Can one use "this" when asking a question about a novel one has forgotten the title of?

Question

In a different community (Science Fiction & Fantasy) I have asked a "story identification" question.

I started my question with the sentence

I read this great novel about 30 years ago.

Another user objected that the use of the word "this" was incorrect in this context. He wrote:

I do not think it is correct to use "this" when writing about something [as yet] unidentified.

My original reasoning in using "this" was that the novel was specific, unique, and thus well "defined" even though I was not at that point able to "identify" it myself.

In fact, I did remember enough details for others to find it rather rapidly.

So who is right ?

Answer 1

The use of this in your sentence is not incorrect but informal. Collins Cobuild English Usage in its section on this - these (p716) states:

In conversation, many people use this and these as determiners even when they are mentioning people or things for the first time.

• And then this woman came up to me and she said, 'I believe you have a goddaughter called Celia Ravenscroft'.

Answer 2

"That" would make no sense but this in such uses is 100% idiomatic.

I once spent the winter living in this little cabin out in the middle of nowhere.

I can't really put my finger on it. It just had this "I'm the right puppy for you" quality, so I chose it over the others.

I once saw this movie where the inmates of a mental hospital are left behind when the town evacuates in advance of an enemy onslaught. It is set during World War I.

One of the main functions of determiners "the" and "this" is to present something as the focused topic of an utterance. this is frequently used to that end when the topic is being mentioned for the first time and is understood to do exactly that, "closeness" to the speaker (in the non-locative deictic sense) having that practical meaning in such contexts.

The determiner the, on the other hand, would cause the listener to come up short:

I once spent the winter in the little cabin out in the middle of nowhere.

In a work of fiction, that would be taken as an instance of the story or account beginning in medias res, as we haven't been introduced yet to that cabin though it is being spoken of as if we have been previously introduced to it. But in a conversation, it would not be a good thing to do that, as you don't want the listener to stumble but want them to be able to "follow along" as you announce a topic and only after it has been announced ("a little cabin in the woods") does it become presented as your focus ("The cabin had one small window...").

You can reply irately to the space-trash who criticized you for it:

Oh yeah? Well, take this, and this, and THIS!

In the movie version, each "this" would be accompanied by a punch from the hero: a jab, a cross, and concluding with a walloping uppercut.

Then you get on your space-camel and ride off into the sol-set.

Answer 3

Remarks found in A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Langiuage (Quirk et al, 1985) on the use the demonstratives "this" and "that" as they apply to the usage under consideration.

(CoGEL § 17.46)
[…]
Since there is only one composition called the War Requiem by Britten, we have [12] but not [13] or [14]:
• The War Requiem of/by Britten (is a splendid work.) [12]
• *The War Requiem of Britten's [13]
• *One of Britten's War Requiems [14]
Yet, we are able, in apparent defiance of this statement, to use demonstratives as follows:

• that wife of mine [15]
• this War Requiem of Britten's [16]

In these instances, which always presuppose familiarity, the demonstratives are not being used in a directly defining role; rather, one might think of them as allowing us to see wife and War Requiem as appositional, as members of a class of objects: 'This instance of Britten's works, namely, War Requiem'. Even when more than one object exists corresponding to the noun, the post-genitive phrase preceded by this should be regarded as having a generic partitive, eg:

• this hand of mine [17]

Example [17] should be interpreted not as 'this one of my (two) hands' but rather as 'this part of my body that I call "hand"'.

The indications found in Practical English Usage (Michael Swann, second edition, 1995) refer to the usual contexts of use, but a note on "that" and "those" adds a precision about meaning.

(PEU § 565, n° 8 other uses)
Note the special use of this (with no demonstrative meaning) in conversational story-telling.
• There was this travelling salesman, you see,. And he wanted …

That/those can suggest that an experience is familiar to everybody.

• I can't stand that perfume of hers.

This use is common in advertisements.
• When you get that empty feeling — break for a biscuit.
• *The perfect hobby for *those long winter evenings — astrology. Send for our free brochure.

This usage is correct, but informal ("always presupposes familiarity").

I read this great novel about 30 years ago.

The interpretation could then be "this instance of a book, which [I call / is called] a great novel".

Answer 4

I would argue that it is not only grammatical, but serves a specific function. Since "this" requires a referent, it can be used to implicitly announce and emphasise the referent in advance:

Greater love hath no man than this,
➔ that a man lay down his life for his friends.

In speech (or written speech), the act of communication itself – the sequence and cadence in which words are revealed – is part of the context, and it's just as valid to "point to" an upcoming idea as to a physical object in the room.

If you begin, "I read this great novel on a road trip to Disneyland with my family when I was 12...", then you have set up the question "What novel?". The reader is alerted to expect a return to that question, even if you don't come to it directly, which aids clarity if they are reading the whole text straight through. However, that is not necessarily how one reads an encyclopedia article (for example), so the idiom is less suited to formal use as a matter of style.

Answer 5

The question "who is right?" is hard to answer because it could depends on context. Many of the answers seem to go to "which is right?". In view of the technical responses, one could say: "You are right and the detractors are wrong". In the context of language change, while the usage: "I read this great novel about 30 years ago." may be deemed correct, but I would never use it. I would use: "I read a great novel about 30 years ago." substituting "a" for "this". I'm not sure that formal/informal quite covers it. The first one sounds wrong to me. Perhaps it's because it sounds like slang. So we may get into the discussion of evolution of the language except for the fact that others have found justification for correctness. Perhaps the speaker is concerned that the sentence "I read a great novel about 30 years ago", taken alone, may elicit the response: "Is that all?"; context should help alleviate that likely silly question.

Answer 6

The use of this presupposes discursive or actual proximity to the referent.

Question: "I read this great novel about 30 years ago.

Another user objected that the use of the word "this" was incorrect in this context. He wrote:

I do not think it is correct to use "this" when writing about something [as yet] unidentified." [bolding mine]

I agree, the indefinite determiner a would be used as it has not yet been identified:

I read a great novel about 30 years ago. It was about [whatever].
BUT it can also be:

• I read this great novel about 30 years ago. It was about aliens and cowboys on ship in the Pacific.

That use of "this" refers to the speaker's actual experience, which is then revealed in the next statement. This question is really about deixis:

Common Frame of Reference Needed Without a common frame of reference between the speakers, the deixis on its own would be too vague to be understood, as illustrated in this example from Edward Finegan in "Language: Its Structure and Use." Consider the following sentence addressed to a waiter by a restaurant customer while pointing to items on a menu: "I want this dish, this dish, and this dish". To interpret this utterance, the waiter must have information about who I refers to, about the time at which the utterance is produced, and about what the three noun phrases this dish refer to." (5th ed. Thomson, 2008)

See example

this can refer to something mentioned a speaker to references in his/her own speech but usually it does not refer to something in someone else speech. If two speakers are addressing each other, one might might use this if the context is very clear.

Speaker 1 (quoted in a slide): "We had a huge problem with our tap water. It turned out to contain much too much lead. We were afraid our kids would be poisoned".
Speaker 2 (speaking to Speaker 1 or addressing a roomful of students, for example). Yes, we have found this problem to be very serious in certain towns using the old water mains.

Summary: this as an actual thing (a referent) the speaker and listener are in contact with (the waiter example above) or this as a catch-all pronoun that refers to something in a speaker's own discourse or in close proximity to the speaker and listener(s) (the slide example). Both of these uses are deictic as they "point to the thing", actual thing or thing in speech (topic, situation).