“This” or “that”?

Abstract This study investigates the multifunctionality of Mandarin Chinese demonstratives, focusing on their discourse-organizing and appraisal functions in both written and spoken contexts. While demonstratives serve deictic roles for spatial and temporal reference, recent research highlights its extension into domains of discourse management and affective positioning. Drawing on online posts and conversational data, the current study analyzed the distribution of proximal zhe ‘this’ and distal na ‘that’ across three dimensions: deixis, interaction, and appraisal. Findings show that demonstratives occur more frequently in spoken than in written discourse, with distal na dominating in conversation and proximal zhe more common in written posts. Functional analysis reveals that distal na is closely linked to interactional functions such as topic management, distancing, and expansion, whereas zhe more frequently indexes epistemic stance, immediacy, and reader engagement. These results highlight the layered roles of demonstratives, and they also indicate asymmetry of functional extension with distal and proximal demonstratives in modern Mandarin.