Demonstratives as indicators of interactional focus: Spatial and social dimensions of Spanish esta and esa

• Published in: Cognitive linguistics 2020-08, Vol.31 (3), p.485-514
• Main Authors: Shin, Naomi, Hinojosa-Cantú, Luis, Shaffer, Barbara, Morford, Jill P.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cognitive ability; Cognitive linguistics; construal; Demonstratives; Hypotheses; Influence; intersubjectivity; Linguistics; Social factors; space; Spanish; Spanish language
• ISSN: 0936-5907; 1613-3641
• DOI: 10.1515/cog-2018-0068

This paper adopts a cognitive linguistic framework to explore the influence of spatial and social factors on the use of Spanish demonstratives ‘this’ and ‘that’. Twenty adult Spanish speakers in Monterrey, Mexico, were asked questions prompting the selection of puzzle pieces for placement in a 25-piece puzzle located in the shared space between the participant and an addressee. Although participants were not explicitly instructed to produce demonstratives, the need to identify specific puzzle pieces naturally elicited a total of 523 tokens of and . Analyses of the distribution of versus show that demonstratives are not used in a categorical manner to mark differences in physical space. Although participants tended to produce proximal for referents near the speaker, both and were used for referents further from the speaker and closer to the addressee. Participants’ demonstrative selection was also influenced by interaction type: intersubjective misalignment between speakers promoted the use of proximal , whereas intersubjective alignment promoted the use of distal . These results support the view that nominal grounding is an intersubjective activity. Physical and social factors shape speakers’ construal of the developing co-constructed communicative event as a whole, leading to increasingly variable usage of demonstratives as the referent is more distant both spatially and intersubjectively from the speaker.