., 1991, 272). Noun phrases with a demonstrative determiner may refer to the situation and express proximity or distance in time, location or even emotionally, where proximity indicates greater empathy (Biber et al., 1991, 273). Anaphorically, demonstrative determiners tend to refer to the immediate textual context. When they are used as modifiers, they require some form of lexical repetition of the noun “to refer unambiguously to the presupposed item at the identical degree of particularization” (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, 65). In order for that to happen, generally, they agree in number with their referent; that is, this/that refer to singular or mass nouns, while the plural forms these/those refer to countable plurals. They may also refer to a list, where the singular is used to refer to the whole list, while the plural is used to refer to each item in the list.