As the fourth in a
series of pointers for crafting more readable and compelling compositions, I am
posting in this week’s edition of the Forum the essay below, “Using the demonstrative
reference words,” that I wrote for my weekly English-usage column in The Manila Times in early 2004. The
discussion focuses on those
handy words we can use so we don’t have to repeat ourselves to drive home a
point and, even more important, to make what we are saying more immediate and
forceful. They are, of course, the demonstrative adjectives, the
demonstrative pronouns, and the demonstrative adverbs. All of us are
supposed to have already internalized these reference words in our
conversational English as early as in grade school, but if you happen to be one
of those who had not become totally proficient in using them for one reason or
another (perhaps due to youthful inattention or an ineffective grammar teacher),
this review should be able to fill whatever gaps there might be your mastery of
them. (July 29, 2012)
Using the demonstrative reference words
This time, our
back-to-the-basics review of English composition brings us to the demonstrative
reference words—those handy words we use so we don’t have to repeat
ourselves to drive home a point and, even more important, to make what we are
saying more immediate and forceful. As some of you may recall, the three
categories of these reference words are the demonstrative adjectives, the
demonstrative pronouns, and the demonstrative adverbs.
Demonstrative
adjectives. This category consists of the modifiers “this,” “that,” “these,” and
“those.” These words belong to the class of function words called determiners,
which serve to either identify nouns or word groups functioning as nouns or
give additional information about them (the non-demonstrative determiners “a,”
“an,” and “the” also belong to this class). We will remember that the
demonstrative adjectives always agree in number with the nouns they
modify—“this” and “that” for singular nouns, as in “this apple” and “that
woman,” and “these” and “those” for plural nouns, as in “those apples” and
“those women.”
The demonstrative
adjectives “this,” “that,” “these,” and “those” are also called the pointing
words. They indicate how near or far an object is from the person
describing it, and are particularly useful in spoken language, where the
speaker can actually point to the objects or allude to them by tone of voice.
See the big difference these pointing words make: “That car salesman over
there is recommending this model to me instead of that model over
there, but I think all of these models offered by this dealer are
priced much higher than those offered by the other dealer downtown.”
Look at the
statement now without the demonstrative adjectives: “The car salesman is
recommending one model to me instead of another model, but I
think all the models offered by the dealer are priced much higher
than the models offered by the other dealer downtown.” The sense of
identity, immediacy, and proximity evoked by the first sentence is gone, clear
proof that the judicious use of demonstrative adjectives truly gives verve to
language.
The demonstrative
adjectives work as well even if the speaker or writer isn’t actually present at
the place where the objects being described are found. When adroitly used in
narratives or expository writing, these pointing words can actually allow the
reader to relive the writer’s experience, as if the reader himself was present
at the scene.
Take this narrative
passage:
There was this lovely woman beside me at the bus stop during this pounding rain, and right in front of us were these three men who looked like thugs, eying us with a menace that you could actually feel. Those moments made me think that it was the better part of valor to flee—never mind what could happen to that woman beside me—but these two thoughts stopped me from taking that action: “What will happen to this woman if I left her behind? Will I ever get over this shameful act of cowardice that I am about to do now?”
Demonstrative
pronouns. When the reference words “this,” “that,” “these,” and “those” point to
specific things independently without latching on to specific nouns, they
function as demonstrative pronouns instead. This is the case with the pointing
words in the following sentences: “This is the variety of apples I
mentioned to you last night.” “That is the director that launched a
thousand acting careers.” “I don’t like these any more than you do.” “Those
are a few of my favorite things.”
We can clearly see
that demonstrative pronouns are particularly suited to spoken prose, when the
speaker can actually point to the objects he is describing, whether near or far
from where he speaks. In writing, however, we can’t point as easily to a
particular object or noun, so we need a clear antecedent noun to establish the
identity of the object that the demonstrative pronoun has replaced: “The man’s
eldest son passed the entrance test to the state university. That made
him easily the happiest father in the small farming town.”
When such a link to
an antecedent noun can’t be clearly established from the preceding sentences,
it becomes advisable to supply a new noun. This is where the demonstrative
adjectives come in handy; they modify the new or repeated nouns instead of
replacing them: “That feat of his son made him easily the happiest
father in the small farming town.”
Demonstrative
adverbs. This class of reference words includes such adverbs as “here,”
“there,” “then,” “thus,” and “hence.” These words can handily take on the role
of those places or situations that the listener or reader already knows, or
those earlier described in a narrative and other forms of expository prose,
thus avoiding the need to present them again: “As I told you before, I want you
here, not there. You were a free agent then, but not
anymore. You will thus be reporting to me directly until six months hence,
when your contract expires.”
----------------From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, January 7, 2004 issue © 2004 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved. This essay subsequently appeared as Chapter 56 of the author’s book Give Your English the Winning Edge © 2004 by Jose A. Carillo. All rights reserved.
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