Demonstratives reconsidered: Insights from experimental pragmatics and corpus-based studies

Abstract This study provides an up-to-date overview of current research on demonstratives, integrating insights from experimental pragmatics, corpus-based studies, and language acquisition research. The contributions to this thematic issue, including our own, emphasize the importance of social, multimodal, and interactional factors in demonstrative use and show how the selection of demonstratives dynamically adapts to various speaker-addressee configurations and evolving discourse contexts. A central aim of this thematic issue is to highlight an ongoing shift toward interaction-oriented and procedural accounts, where demonstratives serve not only as spatial markers but also as tools for managing joint attention and maintaining discourse coherence. The introductory paper argues for an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates linguistic typology, relevance theory, and usage-based models to deepen our understanding of the cognitive and social foundations of demonstrative reference.