A language's demonstratives place referents at one of two locations on the distance scale, proximal or distal.  In English, <i>this</i> denotes proximal referents, while <i>that</i> indicates referents that are farther away from the speaker.

<br><br><b>Reference</b><br>
Diessel, Holger. 2008. Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives.
In Haspelmath et al (2008), chapter 41. Available online at <a href="http://wals.info/feature/41">
http://wals.info/feature/41</a href>.
