Deictic use of Dutch demonstratives

This paper presents a study of the use of the Dutch proximate (dit, deze; this) and distal (dat, die; that) demonstratives. Previous studies on the use of demonstratives to refer to linguistically introduced objects addressed the notion of 'force'. Force consists of three strategies: 'givenness', 'noteworthiness' and 'foregrounding'. We show how these three strategies can be generalized to the deictic use of demonstratives to refer to objects in a visual task domain. The empirical data obtained from recorded dialogues showed that proximate demonstratives are used in cases where a speaker wants to signal to the addressee extra force to find the intended referent while distals are used in cases where the referent is more 'given' with regard to the addressee's consciousness. Our results differ from those that have been reported in the literature on the use of the English demonstrative.